Part 2

_H._ (_who has been watching_ ESTHER’S _face, and not her fingers, sets down his cup hastily_). Seven lumps is a little radical. Then you have forgotten all in four years? (_Pacing the floor._) Forgotten what I, Esther, have been fool enough to remember as if it had happened yesterday! Who is it talks about woman’s constancy?

_E._ (_aside_). Not I. But I am very much afraid I shall begin to. Has the tea gone to my head too?

_H._ (_with much feeling_). The bitterest lesson the four years have taught me, Esther, is that one’s earliest lessons are never unlearned. They have been kinder to you.

_E._ (_in a low tone_). Have they? Perhaps. They have taught us both, however, that it is not necessary to unlearn them; one can go on as if one had never studied—old lessons.

_H._ Or old letters? (_Coming nearer and taking up the letter._) But you did care for me enough to keep this letter—to read it over to-day—to give one thought to old happiness in the presence of new?

_E._ (_recovering herself with an effort_). I thought enough of myself to keep it. It is a mistaken theory that a woman keeps old love-letters for the sake of the sender. She keeps them because they are flattering—because they—they sound nice. I have lots more.

_H._ (_offended_). And you were only weeding them out to-day? Very well. That is enough. No further words are necessary.

_E._ Yes—so you said before (_glancing at letter_), or something very like it (_Looking into the teapot._) There is no more tea for us, and the lamp has gone out. (_Looking about._) And no matches—unless you have one in your pocket.

_H._ (_who has been thinking, moodily feels in all his pockets_). I am very sorry—but I cannot supply you with even the necessaries of life.

_E._ Never mind, I can light it from the fire.

_H._ (_pushes the letters toward her_). Make a lamplighter of one of these, and I will light it for you.

ESTHER _hesitates an instant, takes up one letter, and then the other_.

_H._ Oh, use mine. It has failed to rekindle a passion, but it may do for a teakettle. It may as well be reduced to ashes along with the rest of the poor little love-story.

ESTHER _turns her head a little away and slowly twists both letters into lamp-lighters_.

_H._ (_aside_). I shall let all my hopes burn in the flame with my letter. If she uses that, I give her up. I shall know she is not mine to give up. I have come to the pass where folly is my only reason. She is twisting Dr. Tennant’s! But now she is twisting mine. (_She rises to go to the fire and he rises to do it for her._)

_E._ I prefer to do it myself.

_She returns with one burning, with which she lights the lamp, and lays the other down on the table. He takes it up eagerly._

_H._ So, Esther, you did not burn it, after all? (_Rising and coming toward her._) You did not care that the last of it should go out in ashes?

_E._ (_speaking lightly_). It was not that so much, but I was afraid it was better suited for an—extinguisher. I think that was more what you meant it for.

HAROLD _goes back to his seat gloomily and tastes his tea._ ESTHER _plays with the teaspoon—a pause._

_E._ How do you like your tea?

_H._ It is a little—cloying.

_E._ (_rising and moving about the room_). A bad fault.

_H._ (_dryly_). But fortunately an uncommon one.

_E._ (_with feeling_). I have made a great many mistakes in my life—suffered a great deal of unhappiness—because I have been afraid of being cloying. (_Aside._) Am I mad, that I should tell him the foolish truth!

_H._ (_rising_). I should say it was a fault to which you were not constitutionally inclined. (_Aside._) That sounds much firmer than I feel.

_E._ No, but on that very account people should have borne with me more than they have! (_Still with feeling._) Things might have been different.

_H._ (_going toward her_). Esther! (_A bell._)

_E._ (_hurriedly_). Never mind! There is the door-bell! Things are going to be different! (_With a faint smile._) I told you he did not like any sweet at all in his.

_H._ (_impetuously_). And have I not had my full allowance of bitter? It is time you began dispensing sweets—so let him stay away.

_E._ (_laughing nervously_). But—but it wasn’t my idea to get rid of him.

_H._ The plan is ready for your acceptance. You were going to tell me you were engaged to-morrow—tell him so to-day, instead!

_E._ (_glancing at clock_). I cannot. His engagement was made with me a week ago.

_H._ And mine five years ago. (_She hesitates._) Besides, he is late—half an hour late. What is it about a lover who is late? He has divided his time into more than “the thousandth part of a minute.”

_E._ (_laughing_). And are you not later—by four years?

_H._ (_firmly_). I am twenty-four hours ahead of time.

_A knock. Enter maid with a card._

_E._ Show him into the reception-room. I will come in a moment. (_Exit maid._) It is he, Harold. I must go.

_H._ (_taking her hands_). Esther, think one moment. Forget the four years. I have come a day too soon. I have swallowed two cups of tea and eight lumps of sugar and made a general ass of myself—but—I love you.

_E._ But—but this is so shameless! I thought I should have to say—something like that—to him.

_H._ (_coolly_). And I am in time to save you from so unfortunate a mistake. You had much better tell it to me.

_E._ But I must give him an answer.

_H._ Give me one first! Adopt my plan, it is so simple. Send word—or tell him, if you like—that you are engaged. But come back!

_E._ Indeed, he shall have his answer first. His right demands precedence at least. But (_opening the door_) I will come back.

_H._ To five years ago?

_E._ Perhaps. (_Returns just as she is leaving the room._) But, Harold, Harold, I thought an afternoon tea was so safe, or I should _never_ have asked you.

_H._ And so did I—or I should never have come.

CURTAIN.

THE COMMONEST POSSIBLE STORY

BY BLISS PERRY

Philander Atkinson, bachelor of law and writer of light verse, sat one murky August evening in his hall-bedroom, with the gas turned low, wondering whether the night would be too hot for sleep. At a quarter before ten a loitering messenger-boy brought him a line from his friend Darnel: _Come around at once. Just back. The very greatest news._ Thereupon Atkinson discarded his smoking-jacket, reluctantly exchanged his slippers for shoes, and took the car down to Twelfth Street, remembering meanwhile that Darnel’s brief vacation from the Broadway Bank expired that day, and speculating as to the nature of the great news which the clerk had brought back from Vermont. The lawyer was a Vermonter too, and it was this fact, as well as a common literary ambition, that had drawn the young fellows together at first, long before Philander, on the strength of having two triolets paid for, had moved up to Thirty-first Street. Philander Atkinson liked Darnel, admired his feverish energy and his pluck, envied his acquaintance with books. He had always persisted in thinking that Darnel’s stories would sell, if only some magazine would print one for a starter; and he had patiently listened to most of these stories, and to some of them several times over. Yet Darnel had never had any luck; had never had even his deserts; and the sincerity of his congratulations whenever Atkinson’s verses saw the light always caused Philander to feel a trifle awkward. He knew that the indefatigable clerk had two or three manuscripts “out”—out in the mails—when the vacation began, and as he turned in at Darnel’s boarding-house he had almost persuaded himself that _The Æon_ had accepted “Laki,” his friend’s Egyptian story. It was a long climb up to Darnel’s room, and the writer of light verse mounted deliberately, being fat with overmuch sitting in his office chair. On the third floor the air was heavy with orange-flowers and Bonsilene roses, and a caterer was carrying away ice-boxes. A whimsical rhyme came into Philander’s head, and he made a mental note of it. Just then Darnel appeared, leaning over the balustrade of the fourth-floor landing, his coat off, his collar visibly the worse for the railway journey, and an eager smile upon his thin, homely face.

“Hullo, D.,” said Philander. “Here I am. Been having a wedding here?” he added in a low voice, as he grasped Darnel’s hand.

“I believe so. I’m just back. Come in, Phil. You got my message?”

“Why else should I be here, old fellow? Is it ‘Laki,’ sure?”

Without answering, Darnel led the way into his tiny room. His trunk lay upon the floor, half-unpacked, the folding-bed was down, for the better accommodation of some of the trunk’s contents, and the desk in the corner, under the single jet of gas, was covered with piles of finely torn paper. Darnel’s manner, usually nervous and somewhat conscious, betrayed a certain exhilaration, but he was under perfect self-control.

“‘Laki?’” he said, seating himself in his revolving chair and whirling around to the desk, while Atkinson threw himself upon the bed, “‘Laki?’ Oh, I had forgotten. It’s probably here.” He pulled over the mail accumulated during his absence. “Yes.” He tore open the big envelope. “‘The editor of _The Æon_ regrets to say,’ etc.;” and he tossed the printed slip, with the manuscript, into his waste-basket, with a laugh.

Atkinson’s heart sank. Poor Darnel; it was not a cheerful welcome home. But Darnel was busied with his letters.

“And here are the others,” he went on. “I thank the Lord none of them were accepted.”

“What!” exclaimed Philander, turning upon his elbow.

Darnel looked at him with a puzzling smile.

“That’s why I sent for you,” said he. “Phil, all that I’ve been writing here for three years is stuff, and I’ve only just found it out. I can do something different now.”

Atkinson stared. Darnel had rarely talked about his own work, and then in a scarcely suppressed fever of excitement and anxiety. Many a time had Atkinson noticed his big hollow eyes turn darker, and his sallow face grow ashy, even in reading over with a shaking voice some of that same “stuff.”

“I have learned the great secret,” Darnel added, quietly.

“You have Aladdin’s ring?” said Atkinson. “Or are you in love?”

“Both,” replied Darnel. “It is the same thing.”

Philander flung himself back upon the pillow, with a little laugh. “Go ahead, D.”

“I have found her, and myself. Let me turn down the gas a little; I see it hurts your eyes. I belong in the world now; I am in the heart of it—I said to myself coming down the river this afternoon—in the heart of the world.” He lingered over the words. “Phil,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “all the time I was trying to write I was really trying to lift myself by the boot-straps. I was laboring to imagine things and people, and to get them on paper. It was all wrong. Do you remember that French poem you read me last winter, about the idol and the Eastern princess—how she lay on her couch sleeping—the night was hot—with the bronze idol gazing at her with its porphyry eyes, while her brown bosom rose and sank in her sleep, and the porphyry eyes kept staring at her—staring—but they never saw? Well, I believe my eyes have been like that. In ‘Laki,’ now, you know I wanted to describe the exact color of the stone in the quarry, and asked the Egyptologist up at the Museum to tell me what it was? He laughed at me. Very well. It was a dull-red stone, with bright-red streaks across it; I saw the same thing in Troy this afternoon, when a hod-carrier fell five stories and they picked him up from a pile of bricks.”

“You’re getting rather realistic,” muttered Philander. Darnel was not looking at him, and went on unheeding.

“I have but to tell what I see. I have stopped imagining; my head has ached—Phil, you don’t know how it has ached—trying to imagine things. I am past that now; if you only shut your eyes and look, it is all easy. Take that old Edda story that I tried to work up, about the fellow who fought all day long against his bride’s father, and when night came the bride stole out and raised all the dead men on both sides, by magic, so that the next day, and every day, the battle raged on as before. I used to plan about the magic she used, and tried to invent a charm. Why, all she did was to pass over the battle-field at night, where the dead lay twisted in the frost, and while the wolves snarled around her and the spray from the fiord wet her cheek, she stooped to touch the dead men’s wrists; and they loosed their grip upon broken sword and split linden shield, their breath came again, soft and low like a baby’s, and so they slept till the red dawn.”

“Look here,” said Atkinson, sitting up very straight, “you’ve been reading ‘The Finest Story in the World,’ and it has turned your head.”

“Oh, the London clerk who was conscious of pre-existences, and forgot them all when he fell in love? I could have told Rudyard Kipling better than that myself.” Darnel gave an impatient whirl to the revolving chair.

“You mean you think you can,” replied Atkinson, sharply.

“As you like.” He spoke dreamily, and Atkinson dropped back on the pillow again, watching his friend as narrowly as the dim light would allow. Hard work and unearthly hours had told on Darnel; he certainly seemed light-headed.

“Sickening heat—black frost—” he was murmuring; “marching, stealing, fighting, toiling—joy, pain—the life of the race—is a man to grow unconscious of these things in the moment that he really enters the life of the race, that he feels himself a part of it? What do you think, Phil?”

“I think,” was the slow reply, “that whatever has happened to you in Vermont has shaken you up pretty well, old fellow. They say that when someone asked Rachel how she could play _Phèdre_ so devilishly well, she just opened her black Jewish eyes and said, ‘I have seen her.’ And I think, in the mood you’re in now, you can see as far back as Rachel or anybody else. It’s like being opium-drunk; if you could keep so, and put on paper what you see, you could beat Kipling and all the rest of them. But you can’t keep drunk, and you can’t write prose or verse on love-delirium. It’s been tried.”

“Suppose Rachel had said, ‘I _am Phèdre_?’”

Atkinson lifted his stout shoulders, laughing uneasily. “So much the worse. I should say, the less pre-existence of that sort the better. You might as well tell me the whole story, D. What is her name?”

“In a moment. She loves me, Phil. She is waiting for me in her little house among the hills. I left her only this morning, and soon I shall go back and leave New York forever. I can write the story up there—the story I have dreamed of writing—for I shall always have the secret of it. I have but to shut my eyes and tell what I see; and it is because she loves me. All the life of all the past—I can call that ‘A Story of the Road.’ Then there will be the future to write of—the men and women that are to come; for we shall have children, Phil, and in them——”

“You’re making rapid progress,” ejaculated Philander.

“——I shall know the story of the future. Even now I know it; I do not simply foresee it, I see it. Why not ‘A Story of the Goal!’ For I belong to it—do you not understand? Yet, after all, what is that compared with the present? It shall be ‘A Story of the March!’ Look there!”

He threw his eyes up to the ceiling, which was brightened for an instant by the headlight of an elevated train as it rushed past.

“Do you know what that engineer was really thinking of as he went by? That would be story enough. Or what was in the heart of the bride to-night, down on the third landing—you smelled the orange-flowers as you came up? To feel that your heart is in them, and theirs in you——”

But Philander Atkinson was not listening to the lover’s rhapsody. He was thinking of a certain summer when he, too, had had strange fancies in his head; when his thoughts played backward and forward with swift certainty; when he had grown suddenly conscious of great desires and deep affinities, and for a space of some three months he had dreamed of being something more than a mere verse-maker, a master of the file. Then—whether it was that she grew tired of him, or they both realized that some dull mistake had been made—it was all over. There was still in his drawer a package of manuscript he had written that summer; in blank verse, none too noble a form for the high thoughts which then filled him; in a queer new rhythm, too, the secret of whose beat he had caught at and then lost, for the lines read harshly to him now. He looked these things over occasionally, as a sort of awful example of himself to himself; though he had gone so far as to borrow some of their imagery, not without a certain shame, to adorn his light verse. His card-house had fallen, but some of the colored pasteboard was pretty enough to be used again. Curiously, he found that he could cut pasteboard into more ingenious shapes than ever since his brief experience in piling it; fancy served him better after imagination left him; his triolets were admirably turned, and his luck with the magazines began. Altogether it had been an odd experience; half those crazy ideas of Darnel had been his two years before, but he was quite over them—yes, quite—and now it was D.’s turn. He listened again to something that Darnel was murmuring.

“And she is an ordinary woman, one would say; a common woman. That is the mystery and the glory of it. I do not know that she is even beautiful. There must be thousands of women like her; I can see it plainly enough, that there must be thousands of women in the world like _her_.” There was a reverent hush in his voice.

Atkinson choked back an exclamation. Was D.’s head really turned? “A common woman”—“not know whether she is beautiful?” A face rose before him, unlike any face in all the world: eyes with the blue of Ascutney, when you look at it through ten miles of autumn haze; hair brown as the chestnut leaf in late October; mouth——

Philander trembled slightly, and rising to his feet, stood looking down at Darnel, haggardly. It was quite over, that experience of two summers before, but while it lasted he had at least never dreamed that there were thousands of women in the world like _her_.

“Sit down, Phil, I am almost through. A woman like other women, and the story, when I write it, a common story. It will be the commonest possible story; common as a rose, common as a child. I am going back to Vermont, where I was born, and where I have been born anew. There will be plenty of time for the story—years, and years, and years. I have only to close my eyes some day, and she will write down all I tell her, and I shall call the story hers and mine.”

But Atkinson still stood, his hands in his pockets, his heavy figure stooping, the lines hardening in his face, while he watched the rapt gaze of Darnel, and drearily reflected how strange it was that a woman should open all the gates of the wonder-world to one man’s imagination, and that some other woman should close those secret gates, quietly, inexorably, upon that man’s friend.

“Wait,” said Darnel. “Must you go back to your triolets? Let me show you her picture first.” He turned the gas up to its fullest height, and held out a photograph.

It was the same woman.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

BY GEORGE A. HIBBARD

CITY OF NEW YORK, April 10, 1887.

DEAR SIR: It is with some hesitation that I venture to trespass upon your valuable time, knowing as I do that the demands of clients, of constituents, of friends, are so exacting. Still, as what I am about to ask relates to a matter lying very near my heart, I hope you will forgive me. A young man in whom, in spite of the usual extravagances and follies of youth, I discern some promise, and whom I hope, for his own sake and from my friendship for his excellent father, dead long ago, to see occupying a respectable position in the community, has, with the heedlessness peculiar to his age, involved himself in certain difficulties which, although at present of a sufficiently distressing nature, may, I hope, be satisfactorily overcome. Knowing so well your distinguished abilities, ripe judgment, and great experience, I can think of no one to whom I can, in this critical period of his life, more confidently send him for counsel, instruction, and aid, and I accordingly commend him to you, trusting to our old friendship to account for and excuse my somewhat unusual act. Though what I ask of you is something not usually required of a lawyer, I think you will understand my reason for thus troubling you. No one can have a more thorough knowledge of the world than an old practitioner like yourself, and what you may say must fall upon the ears of youth with weighty authority. Talk to him as you would to your son, if you had one, not as to a client, and I will be inexpressibly indebted to you, for I know you will lead him to appreciate the serious realities of life, which, at present, he is so disposed to disregard.

I need only add that he is a young man of some fortune, and, certainly, by birth worthy of much consideration. He will call upon you in person and himself explain his present embarrassments.

I remain, now as always, Your obedient servant, RICHARD BEVINGTON.

THE HON. JACOB MASKELYNE, Counsellor at law, Number — William Street, City of New York.

This was the letter that the Honorable Jacob Maskelyne read, reread, and read yet again. Indeed, not content with its repeated perusal, he turned it this way and that, looked at it upside and down, and finally, laying it upon the table, he held up its envelope in curious study, as people so often do when thus perplexed. It bore the common, dull-red two-cent stamp and was post-marked the day before. Both it and the letter were apparently as much matters of the every-day world as a jostle on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, the old lawyer was more than puzzled—more than puzzled, although he, of all men in the great, wideawake city, would in popular opinion have been thought perhaps the very last to be thus at fault. If millstones were to be worn as monocles—if there was any seeing what the future might bring forth—the chances of a project, the risks of rise or fall in a stock, the hazards of a corner in a staple, the prospects of a party or of a partisan, Jacob Maskelyne would be regarded as the man of men for the work. But, under the circumstances, even to him this letter was more than perplexing. Here, on this spring morning, with floods of well-authenticated sunshine pouring into every nook and corner, dissipating every mystery of shadow and, it might seem, every shadow of mystery—here, in his office, bricked in by the unimaginative octavos of the law—those hide-bound volumes, heavy literature of all things most amazingly matter of fact; here, in the eighteen hundred and eighty-seventh year of the Christian era, in the one hundred and eleventh year of the Republic, he had received a letter from his old guardian, whom, when he himself was not more than twenty, he remembered walking about a feeble old man with many an almost Revolutionary peculiarity in speech and manner, and whose funeral he, with the heads and scions of most of the first families of the town, had attended full twenty-five years ago. It certainly was enough to bewilder anyone. He again took up the letter. It was unquestionably in old Bevington’s best style, courtly enough, but a trifle pompous. Had it not been for its true tone he would undoubtedly have thought the thing a hoax and immediately have dismissed it from his mind. He touched a hand-bell, and in response a young man—a very prosaic young man—over whose black clothes the gray of age had begun to gather, appeared.