Chapter 17

"What I ain't picked up about 'em I knew when I was born," said Joe, with a laugh and a pat of the mare's head. "All right--we'll turn ourselves into a couple of amachure vet'rinaries--seein' they ain't none hereabouts."

Between them they had soon bestowed the mare upon the stone boat in the best possible position for enduring the ride.

"Seems as if she understands the whole thing," Joe said, at length, looking down into the animal's face as her head lay quietly upon the blanket. "You're a lady," he said, softly, to Betty. The mare's beautiful liquid eyes looked dumbly back at him, and he stooped and rubbed her nose. "Yes, you're a lady," he repeated, "and we'll do our level best to deserve your trustin' us--poor little wreck."

In a roomy stall they put Betty. It was an afternoon's work to arrange it for the scientific treatment of the broken leg. Joe, with the readiness of a surgeon--he was, indeed, an amateur veterinary, and was consulted as such by the whole countryside--set the leg and put it in plaster of Paris. The two men rigged a sling which should keep the weight of the mare off the injured legs and support her body. With the help of two farm hands, Betty was put into this gear in a way which made it impossible for her to move enough to hurt the broken leg. A rest was provided for her head, and her equine comfort was in every way considered. When all was done, the farmer and the electrical engineer looked at each other with exceeding satisfaction.

"She'll get well," said Jarvis, with conviction. "I never saw it better done than you have managed it."

"Me?" returned Joe, with a laugh. "Well, say--I wouldn't mind havin' you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally."

Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper time.

At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man's figure standing beside that of the animal.

"Well!" Joe greeted him. "You're another. I can't seem to sleep, thinkin' about this poor critter, slung up here--sufferin'--and not understandin'. They like company--now I'm sure of it. It's a good thing she can't know how many days and nights she's got to be strung here, ain't it?"

His hand was gently stroking the mare's shoulder, as if he thought it must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.

"Go back to bed, Joe," advised Jarvis. "You've plenty to do to-morrow. I'll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it--I'm as bad as you, I can't sleep for thinking of her."

"Course you can't," thought Joe, going back to the house. "But you didn't say which 'her' 'twas that keeps you awake. I guess it's one's much as 'tis t'other."

It was about two o'clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon a pile of hay, his hands clasped under his head, heard light and uneven footsteps slowly approaching across the barn floor. He was instantly alert in every sense, but he did not move.

"Betty dear," said a soft voice. Then a slender figure came into view in the dim light, walking with a limp and painfully. A loose blue robe trailed about her, and two long brown braids, curling at the ends, hung over her shoulders. She came slowly into the stall and stood and looked at Betty. Suddenly she put both arms around the mare's neck, laid her cheek against the animal's face, and spoke to her.

"Poor Betty," she said, pitifully. "Did you fall into the hands of a cruel girl, who hurt you for all the rest of your life? Can you forgive her, Betty? She didn't mean to do it, dear. She was out of temper herself, because she couldn't have her own way--when she didn't _want_ her own way--Betty--can you understand? You were doing the best you could--she made you act such a silly part. Dear little Betty--she would stand beside you all night long, just to punish herself, if she could--but----"

She leaned against the side of the stall, and sank slowly down to the ground, with a hand pressed to her knee. Jarvis, on the hay, stirred involuntarily, and with a little cry of alarm the girl struggled to her feet again. At the next instant, as Jarvis spoke gently and his face came into view in the lantern light, she leaned once more, breathing quickly, against the side of the stall. Her face as she stared at him was like that of a startled child.

"You mustn't stand, you're not fit," he said, anxiously. "You ought not to have come. Let me help you back."

She gazed at him beseechingly. "Please let me stay a few minutes," she said. Was this meek creature the willful young person of the morning? "I can't sleep for thinking of her, and I want to make her understand that I'm sorry."

"I think she does. If she doesn't, she at least appreciates the tone of your voice. Even a horse might have sense enough for that. Let me bring you something for a seat, if you will stay."

He found an empty box, covered it with a new blanket, and set it by the side of the stall. She sat down and studied the arrangement of the appliances for the keeping of the mare in the quiet necessary to the healing of the broken leg. Jarvis explained it all to her, and she listened eagerly and attentively. But when he had finished she asked him abruptly:

"Did you hear what I said to Betty?"

"I could hardly help it."

"Then you heard me say that about being out of temper at not having my own way this morning--when I--really didn't want my own way." Her eyes were on Betty's patient little head.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked, smiling.

"Did I seem to want it?"

"Very decidedly."

"Yet--if you had let me have it--do you know how I should have felt toward you?"

"I know how I should have felt toward myself."

"How would you?" she asked, curiously.

He shook his head. "I believe I'd better not try to explain that."

"Why not?"

"Dangerous ground."

"I don't understand."

"When you admit," he said, "that when you seem to want your own way, you really don't want it----"

"That was just in this instance," she interrupted, quickly.

"Such a thing never happened before?"

"Certainly not."

"How about the time you lost your slipper off under the table the night we were dining at the Dennisons' and you forbade me to get it? Then when you thought I hadn't----"

"Oh--that was a silly thing--don't mention it. This was different. You knew the horses weren't safe for me to drive----"

"You admit that?"

"For the sake of the argument, yes. But since you thought they weren't safe, it would have been a weak thing for you to have given in to me."

"Thank you--that's precisely the way I felt."

"But it doesn't prevent--it wouldn't prevent my wanting my own way--always--about everything----"

"When?"

She turned a brilliant color under the lantern rays.

He bent forward. "Are you warning me?"

"I'm trying to let you know the sort of person I am."

"Well," he said, leaning back again, and studying her with attention, noting the picture she unconsciously made in her blue robe, with the brown braids hanging over her shoulders, "I've been observing you with somewhat close scrutiny for about three years now, and it occurs to me that I'm fairly conversant with your moods and tenses. Perhaps I ought to be warned, but--I'm not."

"I've always been told that sort of thing grows upon one," she observed.

"What sort of thing? Having one's own way?"

She nodded.

"You're right there," he agreed. "I've been wanting mine, more or less strenuously, for three years."

"Elaine Dennison," she observed--somewhat irrelevantly, it might seem--"is the dearest, most amiable girl. She loves to make people happy."

"Yes--and doesn't succeed. And you--don't want to make them happy--and--could."

She shook her head. "No--I never could. Anybody who had much to do with me would have to learn at once that I must have my own way."

"And if he should chance to be the sort of person who always wants his own way, it would be disastrous. Yes--I see. And I comprehend your ideal. I saw such a man once. It was in a railway station. He stood at one side holding all the luggage, and his wife bought the tickets. She was larger than he--I should say about one hundred and fifty pounds larger. To take and hold such an enviable position as this woman held needs, I think, an excess of avoirdupois."

He was laughing down at her, for she had got to her feet, and he had risen with her. One hundred and twenty pounds of girlish grace and slenderness looked even less beside one hundred and eighty of well-distributed masculine bulk. But it was only his lips which laughed. His eyes dwelt on her with no raillery in their depths, only a longing which grew with each jesting word he spoke.

"Will you let me carry you in?" he asked, as she moved slowly toward Betty. She shook her head. She laid a caressing hand on the mare's smooth nose and whispered in her ear.

"Good-night, Betty," she said.

"You ought not to walk, with that knee. You can't fool with a knee--it's a bad place to get hurt. I'm going to carry you."

She stood still, looking up at him at last. "Good-night, Mr. Jarvis," she said.

He came close. "See here," he said, rapidly, under his breath, "I can't stand this any longer. You've put me off and put me off--and I've let you. You've had your way. Now I'm going to have mine. You shall answer me, one way or the other, to-night--now. I love you--I've told you so--twice with my lips--a hundred times in every other way. But I'm not going to be played with any longer. Will you take me--now--or never?"

"What a singular way--what a barbaric way," she said, with proud eyes.

"It may be singular--it may be primitive--it's my way--to end what I must. Will you answer me?"

"Yes, I'll answer you," she said, with uplifted head.

"Look at me, then."

She raised her eyes to his. Given the chance he so seldom got from her, he gazed eagerly down into their depths, revealed to him in the half light, half shadow, of the strange place they were in. She met the look steadily at first, then falteringly. At length the lashes fell.

In silence he waited, motionless. She tried to laugh lightly. "You're so tragic," she murmured.

There was no answer.

"We should never be happy together," she began, slowly. "You've a will like iron--I've felt it for three years. Mine is--I don't know what mine is--but it's not used to being denied. We should quarrel over everything, even when I knew, as I did to-day, that you were right. I--don't know how to tell you--but--I----"

She hesitated. He made no answer, no plea, simply stood, breathing deep but steadily, and steadily watching her.

"You're such a good friend," she went on, reluctantly, after a little. She was drooping against the door of the box stall like a flower which needs support, but he did not offer to help her. "Such a good friend I don't want to lose you--but I know by the way you speak that I'm going to lose you if--I----"

She raised her eyes little by little till they had reached his shoulders, broad and firm and motionless.

"Good-by, Mr. Jarvis," she said, very low, and in a voice which trembled a little. "But please don't mind very much. I'm not--worth it. I----"

She lifted her eyes once more from his shoulder to his face, to find the same look, intensified, meeting her with its steady fire. She paled slowly, dropped her eyes and turned as if to go, when a great breath, like a sob, shook her. She stood for an instant, faltering, then turned again and took one uncertain step toward him.

"Oh--I can't--I can't----" she breathed. "You're the stronger--and I--I--want you to be!"

With one quick stride he reached her. "Of course you do," he said, his voice exultant in its joy.

Behind them brown Betty watched with dumb eyes, wondering, perhaps, how so stormy a scene could be succeeded by such motionless calm. As for her, this new, strange way of standing, always standing, too full of pain to sleep, was a thing to be endured as best she might.

R. H.--A PORTRAIT

Not credulous, yet active in belief That good is better than the worst is bad; A generous courage mirrored in the glad Challenging eyes, that gentle oft with grief For honest woe--while lurking like a thief, Peering around the corners, humor creeps, Into the gravest matters pries and peeps,

Till grimmest face relaxes with relief; A heart beloved of the wiser gods Grown weary of solemnity prolonged-- That snatches scraps of gladness while Fate nods, Varying life's prose with stories many-songed: One who has faced the dark and naught denied-- Yet lives persistent on the brightest side.

ALLAN MUNIER.

THE FUTURE MRS. THORNTON

By SARAH GUERNSEY BRADLEY

From a worldly point of view there could be no question as to the wisdom and desirability of the match, and Miss Warren's family was worldly to the core.

It had been a crushing blow to Mrs. Warren's pride, and, incidentally, a blow in a vastly more material direction, that her two older daughters had made something of a mess of matrimony, pecuniarily speaking.

She was confessedly ambitious for Nancy--Nancy, the youngest, the cleverest, the fairest of the three. Position she always _would_ have, being a Warren, but she wanted the girl to have all the _other_ good things of this life, that for so many years had been unsatisfied desires. Not, _of course_, that she would want Nancy to marry for money, she assured herself virtuously; that, in addition to being an indirect violation of an article of the Decalogue, was so distinctly plebeian. But it would be so comfortable if Nancy's affections could only be engaged in a direction where the coffers were not exactly empty. In other words, money would be no _obstacle_ to perfect connubial bliss.

And think of the future which awaited Nancy if she would but say the word! Even the fondly cherished memory of the Warrens' past glory dwindled into nothingness in comparison.

To be sure, Mr. James Thornton was not so young as he _had_ been ten years ago--"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all," Mrs. Warren was fond of quoting--nor, in point of girth, did he assume _less_ aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very generally looked upon as an altogether desirable _parti_.

It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. Under great stress of feeling, in the heat of argument and the like, he had been known to break the Sixth Commandment in so far as the English of the king was concerned.

"You was," "those kind," "between you and I," would slip out, but these variations from the strictly conventional were looked upon as little eccentricities in which a man whose fortune went far above the million mark could well afford to indulge.

"James is so droll," the aristocratic Mrs. Warren would say comfortably, resolutely closing her eyes to the fact that James' early environment, and not his sense of humor, was responsible for his occasional lapses. For James' father, old Sid Thornton, as he was always called, could not have boasted even a bowing acquaintance with the very people who were now not only falling over each other in their mad anxiety to entertain his son, but were even more than willing to find that same son a suitable wife among their own fair daughters. Old Sid Thornton's homely boy, Jim, running away to sea, and Mr. James Thornton, back to the old town with a fortune at his disposal, and living in a mansion that was the admiration and envy of the whole county, were two totally different entities.

Temptingly did the mothers with marriageable daughters display their wares. But of all the number, and many of them were passing fair, Mr. James Thornton cast longing eyes on only one, and that was Nancy Warren. Frankly, he wanted to get married, settle down, perhaps go into politics when he had time; he wanted a mistress for that beautiful house on the hill, some one who would know how to preside at his table and dispense his hospitality; some one, in short, who would know, instinctively, all the little niceties which were as a sealed book to him, and the tall, fair, thoroughbred Miss Warren seemed ideally fitted for the post.

Encouraged thereto by the tactful Mrs. Warren, James had poured into her eager ears the secrets of his honest soul, and Mrs. Warren had listened with a sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages--before Nancy had opened her blue eyes on this naughty world--when he was a gawky, freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church with Mildred, the eldest daughter of the house of Warren.

That was long before Mrs. Warren had felt poverty's vicious pinch, and before her life had become one continual struggle to make both ends meet. Somehow, her point of view had changed since then--points of view _will_ change when the howl of the wolf is heard in the near distance, and yet one must smile and smile before one's little world--and, all other things being equal, Mr. James Thornton's home, garish with gold and onyx, and fairly shrieking with bad tapestries and faulty paintings and ponderous furniture, seemed as promising and fair a haven as she could possibly find for the youngest and only remaining daughter of the house of Warren. As for any little jarring notes in the decorative scheme of the Thornton abode, Mrs. Warren knew that she could trust Nancy to change all that, if she were once established there as the bride of Mr. James Thornton.

Now, Nancy had her share of the contrary spirit, and although she did not look altogether unfavorably upon the wooing of the affluent James, she took very good care that her mother should not suspect her state of mind. Perhaps that one unforgettable summer, of which her mother only dimly dreamed, made her despise herself for her tacit acquiescence, and she salved her accusing conscience with some outward show of opposition.

"Mr. Thornton is most kind, but his hands are positively beefy, mother," complained Nancy, one day, her short upper lip curling a bit scornfully. Mrs. Warren had just finished a long dissertation on the virtues of Mr. James Thornton, and, merely incidentally, of course, had touched on the great advantages that would accrue to the girl who should become his wife.

"You _ought_ to know, my dear," Mrs. Warren replied, blandly, "that the sun of South Africa has a _rather_"--Mrs. Warren's broad _a_ had a supercilious cadence--"toughening effect on the skin. Hands or no hands, he has more to recommend him than any man of _your_ acquaintance." Mrs. Warren refrained from adding in what respect. "He is very much taken with you. Let him slip through your fingers and he'll be snapped up by some one else before you can say 'Jack Robinson.' Effie Paul"--Mrs. Warren began counting the pining ones on her fingers--"would give her old boots and shoes if she could annex him--she's a calculating creature; I never liked her. Alice Wood needs only half a chance to throw herself at his feet just as she already has done at his head. _Her_ conduct has been disgraceful." Mrs. Warren sniffed the sniff of the virtuous and blameless. "There's not a girl of your acquaintance who would not jump at the chance of becoming Mrs. James Thornton."

"Did you ever read that story of Kipling's where he says, 'Regiments are like women--they will do anything for trinketry'?" inquired Nancy, calmly.

"Kipling may know a great deal about regiments, but he knows _nothing_ about women," said Mrs. Warren, severely. "I am surprised to hear a girl of your age advocating any such idea! I have a higher opinion of my sex, thank Heaven!" She assumed the air of an early Christian martyr.

"Well, I think they're a pretty mercenary lot," said Nancy, stolidly.

"Not at all. People sometimes have a proper sense of the eternal fitness of things," her mother returned, with withering inconsistency. "Not, of course," she added, hastily, "that I would _consent_ to your marrying Mr. Thornton if you didn't _care_ for him."

Nancy's face was a study.

"I think too much of _him_ for that." Mrs. Warren threw her head back proudly.

"He's a trifle unideal, mother; a bit different, you must admit," Nancy laughed. "To begin with, he has a regular bay window."

"Don't be vulgar, Anne," her mother said, sharply. "He inherits flesh."

"Yes, I remember once hearing dad say that old Sid Thornton looked exactly like an inflated bullfrog," Nancy laughed, wickedly.

"Your dear father had an unfortunate way of expressing himself." Mrs. Warren drew herself up stiffly. "And I must say, my dear, that you are much more like poor, dear Charles than you are like me." Mrs. Warren wiped away a tear, and Nancy wondered vaguely whether the tear was for her late and not too loudly lamented father or for the absence of _her_ likeness to his relict.

The next moment Nancy, swiftly penitent, was at her mother's side, and, taking the still wonderfully young face between her hands, said softly: "Kiss me, Marmee. I'm a brute, I know I am. I know what an awful struggle it has been to keep up appearances. I--I'm sick of it all, too. Only--only, I must think, that's all. I must be perfectly sure--that I really _care_--for Mr. Thornton. Don't say anything more now, dearie," she pleaded, as her mother started to make some reply. "I'm going off to think." And, kissing her mother tenderly, this strange little creature of varying moods and tenses went up to her own room to have it out with herself. It was the one place where Nancy Warren felt that she could be perfectly honest with her own soul, where all shams and insincerities could safely be laid aside without fear of that arch-tyrant of a small town, Mrs. Grundy.

She opened her window, and, sitting down on the floor in front of it, her head on the broad sill, gazed, with curiously mingled emotions, at the imposing pile of gray stone on the hill, where Mr. James Thornton lived and moved and had his being.

Down deep in her heart of hearts, Nancy Warren knew that she was far more like her mother than that very lovely and very conventional woman dreamed.

She was a luxury-loving soul--things that were mere accidents to other women were absolute necessities to her. With a longing that almost amounted to a passion, she craved jewels, good gowns, laces and all the other dear, delightful pomps and vanities of this world, which only a plethoric purse can procure.

She reveled in the violets and orchids which, so sure as the day dawned, came down from the Thornton conservatories for the greater adornment of the house of Warren.

The rides in the fastest machines in the county, the cross-country runs on Mr. James Thornton's thoroughbred hunters, all these were as meat and drink to her.