Chapter 2

"You know we've always been taught that women were naturally dependent, and I supposed it was second nature for them to receive money from their husbands, and so they got enough they cared no more about it. Do you think many of them feel like that woman in the car?"

Loveland poked the fire from beneath and then sighed helplessly.

"Can't say, I'm sure," he replied in his gentle, hesitant way. "They don't seem to go according to tradition in anything, so far as I've noticed. They're a peculiar race."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Randolph in a practical tone. "It's pretty easy to understand, once your attention's called to it. I'd never given the subject any thought, but if one chooses to observe he can very soon find out what's what. Some men are idiots and won't learn, so they get in a mess.

"It's natural for you to be mystified, Steve," continued Randolph after a short pause, "but you see I have a sister and I know all about women. You can judge of the rest by any one of them. They're pretty much alike."

Loveland gave the top of the fire a few little jabs.

"Yes, I know," said Randolph. "You have mother and sister both, but you haven't lived with them for years. If you don't actually live in the same house with women you can't know them. Of course even then you may be in the dark on a point or two, as I was on the money question, but you can soon learn. All a woman wants is fair treatment. If a man drinks and makes a beast of himself or sulks around in place of telling her what he don't like and letting her change it, of course she isn't going to be happy. It's easy as rolling off a log to manage a woman."

Loveland rose and thrust the poker down through the top crust of the fire and left it standing there.

"As far as management goes," Randolph went on unheedingly, "leaving morality, and expense, and all that out of the question, I'd just as soon turn Mormon and marry forty women."

Here Loveland stabbed the fire clear through the body, bringing the poker out on the under side and against the hearth with a force that bent its glowing point.

"The stew's done," he said. "We'll dish up now."

This little scene, or rather the conversation that seasoned the stew, soon faded from Randolph's memory, but it lingered in the mind of his companion. Men like the latter, little given to speech, are apt to turn and re-turn in thought what has been said to them, and therefore do not easily forget.

Several weeks after this the two men sat on the bachelor hearth once more; Loveland in his usual quiet mood and Chance smarting from a recent wound. He had begun to feel that his position was almost secure with Miss Leigh, but that day, on the occasion of a picnic at which he had amused himself by trifling with a silly young girl, he was amazed, mortified, and hurt by receiving the cold shoulder when he proffered his company to Miss Leigh on the way home.

His friend's hospitable hearth had more than once proven a refuge and a solace. It was so to-night, and Randolph began to take heart again as he settled back in his comfortable chair in the ingle-nook and watched the hanging of the oyster stew upon the crane.

For a time the gentle simmering of the appetizing dish was the only sound to be heard. Randolph did not feel like talking or even listening, and his companion knew how to hold his peace.

Steve Loveland was one of those men whose intuitive sense is as fine as a woman's; of delicate physique, strong brain, and a sensitive temperament that might have gone off on a morbid tangent but for the common sense, cheerfulness, and unselfishness that held it true to the course. The last man in the world to lead a lonely life, but there was an invalid mother and a delicate sister in a pretty little country town home some two hundred miles away, and that was why Steve had no home of his own. Loving nature as I think most men of fine, sensitive fiber do, yearning for wife, and children, and hearthstone, as every good man must, he had cheerfully and forever put one side all hope of fulfilling these holy dreams and had taken his place on the force of a daily paper, never thinking he was a hero. His comrades never thought of that, either; they only knew that he was always pleasant, always considerate, always every inch a man, and they loved him with one accord.

It was to such a friend as this that Randolph had given his heart, for although he did not fully understand him, he loved him, and the answering affection he received was one of the most beautiful of tributes to his own fine qualities.

When Randolph was ready to talk he told the story of the day--its hope, its disappointment, and humiliation.

"It beats the Dutch, Steve. I can't think what was the matter. There wasn't a thing I did or a word I said to make her behave so."

Steve was softly poking the fire from above. The night was quite cool for June.

"No, there was not," Randolph reaffirmed. "I've gone over the whole day again and again. I didn't give her the least excuse. What do you suppose was the matter with her?"

Steve looked up with an almost startled air.

"Oh, I'm sure I can't say. They're quite beyond me."

"They're beyond every one," said Randolph in the tone of a Supreme Court judge. "I don't see what the Lord made them for."

Steve looked up again and there was the least suspicion of a twinkle in his eye.

"How is it," he asked in his gentle way--"how many of them is it you are prepared to manage?"

Randolph brought his chair down on its four legs.

"Not a confounded one!" he said.

III

For a time Randolph Chance was fairly dazed by the suddenness with which his fortune changed. Yesterday it was down--deep down; to-day it had gone flying up. He had followed Constance Leigh when she walked to the lake in the afternoon; had helped her from a perilous place in the midst of rough winds and still rougher waves; and as he took her from the pier their eyes had met, and this was why, later on, he sat by his friend's fireside in a state of bewildered rapture.

An outsider, one of the world's common folk, would have made but little out of Randolph's brief, rough-hewn sentences. But Loveland was finely strung; he understood.

"I can't forget that look. It breaks me all up every time I think of it."

Randolph spoke like a man who was talking to himself.

"It's so unreal--I may have dreamed it," he went on slowly. "I tell you, Steve"--this with a sudden turn--"I don't dare to hope, but if----"

There was no perceptible tremor in his voice, but the sentence broke sharply.

"I know, old man, I know," said Steve in his gentlest voice.

And he poked the fire softly between the ribs of the grate.

It seemed that Randolph's hope was not without foundation, for after he had been the toy of fate somewhat longer he came to Steve one night with great news, and yet no news to Steve, who had long discerned the signs of the times and had been dreading what he saw must come. Now, although he felt sharp pangs of grief on seeing his boon and sole companion snatched from him and about to be offered up upon the altar matrimonial, yet he rejoiced thereat with the full force of his unselfish nature.

On this especial night the two men sat beside the fire, and also beside some of the last oysters that would ever be served up with the spicy sauce of this same good comradeship. As befitted so memorable an occasion, the oysters were big fellows and were frying gloriously.

Randolph, who was in great good spirits, leaned over and lifted them carefully with a fork he held in hand.

"Here we are!" he exclaimed. "Things are done brown now!"

Then the two men looked up at each other and burst out laughing.

There was one important ceremony which Randolph felt must precede the marriage service, and that was the introduction of his bosom friend to his _fiancee_.

"I've been puzzling my brains to think how I can bring this about," he said to Constance one day. "I've already hinted at it to Steve, but he don't take. I know he wants to meet you, but he's such a retiring fellow--not really bashful, but like a clam in his shell."

"Don't distress yourself, I beg of you," said Constance with a mischievous smile. "Mr. Loveland and I have already met and are now the best of friends."

Randolph stared at her in open-mouthed amazement.

"Where?" he managed to ask.

"Right here in this parlor. I must tell you about it--it was most beautiful. His card took me by surprise, but I supposed you had brought him. When I came downstairs there he was, looking altogether different from your descriptions."

"Well, I like that!" said Randolph. "Do you mean to impeach my statements?"

"Altogether better," persisted Constance. "Yes, he is taller and has a most interesting face. He came forward to greet me without a particle of embarrassment, and there was something so manly and simple, and withal so high-bred in his every movement, that I was charmed. I know he must come of a fine family."

"Oh, he does. He had a line of ancestors a mile long aboard the _Mayflower_. A cousin of his was telling me. He never said a word. He never talks."

"Ah!" said Constance with an arch smile. "He talked that evening, I assure you, and to good effect. He had but a few moments to stay, but he made every moment tell. For one thing, he assured me, with a most winning smile, that he should feel constrained to rise in church and forbid the banns unless I promised to adopt him as a brother."

Randolph's eyes and mouth opened again.

"Perhaps you'd better adopt him as something still nearer!" he said, with a pretense of anger.

"Now that you mention it," Constance replied in a confidential tone, "I came very near doing so. The only reason I did not was that he forgot to ask me."

Randolph broke into a laugh. Then he added in a puzzled tone:

"Well, it beats everything! In all the ten years I've known him I've never heard him say as much as that!"

"I can't repeat all he said----" Constance began again.

"What!" Randolph cried with another semblance of jealousy.

"No, because it lay in his manner; that gentle, affectionate, yet manly manner--indescribable! perfectly indescribable!"

"It's the same to everybody," said Randolph, "and everybody loves him. I never knew another such fellow. It's past belief the way he wins people. And he says nothing, too."

"Ah, but he does!" repeated Constance. "Well, well, there's no telling it all. I continually think of the word delightful in recurring to it and him. I assured him that he would be a member of our family, and that our fireside and our crust--I really didn't dare to promise more than a crust, you know, Randolph--would be his as well as ours. When he left he said good-by in the same perfectly easy, natural way, calling me Constance----"

"What?" Randolph exclaimed.

"And then he said, 'I am a brother now, you know,' and he bent and kissed me."

"The dickens!" cried Randolph.

And Constance finished the sentence.

"He did. And really in the most delightful way," she added naively.

Shortly after this cementing of new bonds there was a quiet wedding ceremony one morning at the little suburban church, and when this was over Randolph and Constance were ready for their walk through life.

This walk--sometimes quickened into a jog trot and even into a lope, sometimes slackened till it becomes a crawl--is variously diversified, according to the temper and general disposition of the parties. In the present instance there was reasonable hope of some harmony of gait, but life is life, whether within or without the wedded fold, and "human natur' is human natur';" and although David Harum may tell us that some folks have more of this commodity than others, yet we know that every one has a lump of it, at least, and usually, thank God! a lump of leaven as well.

The first agitating question upon marriage is that of residence. Happily Randolph and Constance were agreed upon this point. Both were indifferent to the city; both were lovers of the country. Randolph had once read a certain sweet pastoral termed "Liberty and a Living," and hardly a day had passed since the reading that he had not recalled it and speculated as to how he could adjust it to his own life.

The fact that the writer, like himself, was a journalist; that he broke loose from just such shackles as were wearing Randolph's pleasure in life, made it seem more possible to the latter, and now that he had joined hands with a woman of similar tastes, the experiment seemed really feasible.

"It's easy enough if we'll only think so," said Randolph.

"It _looks_ easy," Constance replied more cautiously; "that's one reason why I am afraid of it. That proves to me that we don't know anything about it. If it were really so easy more people would try it. We're not the only ones who love the country."

"I wonder more people don't try it," Randolph exclaimed. "When I look around me in the train and see the care-worn, harassed faces the men wear, I wonder they don't break loose from their drudgery and go to living. What's the use of existing if you have to drudge continually for your bread, and must eat even that in debt half the time?"

"_We_ may have to do without bread," said Constance, smiling.

"Then we'll eat cake, as Marie Antoinette suggested," Randolph responded promptly.

There really was some practical preparation for the proposed country life, although many of the plans seemed visionary enough. Randolph had long been considering an offer from a local magazine that would enable him to do most of his work at home, but the pay was smaller and less certain than he could wish. However, he at last decided to resign from the newspaper force with which he had for years been connected and to risk taking the other position.

Now, happily, he had done good, faithful work in his present place and was highly esteemed. Consequently, as soon as the editor of the paper learned why he was going and what he wanted, he offered him the editorship of the literary department in the Saturday issue, at a smaller salary than he had been receiving, to be sure, but still a larger and more certain one than he could earn on the magazine, and this he accepted and went on his way with much rejoicing.

"I'll only have to go into the city once a week now," he said to Constance, "and my literary work at home won't require over three hours a day. That's something like living!"

Constance was as delighted as he, but she was more cautious and said less. She once remarked in this connection that she intended to borrow a motto from Steve's coat of arms--"Mum's the Word."

During the past few years Randolph's expenses had been small and his earnings considerable; consequently he had quite a goodly sum in bank. With a portion of this he and Constance bought a small place in the country, happening on a genuine bargain, as one will if he has cash in hand. The house was little more than a cabin, and they decided to devote it to their servants--a married pair--while they built a cottage for their own use.

The latter deserves more than a passing word. Both Randolph and Constance had "Liberty and a Living" in mind when they planned it, and although it did not precisely repeat that charming little domicile, yet it was built in much the same style. The one big room--library, dining-room, and sometime kitchen combined--looked out from three sides. In the early morning it saw the clouds piled up in expectant glory over the way across the surging lake; toward evening its windows to the left blazed their farewell as day sailed into the west; while golden sunbeams played at hide-and-go-seek among its pretty furnishings throughout the midway hours. Even on cold, cloudy days there was still good cheer, for a big log fire crackled on the ample hearth beneath the oaken mantel, whereon a glowing iron had etched Cowper's invitation (who could say it nay?):

"Nor stir the fire and close the shutters fast; Let fall the curtains; Wheel the sofa round; And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome cheerful evening in."

The very furnishings of this library were intellectually and spiritually appetizing. A large desk, off one side, bespoke brain work; a solid center-table, strewn with books and magazines, made one long for the glow of the big lamp and the leisure of the evening, while Constance's grand piano seemed to stir the very air with a dream of harmony. The room was lined with low book-cases; above Shakespeare stood his bust; above the many volumes on musical themes, busts of Beethoven and Wagner; pictures--not costly paintings, but engravings, photo-gravures, and etchings, scenes from other lands, sweet spiritual faces, suggestions of great lives--looked down from the walls; while over all, as a frieze to the oaken room, ran the words: "'Tis love that makes the world go round."

To Steve Loveland this home seemed more like Paradise than mortal abode. He watched its building and making with as intense an interest as Randolph's and with far more of sentiment. Marriage to him meant Elysium--the inexpressible, the unattainable; more so than ever now. But whatever yearnings the sweet little nest awoke in the breast of this lonely outsider, his duty and purpose remained fixed.

In the fall of the year, when the grapes hung in luscious bunches on the slender vine; when country by-lanes were mellow with a wealth of sumach and maple coloring; when Nature was saying farewell in her own sweet way, at once so festive and so melancholy, then Constance and Randolph turned their backs on the din and confusion of the city, and seeking the happy woodlands, entered their own little home.

On that very same day Steve received a summons to his sister, who lived with her mother in the little country town. There he was witness to a short, sharp contest with pneumonia; then came a defeat; and then a quiet burial in the village churchyard; next a sinking from hour to hour of the invalid mother whose prop and stay had been taken from beneath her; a second calling of friends to the stricken home; and ere two weeks of absence had been told, Steve found himself alone in the world, as far as any near of kin were concerned.

His grief was quiet, but very poignant. The old bachelor lodgings became unendurable. Randolph had gone to a home of his own, and Steve could not sit there alone, listening to the clods of earth as they fell on mother and Mary.

Both Randolph and Constance stretched out tender, sympathizing hands to the lonely man, and would have been glad had he consented to widen their fireside circle by his presence, but beyond an occasional visit Steve did not feel that he could go to them. He had long been independent--he was over thirty now, and he was not ready to merge his life into the life of another household. Still less was he willing to intrude his continued presence upon a newly married couple. The life there was sacred to him, and although he felt himself next of kin, almost, to its inmates, he shrank from robbing them of their right to be alone.

Go somewhere he must, however, so he gathered a few of his effects and prepared for a flitting--where he hardly knew when he set out, but he chanced to alight in the domicile of some elderly friends, who were delighted to give him house and table room in their rather solitary home.

It chanced that Steve's new rookery (he was in the fourth story) was quite near Mrs. Lamont's handsome house, and Mrs. Lamont was the aunt of Nannie Branscome--bewitching, provoking, maddening Nannie Branscome; uncured, unbaked, indigestible little Nannie Branscome--and they met, to quote from Kate Douglas Wiggin, "every once in so often."

Careless, irresponsible Nannie Branscome! growing wild in the garden.

But the cook was near at hand and the fire was lighted.

What manner of cook? A _chef_ or a stupid mixer of messes?

Who knows?

IV

It was bleak and drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his face while this dismal looting went on unrebuked and unrestrained. But Nature is fickle, possibly because she is feminine. At all events, she can change both mind and conduct, and in short order. So ere long she came out of her November rage and sat down in still, mellow sunshine, and gathering her children about her, whispered beautiful stories in their ears; warmed them with her love and brightness; soothed their care-lined brows and filled their hearts with a sense of the nearness of the Giver of all good.

It was on one of these days of Indian summer that Steve cut loose from work and started off on a tramp. He worked in town; he rested in country.

He had put something like five miles of woodland and late fall meadow between himself and the distractions of city life, when looking adown a path that sloped gently to a brook he saw, sitting on a tree that lay athwart the stream and paddling her white feet in the sunny water, Nannie Branscome. His surprise robbed him of his reserve and he hastened to her.

"Are you lost, Miss Branscome?"

"Yes," she answered calmly.

She still sat there, paddling her feet, with nothing of consternation or perplexity in her face or manner. All around her were the browns of a summer that had come and gone; heaps of dead leaves nestled close to the trees, mute witnesses of a lost beauty; while here and there an ox-eyed daisy glowed from out its somber company as a firefly shines through the dusk of twilight. In the midst of all this sat Nannie in her pretty suit trimmed in scarlet, looking like a bird of paradise amid a flock of sparrows and other soberly clad creatures. Indeed, she reminded one of a bird, with her head cocked on one side and her air--not bold, but saucy.

Steve stood on the bank of the creek, perplexed for a moment. Then he asked with a slight smile:

"What are you going to do about it?"

The girl lowered her head a trifle and looked out at him from 'neath her curls, but she said nothing.

"Let us go home, Miss Branscome."

She continued looking at him without a word, and he returned her gaze as he stood there with a gentle dignity that had its effect upon her.

"Barefooted?" she asked.

"No. I am going to explore this creek for a little distance, and you can get ready while I'm gone."

"But suppose my shoes and stockings have floated down the stream? What then?"

Steve was dismayed, but he maintained his quiet air.

"Suppose," persisted Nannie.

Just then Steve caught a glimpse of a tiny shoe at the foot of a near tree.

"And suppose," he said, "they have not, but are awaiting their owner over yonder?"

Nannie laughed and looked around and Steve walked on.

When he returned she was ready, and they set off together toward town.

"Were you really lost?" asked Steve.

"Yes. I've been wandering around for at least two hours."

"How came you to go out there?" he asked.

"I was expected to go somewhere else," she answered with one of her elfin looks.

Steve was silent. Mentally he was wondering if this was the mainspring of conduct in all women. He thought very likely it was. Mary often asked his advice and then always took her own way, and it was invariably opposite to the course he had indicated.

They had not gone much further, when, happening to look around for something, Nannie caught a glimpse of her dress skirt and saw that it was creased and stained with mud.

"There now! I've just ruined my gown!" she exclaimed, and then burst into passionate tears.

"Miss Branscome! don't!" said Steve, who was fairly startled out of his usual quiet into something akin to excitement. "Don't! I beg of you. Nannie! don't cry, my dear!"

He failed to notice how he had spoken; so did she, apparently.