Part 22

"Nobody can, dear. You know that," returned Clover, distressed by this rare flood. She slipped her arm around the recumbent form, and interspersed her words with loving pats. "I am so disappointed, Milly. I thought you would be as happy as I am."

"I am never as happy as you are," answered the other. "I know this is abominable, but I've got to be selfish this once. I'm just envious and miserable, Clover. Why should you always be blessing people and I never? My heart is heavy, and it hurts me all the time."

In an instant Clover sank her joy in loving compassion. It was the first admission concerning Jack that Mildred had ever made.

"My poor darling, I am so sorry," she said feelingly, "and I do not see that you have done any wrong. Instead, you have been true to yourself. Anything else would have been a dreadful mistake."

Mildred was so surprised that she stopped crying suddenly. "Then Jack has told you?" she said without lifting her face, a belated sob struggling in her throat.

"Yes. Shouldn't you prefer to have him go away?"

"No, not unless he wishes it. I would rather he stayed."

"Things will come right for you, dearest. They always do when one is trying to live up to her standards, and to do the best she knows how. Perhaps I have made you feel that even I thought you ought to marry him. If I have, please forgive me for adding to the cruelty of your position. I ought to have known that you would be glad, too, if it could have been Jack."

Mildred rose to a sitting position. "Let us forgive mutually," she said, wiping her eyes. "I am mortally ashamed of myself for bothering you at such a time. Wait till to-morrow morning and see me redeem my character by my treatment of that--thief!" She stooped and kissed her sister passionately. "Why should I blame him, when I know that I would not look at any woman but you if I were a man? What a lot of trouble it would have saved me, by the way!"

"I don't know," returned the other with a smile. "You see I should have been forced to refuse you."

"That is just like saying you love him better than me," with quick suspicion.

"No, no; only better than that man you were going to be."

"Well," said Mildred, shrugging her shoulder in a characteristic gesture, "I rather think I should enjoy the refreshing change of being refused once or twice. As for you,--as if I should mind your refusal! I should simply kidnap you." She stooped, and laid her cheek against Clover's once more.

Aunt Love was a happy woman next day. She was quite a heroine in the small family jubilation.

"All my life I shall owe you twelve added hours of happiness," Page said to her, when she gave him a rousing kiss.

"Well, Mr. Gorham, you know I always was good to you," she responded radiantly, and contented herself all day by drawing Mildred off into corners to discuss this and that detail of "his" and "her" behavior during the past weeks; "trifles light as air," but "confirmation strong" to Aunt Love of a good time coming, and which she dwelt upon with such profound delight and secrecy that Mildred had not the heart to refuse her an audience for all the asides she chose to make.

Gorham Page allowed himself a brief period in which to realize his happiness before returning to Boston, but his energies now turned willingly toward his work as the means by which he could soonest carry Clover to his own home and hers; and before he left, it had been arranged that they should be married the following spring.

The day before the one set for his departure, Jack came out to Clover, who was sitting with some fancy work on the piazza. Page was at the hotel, writing business letters.

"Gorham says your cigars are too strong to be good for you," she said, looking up as he struck a match.

"Yes, he has let out from the shoulder lately," returned Jack, puffing his cigar alight.

"Do listen to him, Jack," said the other pleadingly. "Don't injure your health."

"What is my health good for?" asked the young fellow, dropping down on the edge of the piazza, upon which he extended one leg, while he embraced the other knee as he leaned against a pillar.

"Don't talk that way," said Clover. Van Tassel had never heard her use so acute a tone, and he was surprised on looking up to see her eyes swimming. "It is wicked when one has friends who love him as yours do you."

"All right, Clover. Thank you. I am listening to Gorham. This cigar that I have here"--he removed it from his lips, and regarded it through contracted lids--"might have become sauerkraut by a little different process of handling." He smoked a minute in silence, then said: "Mildred has gone away, hasn't she?"

"Yes; she has gone to spend a day or two with Helen Eames. Helen has been urging her all summer."

"I think I'll go back with Gorham to-morrow," added Van Tassel briefly.

"Why, Jack!" Clover dropped her work and gazed at him.

"Yes, I'll go back." The young man flipped the ash from his cigar off into the grass.

"Do you feel that you have seen the Fair?"

"Yes, too many Fairs." Jack smiled rather dolefully as he glanced up toward the blue eyes.

"I can't urge you to stay," said Clover sadly.

"Oh, perhaps I'll come back," remarked the other cheerfully, "when I get my second wind, as it were. The first supply has been about knocked out of me."

"You don't look well."

"Oh yes, I am well enough."

"You have behaved like an angel, Jack."

He laughed. "I feel a little like one of those angels on the side of the Transportation Building,--the sort you can pass under a door without touching their buttons, you know."

"Did you plan to go without saying good-by to Mildred?"

"Oh no."

"I'm glad of that. It would hurt her."

"No. I will run up to the Eameses this evening and kill two birds with one stone. I ought to say good-by to Miss Eames. She has been very kind to me. That is," looking up inquiringly, "if you and Gorham can spare me on your last evening. How is that?"

There was dew again in the violet eyes. "It does not seem right for me to be happy when you are not, Jack," Clover said, unconsciously clasping her hands together. "If I could only say something that would stay with you as a comfort! I am afraid to seem to preach when my own lot is what it is. You are plucky and have plenty of self-control, but I hope you will not try to lean only on your own strength. We can all have faith that, so long as we do right, the outcome will be the best thing for us, whatever it is."

"I'm not kicking," said Jack quietly, "but I am going away because I believe it is the best thing both for Mildred and me."

"Does she know your intention?"

"No. It is rather sudden. I only took it to-day. I have staid here long enough to bring things the way I want them if it were on the cards. Now, I will do the next best thing."

A couple of days afterward, Mildred returned from her visit. She came breezily into the room where her sister was sitting.

"Oh, I am so glad to see you!" exclaimed Clover, starting up and kissing her.

"Let us look at you," said Mildred, holding her off and scrutinizing her with bright, audacious eyes. "No, they are not red," she continued; "I thought I might be coming home to a Niobe."

"They are both gone," said Clover plaintively.

"Yes." Mildred turned away to a mirror, and began removing her hat-pins. "I have been kept so busy consoling Helen Eames that I couldn't come home any sooner to dry your tears."

Her sister look at her inquiringly. Was there any bravado in this disappointing gayety? Apparently not. Mankind loves a lover, and Clover, especially loving this lover, felt tempted to resentment; but might it not be that Mildred indeed felt more light-hearted than for months past? Why should she be blamed, if she found relief in the knowledge that her home was free from a presence which had been in a way a constant reproach?

"I wish Jack did care for Helen Eames," returned the elder, unconsciously sighing.

"Yes; wouldn't it be convenient?"

"I'm glad you've come home, Milly. The house has seemed so empty."

"Oh, but what lovely flowers!" exclaimed the latter, espying a great bowl of roses in a shaded corner. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"They are not yours, my dear." Clover smiled at her work. "They came last night."

"They are beautiful. Did brother actually remember to have such a sweet substitute sent you on your first lonely evening? I am proud of him. What else interesting has happened?"

"Nothing, I think. Gorham received a characteristic letter from Robert just before he left. He gave it to me to keep, with one that came from Hilda. Perhaps you would like to see it?"

"Indeed, I would. Nice, jolly Mr. Page! I wish they lived next door."

Mildred took the letter Clover handed her. "I'm going to read it aloud. It probably says nice things about you.

"DEAR GORHAM,--So you have won that sweet woman! Blessings on you, my boy! I may be partial, but I believe you are somewhere near good enough for her. Truth compels me to state, however, that your gain is my loss, owing to the overweening satisfaction it is to Hilda. In an evil moment, I underrated her prescience when she prophesied this happy event, and the consequence is that I am considering living at the club until the first blush of her triumph passes over. It flavors the matutinal oatmeal and the after-dinner coffee. I cannot indulge in a short nap without encountering a tall nightmare in which the wife of my bosom pops out from unexpected corners and ejaculates 'I told you so.' She sits opposite me now, writing a letter to go with this. I know those are burning words that are growing with such swiftness. I can almost hear the paper hiss. However, I am just as pleased as she is. Please give Clover my love,--you see I am not slow to use my privilege in naming her,--and tell her I am sure the world will be a better place for such a home as you and she will make in it. Indeed, I feel more than I can say on the subject.

"With kind regards to all, "Your brother, "ROBERT."

With the early autumn came the Parliament of Religions,--the congress which, among the many that preceded and followed it, proved, to the general surprise, to be the one of greatest interest to the public. Miss Berry was indefatigable in her attendance; and her young ladies were often with her. The names of those Orientals, whose words she listened to as to music, were impracticable to her; but their dark faces and graceful gestures were fixed in her mind forever. Aunt Love was one of thousands whose complacent generalization of "the heathen" received a blow.

Clover did her share in the entertaining of some of these scholarly delegates from the far East; and Mildred found a totally novel sauce piquante in the society of a handsome coffee-colored Indian, who wore a pink silk turban and mouse-colored robe, and talked transcendental philosophy in the purest English while gazing at her from long, beautiful eyes.

Lieutenant Eames had rejoined his regiment, whether or no hiding a heart-wound, Clover did not know. Mildred said nothing. October, the busiest, gayest month of the Fair, came on. Such of society as had hitherto been obdurate, now returning from seashore and mountains, made one united, belated rush for the widely extolled Exposition. The climax of attendance during one day came on October 9th, Chicago's own celebration, the anniversary of the great fire, when more than seven hundred and fifty thousand persons were in the grounds. The effect, when one could rise to a slight eminence and look down, was such as is observed in a trap so full of flies that there is only a general stir and movement among the mass; no form is visible.

The day was faultless. Not a cloud flecked the azure against which shone the groups of the Agricultural Building, that one edifice which interposed no roof between its superb statuesque decorations and the revealing blue of the firmament. The three mammoth fountains at the end of the Court of Honor played in dazzling sunshine, filling the air with crystals.

Clover and Mildred were present, attended by the Pink Turban, splendid in his unconsciousness of being regarded on all sides as a sort of embodied apotheosis of the Midway.

The ceremonies of the day began with what Clover's chair-boy naively called a procession of "the hussies," although the Chicago Hussars might have taken exception to the term. From that moment until late evening, the interest was not permitted to flag. A tightrope-walker in cavalier costume ran and pirouetted high in air before the Peristyle, the scarlet and gold of his costume showing jewel-like against the pure columns.

A large chorus sang national hymns. The young liberty-bell pealed. Hundreds of children in fancy costumes marched around the lagoons; but the magnitude of the crowd defeated its own entertainment by the fact that the procession of elaborately prepared floats could not force their way through the avenues.

It was all very wonderful, but greatest of all was the fabulous splendor of the night display. The Van Tassel party viewed it from the roof of the New York Building. Surely, Chicago had earned the right to celebrate herself by bombardments of colored fire, if so it pleased her, and she did so this evening on a scale which trebled previous efforts, and made the heavens as luminous as on that night, twenty-two years ago, when she was the victim instead of the instigator of her pyrotechnics.

Once more the city meant to distinguish the World's Fair by novel and striking accompaniments to its intrinsic grandeur. It was intended that its close should be attended with a metaphorical flourish of trumpets; but close upon this last day, shame and affliction visited Chicago in the murder of its mayor, and all festivities were renounced. The last hours of the existence of the Dream City were mournfully quiet.

"A bubble is always most beautiful just before it vanishes," Mildred said to Clover, as they stood together in the Court of Honor on that afternoon, waiting for the fateful moment.

"It never looked more lovely," replied Clover. They spoke softly, as in a holy place, and with one accord looked up at the infinite message in carven letters, the significant legacy of the summer's grand experience:--

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

A strain of solemn sweetness sounded through the harmonies that poured without ceasing from the orchestra in a neighboring pavilion, touching every heart in that waiting throng.

The rays of the low-hanging sun shot for one moment past the side of the Administration Building, gleamed through the waters of the fountain, and traveled a swift path across the lagoon to illume for an instant the golden Republic.

"It is the swan-song!" exclaimed Mildred.

A long, sullen roar sounded from the east. It was the first peal of the salute which bade the Dream City vanish. The sisters clasped hands, as they had once before in the selfsame spot. The eyes that had sought each other, dark with excitement and anticipation, that day, now saw through mists of tears. The myriad flags they had seen unfurled in gladness now with one accord slipped down from sight, and the music died as the message from the cannon's mouth told the country around that all was over.

Jack had been with them on the opening day. Mildred could recall how earnest and handsome he looked, standing with his hat off, carried away by the spirit of the occasion. A great wave of compassion swept over her heart, and mingled with the yearning and sense of loss in the air. The weather was chill now and cloudy. She was glad to slip her arm through Clover's and hurry home.

Soon after this, Aunt Love returned to Pearfield. There was some discussion as to whether she should take Blitzen; but that sagacious animal, as was usual when anything inimical to his interests was in the air, seemed fully aware of her doubts, lost his high spirits, haunted her like a silent ghost, walked when she walked, sat when she sat, and whined as he gazed at her, until the persecuted woman yielded to his mute entreaties. Electra stayed, and remained the heroine of her latticed inclosure,--an additional reason for Blitzen to prefer returning to his native heath.

Aunt Love's farewell was by no means a sad one. She was radiant as she remarked how soon Clover would be her neighbor.

"And in that way we'll get you, too," she said to Mildred; but that young woman demurred.

"Of course she will come," said Clover.

"I'm not sure," persisted the younger.

"Well now, my dear," said Miss Berry in parting advice, "don't you wander through the woods too long and take up with a crooked stick at last; but, whatever you do, marry a man o' your own color, who wears a hat and coat instead of a turban and a bath wrapper. Remember that."

"I don't know," responded Mildred, with a teasing smile. "The Pink Turban says he has a pair of very handsome diamond earrings. Perhaps, if I should have my ears pierced, he would let me wear them a part of the time."

"Go 'way!" exclaimed Miss Berry, with a repudiatory gesture.

The old Scotch housekeeper soon returned, joyful to be back again, and felicitating herself that the Fair was safely over; and life might have been supposed to move on as before, but it did not.

Clover had come into a new state of existence, the deep, constant joy of which she never expressed in words. Except for the framed photograph on her dressing-table, Mildred might have believed her equable sister to be unchanged in thought as well as habit; but Mildred's own mode of life was noticeably changed this season. The winter was a hard one. Cold weather set in in November, and the reaction from the great business activity of the year before caused a depression cruelly felt among the poor. Charitable work was the order of the day, and Mildred entered into it heart and soul.

"Slumming was never so fashionable," she said; and thus lightly accounting for the new direction of her energy, she learned novel views of life, which would modify her character in all time to come. Clover was her efficient aid, and her friend Helen Eames sometimes went on these expeditions too, under the shadow of her wing.

It was rather a grievance with Helen that Mildred never of her own accord referred to Jack, and if questioned, made brief replies. Mr. Van Tassel was a Chicago man and belonged here. He was, in Helen's own phraseology, "perfectly fascinating," and not to be lightly dropped. She intended to keep herself posted as to the probabilities of his return; but Mildred early nipped her plans in the bud.

"We can't reckon on Mr. Van Tassel as a Chicagoan any more," she said. "He is reading law very earnestly now in Boston, and he has lived there so many years, it is home to him. Besides that, he is devoted to Clover, and when she is married to his cousin, that will be another tie to keep him at the East."

Upon which Miss Eames grew thoughtful, and fortune shortly after throwing in her way an invitation to visit a friend in Boston, she incontinently dropped her pilgrimages amid Chicago's back streets, and departed on the most limited train available.

Soon afterward, Mildred received a gay letter from her. Mr. Van Tassel had called, and had been one of the theatre party her hostess had given the night before. She was having a charming time, and hoped dear Mildred would not take something in those dreadful basements before she could return to help her again.

"Wouldn't it be strange," Clover asked, when her sister showed her the letter, "if little Helen should catch Jack's heart on the rebound, after all?"

Mildred returned her look with unusual gravity. "Are men's hearts so unfaithful, do you think?" she asked seriously.

"Sometimes," answered Clover, "when they despair; and women's, too."

"Then they are unworthy," Mildred said quietly.

No winter ever suffered more than this by contrast with the summer. In public print and by private hearsay, the bitter needs of the poor surrounded one. The corpse of the White City lay wrapped in a winding-sheet of snow. The sisters never entered the grounds from the afternoon its spirit departed. They looked askance, in passing, at the buildings, with their cold, silent surroundings, where so recently all had been life and warmth. The same domes and facades upreared under the cold sky. One could only say as he does in glancing tenderly and sadly at a dear, dead face: "How natural it looks!"

Little wonder that plans were innumerable for preserving a portion of that dream of beauty, to be resuscitated and to become the joy of one more summer; but the work of spoliation had begun, and would march on inexorably.

"Miss Mildred has grown awful quiet, Mrs. Van Tassel," said old Jeanie one day in confidence. "It's a wrong you're doing her, I'm thinking, letting her quench all her bright spirits in those holes she visits."

"I think not, Jeanie," Clover replied. "Miss Mildred is having a deep experience; but we can't help the sorrow in the world except by coming close to it."

"I saw tears in her eyes the other night," whispered Jeanie profoundly, "and I asked the poor child why, and what do you suppose she answered?"

"I suppose she had the heartache over some of our new friends."

"Maybe; but if she did, she wouldn't acknowledge it. She said 't was because the Chicago Beach Hotel was closed for the season, and there couldn't be any dances there!"

Clover smiled. "That sounds as if her spirits had not all departed," she remarked.

But she had been quick to observe the alteration in Mildred. Sometimes she hoped that Jack's absence had wrought the fulfillment of his desire, but she did not seek to probe her sister's feeling. If unseen influences were expanding the entrance to the holy of holies in the young girl's heart, what right had she to interfere? Sometimes she feared Mildred was depressed by the prospect of a marriage which would break up this home. Whatever the cause, the fact remained that her sister's interest in society had waned, and the part she kept up in it was perfunctory, and did not extend beyond those efforts which courtesy demanded. She had never been more companionable with Clover, however, and the latter had never enjoyed her so much.

Thus matters stood when the New Year was ushered in. The day was clear and bright, and many thousands took advantage of the fact that Jackson Park passed back to-day into the public jurisdiction. Curiosity seekers and vandals poured down the strangely mute Midway Plaisance and through the avenues of the Park. Clover and Mildred did not swell the number who gayly parodied "After the Ball."

And now was to come the long pull and the strong pull of winter. Mildred wondered in her own mind why the prospect should look so very dreary. No other season had ever seemed like it. Doubtless it was her new and close acquaintance with the griefs of others that had changed the world, and made life a novel sort of struggle.

The new year was less than a week old when Clover received a letter from Jack, announcing his intention to make them a call.

"I won't give any excuses," he wrote; "I admit that I am coming simply because I want so much to see Mildred and you that I believe I shall do better work after indulging in that pleasure."

"Loyal as ever," said Clover, looking up, and Mildred did not raise her eyes from her work, but she was smiling.

Jack had said he could not set a precise time for his arrival, but that in a few days they might expect him to drop down.