CHAPTER XVI.

"I LIVE, HOW LONG I TROW NOT."

One might well have supposed that the period of final destruction had come on that eventful day. Wind, fire, and sea all combined to make it a memorable one. For, while Lance and the De Vines were going through their adventures in Elbow-Crook Swamp, the incoming tides, fomented by the winds, not only swept away the paltry planking that joined Aunty Losh's headland to the main shore, but also proceeded to crunch up and dissolve a large portion of her real estate.

The freakish inroads of the sea on the North Carolina coast are scarcely subjects for exaggeration, because they themselves outdo fancy. The ocean thereabouts has an occasional fit of map-making. Not content with changing the soundings as it pleases, it sometimes closes up an old inlet, at a single mad flurry, or insists upon opening a new avenue in any place that may suit its convenience. And so, at this particular crisis, having thundered at the outer gates and found no admission, it sent a heavy tide into the Sound, and played havoc there. The green waters, ordinarily manageable enough, converted themselves into cataracts. They heaved, frothed, billowed and raged, until Aunty Losh's demesne, once an innocent promontory, became a very perilous and uncomfortable island.

The watery ditch turned into a rushing tide-way; then it became a deep channel; and lastly it widened into an angry reach of turbulent waves, which could be crossed only by boat. All this transformation, be it remembered, was accomplished in a few hours.

Meanwhile, Aunty Losh and Jessie cowered in the little cabin on the dwindling territory, and expected every moment to be swallowed up by the surges that lashed so wildly around them.

But the retreating coachman had known what he was about. He had gone at once to Hunting Quarters, where he had found Adela, who was herself distracted with anxiety for Sylv, and therefore in a perfect mood for venturing upon the wildest scheme of rescue that could be imagined. It so chanced that the dug-out was harbored in a cove which the girl could reach. The rude sloop clung there, thumping heavily on the bottom, and lurching now and then against the shore, with an impact that would have smashed any other sort of craft at short notice. But this was precisely what she was made for, and so she endured the strain.

Adela prepared to take her out to the now isolated cabin, and bring off the inmates. Old Reefe remonstrated. He said it was certain death to go; that no boat could live in such a wind on a short, shallow sea; and that his daughter must wait until the storm abated.

"No," cried Adela; "I am going, whether it's death or not! How do you know what will happen to them out there if I wait? The cabin itself may be swept away, and poor old aunty in it. Then, Dennie is there, and--and perhaps Sylv." For one instant, as she uttered this name, her voice sank. "If they had any boat, 'twould be another thing. But they're cut off--they can't help themselves--and I'm going."

The brave girl hardly believed that she could make the trip in safety, but she thanked her stars that Dennie had brought her up to handle a tiller--and the rest she left to Providence.

The water was swashing up close to the door of the little hut, and Aunty Losh and Jessie sat within, holding on to each other in silence when, through the deep, prolonged roar of the tempest, they fancied that they heard a shout--a woman's shout. Simultaneously with it there came a thud, like the dropping of some heavy weight upon the ground just outside of the house. "Lord be praised!" Aunty Losh exclaimed, "Thar ain't nothin' could do that ar but the ole dug-out. Open the do', Miss Jessie."

Jessie considered this as a command to invite dissolution into their fragile shelter; but she obeyed.

In a few moments they were on board the sloop, bouncing and reeling through the violent waves. By this time Colonel Floyd, having also received the alarm, reached the spot on horseback. Waiting with old Reefe on the shore, he noted every motion of the plunging sail, which was let out barely enough to give the dug-out headway. Adela stood at the helm, strong and masterful as a man, but with a quick, feminine eye for every chance or change of the terrific gale, and with a touch that responded instantly to her observation. She ignored her two passengers absolutely.

But when, after several escapes from foundering and a weary battle of tacking from one point to another, the sloop rounded, with her heavy prow, into the cove and touched the land, the girl dropped down in the stern, exhausted.

There had been no time for delay or inquiry, and indeed it would have been impossible to talk in the over-powering bluster of the storm, while fighting a way through it; but Adela had been very much astonished both by Jessie's presence at the cabin, and by the absence of Dennie. She now tried to learn from Aunty Losh what had become of him; but the poor old woman's mind was in such confusion from fright and from the suddenness of her rescue that she could not furnish much enlightenment. As for Jessie, she had gone to the headland without any knowledge of Lance's actual whereabouts, but thinking it probable that her lover would go there, since she had heard something vaguely about his arrangements with Sylv. It was now noon, and the suspense in which she remained about Lance, joined to Adela's fearful dread concerning Sylv, would not permit them to rest. The colonel, who had been thrown into a wild excitement by the failure both of his daughter and of Lance to return to the house, hugged Jessie close to his heart with silent prayers of thanksgiving, and wrung Adela's hand with gratitude, while the tears ran down his cheeks. The carriage had followed him with fresh horses, bringing dry wraps, food, and restoratives; and the colonel insisted that the best thing to be done was for the three women to get in and go at once to the manor with him.

Meanwhile Sylv and Lance, helping the disabled Dennie between them, had arrived at the house, and were taking care of the sufferer.

I need not detail the recitals and explanations that followed. I will say only that Jessie treated Adela like a sister that day, and ever afterward. It was strange, mysterious, yet beautiful, to Lance's eyes, to see them together; one of them the latest offspring of Gertrude Wylde, rescued from oblivion--coaxed back, as it were, from the forest shadows and the red race to her own race and kin--the other a descendant of Gertrude's cousin, to-day rescued by her kinswoman from the engulfing waters of the Sound. The whims and prejudices that had hampered Jessie before were now totally dissolved; and Lance's dream was realized, after all. The wild thought which had crossed his mind, of devoting his life to Adela, proved to be simply a perversion of the ardent desire which he had felt, that she ought to be included somehow in the lines of relationship and love prescribed by her ancestry. His allegiance to Jessie, never really shaken, was perfect and enduring. But these results would never have come about had not the actors in the curious drama remained, through all their troubles, sound and sincere of heart. They had, every one, risen somewhat higher than they were when their relations began. Each had advanced in his or her own way. Sylv strove upward by means of intellectual effort and by will; Dennie attained to as lofty a standard of conduct through the working out of instinct and passion. But in whatever manner they had proceeded, all were true.

The wild storm went down that night, though the rolling sea and the curling breakers of the Sound continued to heave for hours, throwing out in the darkness broad lines and crests of phosphorescence that made them look like fluid white fire. Then the rain came, in torrents; and it was well that it came, for the danger to the inflammable pine-plantations, from the conflagration in Elbow Crook, had become alarming. Not even the sullen fierceness of that furnace--in which the swamp-woods, with all their intricacies of flickering boughs, like some gigantic red coral work, were melting down--could withstand the providential rain-streams. The fire faded away as if by magic; and the next day, when Hedson went out, with scores of other gazers, to look at the expanse of charred _debris_ where the wood had been, he remarked tersely (but in an undertone) to Lance: "That property is now worth just one hundred percent more for our purpose than it was day before yesterday. The clearing has been done free of charge."

By the middle of the summer the county awoke to the fact that a syndicate of Northern capitalists had purchased the tract and were going to develop it into a prodigious vegetable garden. The reed-pulp paper-mill went up; there was an immense quantity of ditching and levelling carried on in the swamp. Little houses began to make their appearance; now dwellers came to live in them; and a school and church were found to be necessary. There is now a flourishing community in that place; and while Lance, I am glad to say, has made a good deal of money, his pleasure has grown largely from the knowledge that he has brought about improvements which others also enjoy. Sylv acts as his chief adviser and confidential agent.

Dennie's accident left him somewhat lame, but he has still found it possible to be of service in some of Lance's undertakings. He prefers, however, to retain a degree of independence by living on the island with Aunty Losh, and following more or less his old employment in a superior dug-out schooner, which has replaced the sloop. On the island he has remained ever since the marriage of Sylv and Adela and their installation in a pretty house which was built for them, near enough to the manor to make it convenient for the children of Jessie and Adela to meet often when they shall grow a little older.

One slight question came up, I must admit, as to who had the best right to appropriate the old Wharton Hall motto. Sylv acknowledged that it belonged primarily to Lance, by inheritance from Guy Wharton; but, then, had it not been handed down to Adela as well? The point was settled without dispute; for Sylv's house was built before Lance was ready to remodel the manor, and when the plans were submitted to Lance he proposed--with Jessie's permission--that he should be allowed to contribute as his gift a tablet for the hall, on which were to be shown (not cut in, but raised in bold relief) the lines beginning

"I live, how long I trow not."

Dennie has no new house and no old motto. I cannot suppose that he is altogether a contented man; but I believe he is happy in having taken the right course.

"My old heart do ache for ye, Dennie," said Aunty Losh to him, about the time of the wedding. "There ain't much on't left at my time o' life; but what there be of heart in me do ache, for sure. But ye done right, boy. 'Tain't no use tryin' to drive a woman. It's mighty like when ye tryin' to make a passel o' hens come into the house; and ye chase 'em up and say, 'Shoo!' and gits 'em a'most to the do'; and then they jist run straight past it. No; ye can't drive a woman, Dennie, if she's sot her mind ag'in it. That's what."

Dennie looked up from the tackle he was mending, and smiled. "Wal, aunty," he said, "you and me make out to git along pretty squar' together, don't we? I don't want for to drive ye, and ye can't look to drive me, neither. _I_ don't complain."

The last three words will do for his motto; and they make a sufficiently honorable one.

MAJOR BARRINGTON'S MARRIAGE.

I.

Major Barrington before the acquisition of his military title was a rather shapely gentleman, with a fine, carrot-tinted complexion and strong, reddish whiskers, corresponding well with it, and branching out on either side of his chin with a valiant air.

Nor did his appearance greatly alter, immediately after passing from the condition of plain citizen to that of a defender of his country. His chin (which was shaven, and had a pretty little dent in the bottom of it) came for a time more prominently before the public, being carried somewhat higher in the air; but otherwise you would hardly have known what a great man he was.

It happened thus: The War of the Rebellion had been going on for about a year, and Mr. Zadoc S. Barrington was a boarder in the respectable but shabby mansion of one Mrs. Douce, in East Thirtieth Street, New York--a short, pale, dusty-looking woman, who had under her threadbare wing a maiden relative, Natalia by name. Natalia was alternately visitor and boarder, according as her slender income gave out or held out, and the consequence of this variable status was an equally variable disposition on the part of the aunt toward the niece. Mrs. Douce had naturally a dry heat of temper, which was possibly the source of that pulverous look about the face already noticed; and it was only by turning on periodical smiles, like the spray from a watering-cart, that she was able to allay the gritty particles of her irritability in the presence of paying boarders. It was to be expected, therefore, that during Natalia's impecunious seasons her aunt should relapse into unmitigated dustiness, and puff her discontent, so to speak, in dreary little gusts at the forlorn maiden.

Being forlorn, was it strange that Natalia should look to Barrington for sympathy? Not at all. By degrees he thus came--without any movement on his own part--to take an important place in her daily experience. A variety of little hopes and illusions, of which her life had been pretty well divested before, and which she alone could not have revived, sprung up spontaneously under the most casual glance of Zadoc S. For example, though she had no appetite for Mrs. Douce's feeble dinners, she could get up a fictitious enjoyment of them by looking at the robust Barrington, whose bold coloring and hearty appearance deceived her as to the real measure of his relish for that dreary cookery.

Barrington was not dangerously youthful, but neither was Natalia. Financially he was not prosperous, but she was decidedly not so. Heaven only knows how, during the years of his residence in New York, he had contrived to subsist. It was not on any scientific principle of survival that he persisted; but rather on the principle of the fallen sparrow. Still, he was a portly sparrow, and must have needed a good deal to keep him on his feet. But he remained on his feet--he never soared. And yet, such as he was, Natalia--let us confess it with a becoming amount of maiden timidity--yes, Natalia had begun to love him.

II.

But she did not tell her love. She let concealment feed upon her cheek--which, to be accurate, was not damask, but rather of the quality of sarsnet. However, before her appearance had had time to suffer by this process, an unexpected proceeding on the part of Barrington led her to reveal her sentiment--to surprise and, one might say, surround him. Did capture follow? Let us see.

At this period his affairs were very low. He was a prospective patentee, a filer of caveats for little inventions, which no one could have been hired to infringe, the most ingenious point of which was their perfect adaptability for not making money. He was also by turns an agent for books, subscription engravings, sewing-machines, and what not. He did everything but succeed. Finally he conceived the idea of a new vegetable lamp-oil that could be made from floating oily matter to be found in any swamp. He had made close computation of the swampy land in the whole State of New York, which could be bought for a trifle, and turned into sources of boundless wealth. For a time he fed the flame of hope with this visionary fluid; but a serious lamp explosion, resulting from one of his experiments, deprived him at once of half his whiskers and all his expectations. There was indeed one resource left him, the nature of which we may discover presently; but he hesitated to avail himself of it, because it might compromise his independence. In fact, a certain steady effort to be a man and to keep his self-respect, in spite of his many failures, was Barrington's finest trait, and always gave me a liking for him, notwithstanding his weakness.

By the time his singed whiskers had regained their pristine vigor, and when the war had passed through its first year, there drove up to Mrs. Douce's door, one day, an express wagon with a trunk in it. The startling thing about this was that the trunk (which was made of sole-leather) was quite new, and had painted on it, with terrific distinctness, this legend:

CAPT. Z. S. BARRINGTON, U. S. A.

The painted end of the trunk happened to be nearest the house. Now, Mrs. Douce was at that very moment in her reception-room on the ground floor--a sort of little bin or wine-cooler of a room, where (having nothing better to cool) she kept callers, and sometimes herself--and from there she spied the appalling arrival. She did not know, which was the fact, that Barrington, tired of his sparrow's life on the pavements of the metropolis, had been in correspondence with friends at Washington, who had secured him the promise of a commission on his applying for it. He had not at once made such application, but had gone off with much high beating of the heart, and ordered the trunk, as a preliminary, feeling perhaps that the final step would be easier to take after committing himself thus far.

Mrs. Douce, I say, not knowing this, opened the door for the expressman in a great flurry of excitement. "Now, indeed," thought she, melodramatically, "I begin to feel what war is!"

Then she ran up-stairs herself, to inform Barrington that the trunk had come. But he was equal to the emergency. With an unshaken demeanor the hero rose from the table at which he had been conducting a busy and wholly useless correspondence, and looked at Mrs. Douce with a magnificent calm, which gave her a strange sensation of having penetrated some great general's headquarters. Then he proceeded down-stairs to parley with the expressman, who for a moment seemed to take the place of a flag-of-truce bearer, or some kind of military ambassador.

As Barrington descended he heard Natalia in the drawing-room conducting to its close an extensive piece of music, with a copious rumbling of low notes and a twittering of high ones, which was apparently reluctant to be brought to a close at all. The sound touched his heart, somehow; but he went on. It also touched Mrs. Douce, who had followed; but she did _not_ go on.

III.

She stopped in the narrow passage, just by a niche containing a tall and bilious-complexioned alabaster vase, with scraggly arms, which had always impressed her as giving the house a great advantage over other boarding-houses. (That vase, by the way, had levied its tax in many a bill.) But now it seemed gloomily symbolic; everything had begun to seem unnatural and suggestive since that trunk appeared. She fancied the vase was like a "storied urn," containing the ashes of some valiant warrior who should no more wield the humble breakfast-knife at her devastated table. Overcome with emotion, she passed on and pushed open the drawing-room door.

"Natalia," she exclaimed, impressively, "guess what has happened!" As the expressman, with fate-like footsteps, tramped up-stairs, carrying the trunk on his shoulder, Barrington, who came after him, noticed that the rumbling and twittering of the piano had ceased, and that his landlady had disappeared. The two women were, in fact, conversing in agitated whispers on the other side of the closed parlor door.

"Well, never did I think to lose _him_!" exclaimed Mrs. Douce.

"Poor aunt!" said Natalia; "and so late in the season, too."

"It isn't that so much," interrupted the other, severely; "but it hurts me that he should have been so sudden and so secret."

"Perhaps he thought we--" Natalia paused, and blushed. "But why _should_ he think we'd urge him to stay?"

"Hark! is he coming down again?" said her aunt. No; it was merely the expressman. He thumped his way down to the street door. They heard the wagon drive off, and for a moment afterward they held their breath, as if a battle had been raging near them, and the heavy current of the fight had now swept by, leaving them in suspense, lest it should return. Then the dignified step of Barrington resounded on the staircase. He came to the door, and opened it. "I ought," he began, stepping in with a smile, "to explain matters a little."

Mrs. Douce's mood was like that of elderly matrons at the wedding of a young friend. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. "Oh," she returned, in the breathless, short-of-supplies manner usual with her in awkward situations, "oh--no--explanation is needed, Mr. Barrington!" and, after a short pause, simpering, "I'm sure."

Natalia, meanwhile, stood in a shrinking, drooping attitude near the battered rosewood piece of furniture from which she had been drawing music, and looked a good deal like one of those young ladies in old colored prints who devote themselves to standing mournfully under weeping willows, among headstones.

"Well, you see," proceeded Barrington, who took Mrs. Douce's denial at its worth, "I didn't say anything, because--well, it wasn't quite settled."

"Then you're not _sure_ of going to the war?" Natalia burst forth, with pathetic eagerness. (Barrington noticed that her heightened color was becoming to her.)

"Sure?" answered he, cruelly; "oh, yes; humanly speaking, I suppose it's sure enough. I--good gracious!--I only--"

These incoherent phrases were drawn out by the effect his statement had produced. Natalia's eyelids fell at his words. She was trying to repress a tendency to sob. By the time the hero had discovered this a tear had found its way into sight beneath her eyelashes.

"There!" cried Mrs. Douce, sternly. "Any one might have known it. _We_ aren't made of sole-leather, Mr. Barrington. [He said to himself it was lucky she had told him this.] Common humanity and friendship ought to have shown you what this suddenness would lead to."

"I can't help it," murmured her niece, referring to the tears now hurrying down her face, and misled by the matron's angry tone and her own confusion into the idea that _she_ was being scolded. (She was at this time without money.)

"Of course you can't, dear," said the aunt, soothingly. "As if any one with any considerateness, or average humanity, I may say, would suppose you could! I am not the woman to blame you for giving way under the circumstances, Natalia. It only shows you've got a heart, while _some_ people--Mr. Barrington, excuse me, but I must speak out." However, she didn't speak out any further, but wound up with: "Anyway, it can't be worse than it is [though nobody had intimated that it could be]. You've decided to leave me. Well, that's what I must expect, I suppose." And she dropped into a chair, and patted her thumbs together, as if there were some crushing sarcasm in the action, which satisfied her wounded feelings.

Barrington succumbed to remorse. Besides, Natalia's unhappiness aroused his sympathy, and he became angry--without knowing whether he had a right to be so--at Mrs. Douce's taking the part of a comforter. He fancied he could do this even better than she. "Of course," he said, stiffly, "I don't expect to leave you without compensation for not giving notice. I shall pay you for two or three weeks extra."

He felt a dreadful sinking of the pocket as he spoke; but dignity required the sacrifice. The landlady did not respond for an instant; her eyes wandered about with a pained, prophetic air. "What have I done," she cried, "to bring this upon me? Mr. Barrington, have I ever asked you more than we agreed upon? _Have_ I treated my family meanly? You have been in this house two years, and I know you can't point to anything. What have I done to be insulted so?" she demanded of the faded window-curtains.

A moment of silence followed this outburst; then she swept out of the room, with a thin rustle of her black dress, and left the prospective captain and Natalia alone.

IV.

Miss Douce put away her handkerchief in a business-like manner, and looked at Barrington with soft appeal. "Ah, why didn't you tell?"

"Tell? My dear Miss Douce, I had no idea--"

"Thoughtless man, not to foresee!"

"I didn't suppose your aunt would be so much annoyed."

"Oh, I didn't mean _that_!" said Natalia, growing judiciously pettish.

"What then?"

"Not _her_," said the maiden, significantly.

"Really, Miss Douce," said Barrington, "you have surprised me--I had no idea--"

"Don't, for pity's sake, tell me again that you had no idea!" exclaimed Natalia.

"I beg your pardon, I meant to say something."

"What good can it do to say anything, when you have done your best to break our hearts?" she demanded. And here she brought out the handkerchief again, and began to look dangerously tearful.

"Goodness!" said the unfortunate man. "I'm sure I didn't mean to. I would a good deal rather stay at home than have you feel this way."

"You have caused me great suffering, whether you meant to or not," declared Miss Douce, with a quaver in her voice. Then, replying to his devotion: "Will you give up going, to prove your words? Will you stay at home?"

Barrington felt the glory upon his horizon beginning to fade. He braced himself by a chair with one hand; with the other he took Natalia's. "Do you ask this as a personal favor?" he said.

Miss Douce was weeping slightly again. "I don't want you to go," she answered, shyly, turning away her head. "Yes, for my sake, stay!"

At this crisis Rawsden, one of the junior boarders, who had just returned from business and had been met at the reception-bin by Mrs. Douce with news of the dread trunk, passed up-stairs and caught a glimpse of the tableau, from the hall. "Aha," he muttered (for he was a cynical youth)--"Hector and Andromache!" And then he glided on and up to his remote chamber.

Zadoc S. still hesitated a moment. "I shall not go immediately, in any case," he said, gently. "I shall be here some days yet."

"But why go at all?" urged the Andromache. "Is it irrevocable?"

"No," he answered, unguardedly. "I--I haven't got my commission yet. I'm only expecting it."

There was a sudden revulsion of feeling on this announcement. Barrington became aware that his position was not so heroic as it had been, and Natalia began to blush violently at having betrayed her feelings on a sham emergency. But, as it happened, neither of them thought of getting out of the trouble by laughing.

"You see, now, why I kept it to myself," he proceeded, awkwardly, after some delay.

Miss Douce had released her hand, and now rose abruptly. "Oh, yes," she said; "I suppose it was all very foolish of me--but--you will forgive me?"

"I assure you, I feel honored," cried Zadoc, warmly, "by your solicitude. And, if I dared--if you would allow me--"

Let me here confess that I haven't the slightest notion what Barrington, in that moment of impulse, was going to say. But explanation is made unnecessary by the fact that Miss Douce didn't allow him to finish.

"Don't say any more," she begged. "It is too painful. I must go and find my aunt, Mr. Barrington, to tell her there's a hope of your staying. For if your commission _shouldn't_ come--"

"I should wait, of course," he responded, captivated by her glance.

Naturally, after this, he went up to the room which Mrs. Douce's fancy had transformed into a headquarters, and wrote to his Washington friends not to get the commission. Of course, too, Mrs. Douce came gently rapping at his door, in the evening, with a face as solemn as an obituary notice, and with his bill in her pocket, whereon she had obediently registered the item of compensatory payment, which she had so scornfully rejected in the afternoon. Quite of course he said, with dignity: "You may leave the bill, but I have decided not to go." And then, by sequence, she affirmed--her face irradiated with joy--that she had brought the bill very reluctantly, in the first place, and, if he would excuse her, she thought she would _not_ leave it.

As a further matter of course, Miss Natalia, being informed of the abandonment of warlike measures, pretended not to care anything about the episode, and to feel that it was rather an impertinence than otherwise to bring it to her notice.

On the other hand, little Rawsden had been cracking his joke about Hector, etc., to a Miss Sneef, a rather pretty young boarder, whom he honored by confiding to her his more successful sarcasms; and, when she imparted to him, next day, the news of Barrington's capitulation, he had the presence of mind to smile pallidly and look as if he had known all about it from an early period of his existence. Without changing his tone, he muttered, dryly: "Antony and Cleopatra!"

V.

The two parties most concerned said nothing about it to each other for days. But the interval was not unemployed. Mrs. Douce, having now discovered her niece's inclination (if she had not known it before), was allured by a calculation, based on the fact that Barrington had always managed to pay his bills, and on the hope that if Natalia were to become Mrs. Barrington two permanent paying boarders might be secured, with possibly, in time, a half price besides. "One of these days, after all," she said to Barrington, whom she took an early opportunity of seeing alone, "you will be going off and leaving me, I fear."

"Oh, no," said he; "I've really given up the war!"

"But there are other things than war."

"Other things to carry me away, do you mean? Or other disasters?"

"Well, not exactly disasters," said Mrs. Douce, hastily; "I mean marriage."

"You don't call that a disaster, then?" Barrington inquired, wickedly. "But what on earth has put this into your head?"

"It's much easier to get into my head than war. If you could think of such an unnatural thing as going to war, you might easily decide to marry," was the landlady's equivocal conclusion.

"What, I?" exclaimed Barrington, trying not to grow red, but doing so. "I see I've made you suspicious."

At this juncture a faint ghostly voice was heard rising from the basement, where the cook had long been buried, to the third-story banister, where they were talking. "Mrs. Douce, Mrs. Douce!" And Mrs. Douce, giving him an arch look, observed, with a dry laugh: "I don't know what you're plotting." Then she obeyed the voice.

Whether this talk was the cause, or whether it was owing to the interest which Miss Natalia Douce's behavior with regard to the military trunk excited, Barrington's attention was more closely directed to her now, and he observed in her from day to day a deepening melancholy. She became listless, and fell into reveries. She played more than usual on the piano in the dowdy parlor, behind the bilious-looking but aristocratic vase; but there was less rumbling and twittering in her music than formerly, and there were more pensive strains. She played "Make me no Gaudy Chaplet" and nocturnes by sundry composers; she sang "The Three Fishers." All this was the more interesting, in that there was no apparent personal application in the music she choose, since no one had insisted upon her accepting a gaudy chaplet, and she was not wedded as yet to a fisherman. But one evening Barrington, coming down a few minutes before dinner, entered the parlor as she was wrenching from the key-board the last phrases of a funeral march in the "Songs without Words." He listened attentively until she had finished; then, after a moment's reflection, called out from the arm-chair he had taken: "But why do you play such mournful things, nowadays, Miss Natalia, especially before dinner? No wonder you have no appetite."

Natalia didn't answer, but got up in silence and made for the door. On the way, however, she turned toward him with a look of indignation and a terrible flash of the eye. The next instant she was gone. She did not appear at dinner.

"What do you suppose is the matter with your niece?" Barrington blandly asked the aunt, at table. "I made a casual remark about her playing, just now, and she left the room without a word."

Mrs. Douce did not answer the question until the next day, when she came to Barrington's room. "I've found out all about it, now," she said. "The idea of asking me what was the matter, when you had been speaking to her in that way!"

"Good Lord!" cried Harrington, nettled. "What way? It was innocent enough; and I really don't like those tunes."

"After all that has happened!" continued the landlady, casting up her eyes.

"Well, _what_ has happened?" he demanded.

"Why, your thinking of going to the war--and--and Natalia's feeling badly, and--well, you understand, though I can't explain myself, you've put me out so with your abruptness."

"It's always my abruptness or my suddenness," complained Barrington. "No; I _don't_ understand you."

Mrs. Douce's dusty face hardened and dried till it became a very desert of physiognomy. "Well," she said, "you are not a boy, and I--well, I am old enough, I suppose," with a catch of the breath, "to be your mother. So we may as well speak plainly. You see that Natalia is deeply interested in you; you consented for her sake to give up going to the front; and now you coolly abandon her. Not content with that, you begin to taunt her with her melancholy. I little expected this, Mr. Barrington. I little expected it."

"Oh, you're unjust!" said Zadoc S.

"At least, you'll admit you've wounded her feelings and ought to apologize," was the rejoinder.

"Perhaps so," he confessed, feeling sorry for Natalia.

"Go and see her," urged his landlady, gently, though still with something of the desert atmosphere in her voice. "Speak to her about it."

"I will."

"But, remember there's only one thing can make your conduct consistent and restore her happiness."

"You mean," said Barrington, exploring the dent in his chin with his forefinger--"you mean, propose?" Then, as if this were quite out of the question, he shook his head vigorously, smiling. "Of course not that; but I don't see what else you can mean."

"Nothing else," said the voice of the desert.

"It's impossible," he rejoined, quietly.

"You _must_," responded the voice.

Then Barrington delivered a crushing blow. "I have promised to marry some one else," he said, with great composure.

To Mrs. Douce's gasping, broken, indignant queries he replied that the lady's name was Magill, and that she was a widow possessed of ample means. There had long been an understanding between them, he declared, but he had been unwilling to marry without an independent property of his own. Unable to acquire this, he had hoped at least to gain distinction in the army. That hope he had sacrificed out of pure sympathy for Miss Natalia Douce's distress; and now he had concluded to marry without further delay.

VI.

I pass over the period of internal convulsion in the Douce hearts, widowed and maiden, which followed Barrington's disclosure. For a time their disconcertment was so obvious that Rawsden had it all his own way in making contemptuous remarks about them to Miss Sneef; and to judge from the conversation of these two singular young people, you would have supposed that nothing could give them such exquisite delight as to prove that all human beings are unspeakably false and absurd, and that if they could but have succeeded in showing each other--Miss Sneef on her part, and Rawsden on his--how they two were the falsest and absurdest of all, their happiness would have been complete.

But Natalia soon rallied from the shock of Barrington's engagement to Mrs. Magill, at least far enough to begin an exasperating warfare of innuendo, which, though it stabbed her own heart as well, brought a balm of revenge to her own wounds, but left Barrington quivering under the petty blows. She made frequent allusions to that neglected trunk belonging to the non-existent Captain Barrington, U.S.A.; affected to believe that he kept in it a complete set of defunct accoutrements, which she begged him to put on some time and show to the "family;" and in general taunted him most unfairly with his abandonment of his whilom noble resolve to seek the martial field.

Before long the entire "family" of boarders had joined more or less actively in this guerilla attack; and the worst of it was, that they always kept just beyond the pseudo-captain's range. He couldn't retort upon them without losing his dignity. At last he hit upon a masterly defence. One day he said to Natalia, carelessly, at the table: "Oh, as to my uniform that you've been asking about, I'll show it to you to-night! I am going to drill."

The effect was gratifying. Natalia grew pale at the thought that her cruel sneers had actually driven Barrington (whom she continued to adore in spite of his desertion) back to the cannon's mouth, so to speak. The other boarders were also deeply impressed, in their several degrees. These emotions were considerably modified, yet not wholly effaced, when the military aspirant finally appeared in his trappings; for he did not wear the United States uniform. He was clothed in the splendors of a militia major. He revealed to the little group of fellow-boarders, who had assembled with a sort of hushed solemnity to inspect him, that for some time he had been getting up a new, independent cavalry company, of which he was now the commander.

"And you're all organized?" asked one gentleman, gazing at the major as if he were an entire company in himself.

"Yes; first drill to-night," said Barrington, with a business-like air, lighting a cigar, and looking quite terrific.

"Thought a company was commanded by a captain, and not a major," observed Rawsden, rescuing himself from a secret feeling almost of admiration, and becoming cynical again, just in time to retain the approval of Miss Sneef, who gave him a sagacious glance.

"Yes, that's the common way," said the officer, with superior indifference; "but in consideration of my zeal and expense in getting up the company, which is very large, I rank as Major of the National Guard of the State." Then, with striking precision, he executed a brilliant retreat from the parlor, slammed the street-door, as he went out below, with a report like a cannon, and left the awe-struck boarders to spend a miserably peaceful evening, in a state of deep humility, while he reaped the first honors of his new career.

VII.

There was much question among them as to where he had got the money for this great undertaking; but Mrs. Douce shrewdly suspected that the widow's gold had something to do with it. She was right. Mrs. Magill's money had gilded the major's uniform and the spurs whereby he was now hoping to leap into the saddle of fame.

Still, there was no immediate sign of the threatened marriage for some time after this. Barrington took part in sundry parades, and he and his company were freely mentioned in the papers. But the widow remained so entirely in the background that Natalia almost believed she was a myth; and there was no change in Zadoc's military life, except that the letters U. S. A. on the trunk were replaced with N. Y. S. N. G. Then came the tremendous day when Barrington's cavalry were ordered out, with other militia, to resit the rebel invasion of Pennsylvania. I will spare the reader the hardships of that campaign. It is enough that the gallant major should have undergone them; and, to tell the truth, he was not slow to make the most thereof. He never went into a fight, and hardly so much as heard the snapping of a cap or the drawing of a sabre while his company was at the front; for they were kept marching and counter-marching, for strategic purposes, guarding supply-trains or small batches of prisoners; but he was a hero, for all that, when he returned. He had been obliged to forego shaving during his fortnight's absence, and this gave him a suitably battered and realistic look. I'm sorry to say he was in no hurry about shaving after he came back. He deliberately made capital of that stubby growth on his chin and upper lip, and it lent great effect to his tales of suffering with mud and rains, and beds of hard wood in barns, and to the agony he expressed at not having met the craven foe.

Rawsden and Miss Sneef attempted to turn these narratives to ridicule, but the effort failed signally. Barrington was a success. He had always been trying to be one, on some solid basis or other. Now he had become so on no basis at all.

VIII.

Mrs. Magill was satisfied with her investment, but she wished now to make it permanent. In short, she thought in time that the major should fulfil his promise of marriage. It is scarcely necessary to say that, meanwhile, his resplendent military renown had redoubled his fascinations for the pensive Natalia; and that maiden's faithful admiration and devout sympathy with him in the dangers to which he had lately been exposed had begun to make an impression on his simple, pompous and sanguine middle-aged heart. In all this time the two women who divided his affections and interests had not once met. Being charged with their rival influences, it almost seemed as if the major, while uniting them in his mind, had possessed a sort of chemical power of keeping them apart. But now he became extremely anxious to bring them into each other's society. The pretext he found was that of private theatricals. He proposed to Mrs. Magill that an entertainment in this line should be gotten up at the drill-room of the company, which was a sort of riding-school arena, easily transformed into a theatre. She consented at length, but only on the understanding that this was to be Barrington's last grand frolic before settling down to married life.

"Yes," said Barrington, in vague terms; "I sha'n't want to remain single any longer." But he was a good deal alarmed to find himself wondering, at that very moment, which lady it was that he intended to marry.

Mrs. Magill and Natalia were made acquainted, and among them the three soon completed their plans for the performance. The piece selected was Boucicault's farce, "Wanted--a Widow." The major had pressed Mrs. Magill to take a part, but, with a becoming distaste for publicity, she declined, and Natalia was induced to play in her stead. Considering the title of the farce, the widow's abstention was certainly judicious; but I think she would have been better pleased to see Natalia in the role of Lady Blanche Mountjoy, rather than that of the successful widow, Mrs. Lovebird. Lady Blanche was taken by Miss Sneef, who, being young and pretty, yet withal sceptical by nature, made a success of the part. Mrs. Magill, whose eyes began to survey Natalia in the appalling light of a rival, after the first interview, took care to be present at all the rehearsals, as you may believe; and a little real drama, for which no rehearsal was needed, began to move within the fictitious one.

IX.

Mrs. Magill was a short and rather fleshy person, with a bland countenance, in which the experiences of her forty years--good and bad alike--had agreed to get under shelter of a placid and non-committal tinge of pink, there to make what pretence they could of not being experiences at all. There was the same discreet, uncommunicative look about her hair, which she wore stamped down along her forehead, with the severe simplicity of a butter-pat. Natalia's face, on the contrary, showed whatever she had been through. Thus, the widow and the unmarried woman trenched on each other's provinces, and promptly took a dislike one to another.

The farce in hand, as all my readers may not remember, turns upon the fact that _Henry Revel_ (Barrington), having been jilted by a lady who became _Mrs. Lovebird_, has taken to reckless courses, and finally becomes a heavy debtor, in hiding from the sheriff. In this dilemma he gayly advertises for a rich widow, "with immediate possessions," and his whereabouts thus come to the knowledge of _Amy Lovebird_, now widowed, who deserted him originally only to marry a rich man who could save her father from ruin. She seeks Harry at once, in order to explain and to draw him back to herself. When he receives her response to his advertisement, however, pride and resentment make him unwilling to profit by her wealth. Meanwhile, _Amy's_ friend, _Lady Blanche_, plans a stratagem to test him, so that it may appear whether he receives his former flame's advances out of mercenary policy, or with the old-time affection. She persuades Amy to appear before him as if in great poverty, while she herself (_Lady Blanche_) writes him a letter, stating her fortune and a fictitious age, and requesting a meeting to consider the matrimonial project. When Harry meets Amy and hears this made-up story of her poverty, although his early love remains unabated, he decides to see the other widow, Lady Blanche, whose letter he has just received, to marry her, and to use the money thus acquired for the relief of _Mrs. Lovebird_. This decision, of course, makes him appear for a time false to _Amy_; and the motive of the piece is, accordingly, that of the hero's struggle between the powers of love and of money. Since he finally marries _Mrs. Lovebird_, the superficial moral of the play was favorable to Mrs. Magill, considered with reference to Barrington's vacillations, because the major's affair with her antedated the first springing up of a sentiment for Natalia, and, moreover, she was rich. So the widow had no fear as to the moral influence of the drama upon his mind. But the deeper lesson of this amusing composition is that of fidelity to love without money; so, as a matter of fact, it had a powerful effect in attaching the major to Natalia. At first he thought little about it. But, as the rehearsals went on, he found that theatricals, being an art, and having the magic of art, sometimes give one a strange, new interest in the real person, exhibited under subtly novel circumstances; and he began to think it would be pleasant to follow up his imaginary devotion to Natalia with a real passion.

X.

In proportion as this feeling of the major's grew, Mrs. Magill tired of seeing him perpetually going through the farce with Natalia, and coming out as her tried and trusted lover. She resolved to hasten the date of the performance, perhaps also hoping, furtively, that Natalia wouldn't be ready, and would therefore fail disgracefully.

On his part, Barrington, to whom the new partiality for Natalia had made the rehearsals increasingly pleasant, found also that the conflict between this and his promise to Mrs. Magill brought in an element of painfulness. He became exceedingly blue, and even treated the widow morosely.

"Zadie," said she, one evening, as they walked home from the drill-room, "what ails you? I thought you were going to get so much amusement out of these theatricals."

"I wish I'd never gone into them!" he answered, gloomily.

"How unkind to say that, after the condition we made about them!" This allusion didn't improve his temper.

"I don't forget my promise, though I _am_ sorry," he said, dubiously.

"Sorry about the promise, you mean?" asked the widow, with an archness that failed for want of a street-lamp to light it up.

"You wouldn't like it if I should says yes," he retorted.

"Oh, if you're sorry," she exclaimed, haughtily, "we'll give up the"--here the major became attentive and eager--"the theatricals altogether!" she concluded.

"The theatricals," muttered he, disappointed; "I thought you were going to say--But no! We'll play the farce out, and, when it's done, we'll have the wedding. Does that satisfy you?"

"It's very wrong of you to talk of it that way," said Mrs. Magill, too sagacious to lose her temper. "But I know you'll regret it." And so, holding him firmly by the arm, she carried him off to the door, where they parted.

XI.

At length, the evening of the performance came, and all the independent cavalry, and their friends, assembled to look at it. Rawsden was unusually cynical that day, and came near disabling Miss Sneef for her part by the number and variety of his pessimistic remarks. But this was due merely to his own inward trepidation on her behalf; and it was with a strange whirl of by no means cynical emotion, raging underneath his calm dress-coat and well-starched shirt-bosom, that he left her at the dressing-room, and took his own place in the audience. As for Barrington, the contradiction of moods into which he had fallen excited him to great energy, and he consequently achieved a brilliant success in the first part of the piece. Mrs. Magill sat refulgent and diamond-flashing in her place, drinking in the praise of the major, which was murmured on all sides; these bright moments compensated her for all the pain of the rehearsals. But between the first and second scenes the curtain fell, to allow the arranging of a new "set." The shadow of that descending curtain was destined to darken seriously the widow's fair prospect.

Just as the audience were getting impatient for the second scene, an audible disturbance arose on the stage, in the midst of which the green cloth was rolled up, revealing a pictured street. No one "came on," however; and as a moment elapsed, and the disturbance increased, Mrs. Magill suspected something wrong. Then Natalia burst out on the astonished spectators, through the right entrance, with a distracted air, crying out, with apparent unconsciousness of the lifted curtain, "What! Major Barrington has cut his head open? Where?"

Some of the audience began to laugh, several ladies screamed, and the cavalrymen were divided between a wish to comfort their frightened guests and the duty of running to their commander's aid, when Barrington appeared from the sides, moving mechanically, and with a distinct wound on his forehead. At this sight Natalia, who had but half crossed the stage, paused, screamed sharply and spread out her hands, seeking support. Meanwhile the stage-manager had got the curtain started down, and it dropped silently upon the unexpected tableaux.

By the time it had touched the boards Mrs. Douce had reached the dressing-room. She now stood leaning over her niece, who had fainted, and was lying in a chair. Mrs. Magill, being of inferior velocity, was much longer in making her way to the stage through the crowd of excited people now hurrying to and fro. A hack had already been ordered for Barrington, who was sitting behind the street in Lady Blanche's drawing-room, with his head bound up, and looking rather pale. The hero of a hundred failures, he had at last managed to get a genuine hurt.

"Oh, horrible, horrible!" cried Mrs. Magill. "Speak to me, Zadie; how did it happen? Can no one tell me?"

"We were just getting up Lady Blanche's chandelier in great style," exclaimed the manager, "when Major Barrington came along, and--"

"No more, no more, for mercy's sake!" entreated the widow, with a shudder.

"Yes," continued the manager, with severe accuracy; "he hit his head against it."

"Mrs. Douce," cried Mrs. Magill, "run out and get my things for me--at once--please."

"I'm sorry," said the landlady, rather sharply, "but I can't leave Natalia." Here some one came forward, and said the hack had arrived.

"You see," protested the widow, "I _must_ have my things." But Mrs. Douce devoted herself to Natalia, obliviously.

Barrington had by this time been got on his feet, and was walking slowly toward the stage-door, the arm of a fellow-officer under his own.

"Major," cried the exasperated widow, "stop!" And, as she spoke, she stepped in front of him.

Barrington did stop; but he looked feebly peevish, and in a tone of disgust said, plainly, "Do let me alone, can't you?" There could be no doubt as to his words.

The conflict over his remains, which seemed likely a moment before to become obstinate received a check in this utterance from, as it were, the very dead. Mrs. Magill fell back in horror, and the major was triumphantly borne away with Natalia.

XII.

The farce was never finished; but the assembled company set about the dance which had been planned to succeed it. Rawsden and Miss Sneef enjoyed this very much, in their superior way, and, in fact, the breakdown of the histrionic effort made those youthful misanthropists thoroughly hilarious. The events of the next few days, after the "caving in" of the Major's head (as Rawsden described it), furnished him with still further material for entertainment.

Mrs. Magill resumed the field early the next morning, seeking to visit her poor major. This Mrs. Douce prevented her from doing by powerful and imaginative descriptions of Barrington's condition, and citations from medical authority.

Mrs. Magill then proposed to hire a room in the house. But Mrs. Douce solemnly averred she had no room to spare. Still, the next day Mrs. Magill came, with a carriage full of things, including light bedding, to occupy the enemy's country, and declared she would bivouac in the parlor.

"But the parlor belongs to my boarders," said Mrs. Douce. "Use of parlor included, those are the terms."

"Then I'll take the reception-room."

"The door is very narrow," said Mrs. Douce, scrutinizing the massive form of the invader so insinuatingly as to make the non-committal pink in Mrs. Magill's cheeks give place to an angry red.

Mrs. Magill turned, and called out of the open door to the carriage-driver to bring in the bedding, etc. "Recollect," she said, severely, to Mrs. Douce, "he is my husband that is to be."

The landlady looked inquiringly at the driver, and then, as if correcting her impression, said: "Oh, the major? That makes no difference. Those things shall not come in! Besides, it isn't at all certain that he is."

"Not certain? How can you dare?"

"He says so himself."

"Then he's out of his mind," said Mrs. Magill, calmly.

"He was," replied Mrs. Douce.

"I won't converse with you," said Mrs. Magill.

"Then please order your man not to bring in those things."

But Mrs. Magill refusing, "_I_ will tell him," announced Mrs. Douce, stepping out to do so.

Mrs. Magill, with great presence of mind, instantly shut the spring-lock door and began to walk up-stairs. There was a furious rattling at the door-handle, from the outside, followed by violent ringing. But no one came to open, until the widow had gained the first landing. Mrs. Douce, being admitted at last, swiftly mounted after her. It was a fearful chase; but there was no way of heading off the intruder now.

They went up another flight. But Mrs. Douce over-reached her opponent by calling out, in a loud voice: "You can't see him, Mrs. Magill! _Mrs. Magill!_ Mrs. Magill!"

Immediately after this they heard the lock working in Barrington's door. The major was safe in his intrenchments.

Nothing daunted, however, Mrs. Magill strode forward and knocked. There was no answer except a slight cough, probably caused by the officer's sudden exertion in locking his door. "Major," said the widow, in a gentle tone, "do you hear me?" Echoless silence received her words. She began again, with a considerably increased alertness of voice: "Major! Are you engaged or not?"

"Very much so," answered Zadoc from within, and with a startlingly robust and comfortable voice for an invalid.

"I mean, to me," explained Mrs. Magill, with annoyance. "Mrs. Douce, here, has the face to declare that you are not. I wish the question answered in her presence. Are you engaged to be married?"

"I am sorry not to be able to open the door," responded the evasive Barrington. "It fatigues me to talk in this way, so I hope you'll be satisfied with my answering this one question."

"Well," said the widow, more affably, "say you are--"

"I _are_ engaged to be married," promptly struck in the major, with untimely jocoseness.

"_Am_, you mean," Mrs. Magill corrected. But silence had resumed its reign on the other side of the door.

"Very well, that will do," she concluded, somewhat as a prose Portia finishing a cross-examination in a modern law-court might have done. She shot upon Mrs. Douce a glance of scorn, saying, "I shall come again to-morrow," and then proudly departed.

XIII.

But she did not come on the morrow. Barrington sent her a note, which effectually prevented her doing so.

"Dear madam," it said, "our remarkable--not exactly interview, but conversation, this morning, may have misled you. My reference to an engagement of marriage was to another than the one you had in mind--in point of fact, my very recent engagement to marry Miss Natalia Douce.

"You will pardon the mental reservation in my reply, when you reflect that I made it out of regard to your feelings. Those feelings I am sorry to disturb in any way, and I believe you will see that it is the truest consideration for them that leads me to give up the design we once cherished. Our understanding, too, was that when the farce was finished we would marry. The farce was never finished; the condition was not fulfilled; and therefore our agreement is dissolved. I have just sent in my resignation to the company, and shall dispose of the horse according as you may desire. The uniform I will retain (since it would not fit any one else), as also the respect for you, which has long been entertained by

"Your friend, "ZADOC S. HARRINGTON."

To this note the major never got any reply. In due time, therefore, his marriage with Natalia, being unimpeded, took place very quietly, and, after going off for a small wedding journey, the husband and wife came back to a pair of Mrs. Douce's small rooms, and began to live in them.

Yes; this corpulent, middle-aged sparrow of a major had decided in favor of idealism--prosaic though the form in which it was presented to him--as against money and ease without honest affection. He threw aside the only success he had ever achieved, which was due to the opulent siren, Mrs. Magill, and fell back to his old shabby independence, with a poverty-stricken little wife to share it. I don't say it was good political economy; I dare say it was very bad sociology; and perhaps I ought to show how some dire catastrophe came upon him in consequence. The only obstacle in the way is, that it didn't. He remained reasonably happy ever after.

By this it is not to be understood that he prospered materially. As a matter of fact, he had a terribly hard time. There were the old struggles, the old uncertainties of fortune to be faced, with new anxieties added. His own opinions and his wife's were at times far from being in unison.

After a time, too, he found himself a father; and, though I don't doubt his little infant girl brought him compensations, he grew visibly older. His once courageous complexion, which I have described as carrot-tinted, lapsed slowly toward the hue of turnips when in a boiled state; and--melancholy change!--his dainty martial chin, with the dent in the bottom of it, was hidden by a practical red beard, while his hair became proportionately thin on top of his head. If Mrs. Magill cared for revenge she probably took it now, in the contemplation of his hard career and the alterations in his appearance. He felt this a little, I know; for, as we were walking together one day near Worth's monument, he suddenly changed our course, with a hasty, "May as well go this way;" and I perceived the wealthy widow coming toward us.

We were not quick enough to escape her, and Barrington winced at her expression. Yet I am equally certain that he never regretted his choice.

Luckily for Rawsden's slight remaining toleration of mankind, he left Mrs. Douce's before the baby was added to the other household ornaments. Now that I think of it, Miss Sneef had previously left the house, and Rawsden's critical mood grew upon him so rapidly that he, too, found a change necessary. In fact, he followed Miss Sneef.

Yet he continued to bestow a share of his amused contempt upon Mr. and Mrs. Barrington from a distance.

"Barrington got a taste for the drama that time," he once said to me, recalling the private theatricals, "and he keeps it up well. I think his piece will have a long run."

"What piece?"

"_The Ex-Bachelor and his Baby!_" said the little wretch. "A tragic-comedy--by the whole strength of the company."

I think I should have kicked Rawsden for this, but that something in his manner hinted an inconsistent envy of the major. And he presently went on to say that as for Miss Sneef and himself, although not believing at all in the necessity of sentiment and all that sort of thing, they had concluded--since they didn't seem to be able as yet to get tired of each other--that they would try marriage, and see what that would do for them.

Such was the distorted little tribute of this _nil admirari_ youth to the element of real manliness he could not fail to see in Barrington's marriage.

"BAD PEPPERS."

I.

"You see, I want to strike down to Bad Peppers."

These words were pronounced by the third person at my right on the bench. The bench, it must be explained, was covered with red velvet, and situated in the cabin of a steamer. And the steamer was the _Weser_, bound for Bremen.

I could not imagine at the moment what "Bad Peppers" meant; and the remark--uttered at our first dinner on board--came out with such ludicrous distinctness, in the midst of the clatter at table, that I made haste to observe the individual from whom it proceeded. I beheld a rough but impressive head, with cheeks of a settled red, and beetling grizzly hair, looking out over the board in a dogged, half-perplexed, but good-humored way, though the owner of the head was evidently unconscious that he had said anything open to comment. He was a man, I should say, of forty-six; but as I looked at him now in the glare of the skylight above, the simplicity and frankness in his face were so marked, that I could not help imagining the short gray curls turned to golden brown, and feeling the momentary pity that comes over one in looking at an elderly person who reminds one of childhood, yet is hopelessly far removed from it. I felt a little sorry for a man with this kind of a face attempting so large a task as crossing the ocean to Europe, and I was a little amused at the idea, too.

He was talking earnestly to my handsome friend Fearloe, who sat on this side of him; but I observed that he was watched with a certain patronizing scrutiny by a young German opposite.

"Yes, you see I couldn't get rid of this rheumatism anywhere," he continued, "and so I took a friend's advice and started for Europe. They say that Bad Peppers will fix up the worst case you ever saw better than any amount of medicine. Anyway, I'm going to try it."

Peppers as a cure for rheumatism! What could he mean? And if this was to be the remedy, why go to Europe to try it? But he proceeded:

"And that's the reason, you see, why I want to strike right down to Bad Peppers."

The mystery began to grow less opaque. Possibly he might mean by "strike down" that he wished to reduce his diet to the article in question; but I thought it more likely that Bad Peppers was a place which he had made his objective point. I determined to ask Fearloe at the earliest opportunity, and therefore drew him away as soon as dinner was over.

"Who is your new acquaintance?" I inquired.

"He reports himself as Steven Steavens, a wholesale grocer from Philadelphia."

"And he's going to Europe to cure his rheumatism? Europe ought to be flattered, certainly," said I; and I am afraid we both laughed rather scornfully at our unsuspecting fellow-traveller, who was pacing another part of the deck with a fierce meerschaum pipe in his mouth. "But tell me what he means by this Bad Peppers. Is it a place? I'm sure I never heard of one by that name."

"Of course," said Fearloe, "it's a place, but that isn't the right name. He means a resort of some note for invalids in the canton of St. Gall, Switzerland--Bad Pfeiffers, or Pfeiffers's Baths--south of the Lake of Constance, and near the Rhine: a very picturesque spot, too."

"You've been there, then?"

"Yes," answered Fearloe, who, I may remark by the way, had been nearly everywhere--out of America. He was one of those Yankees of the later generations who are born with a genius for belying their own nationality. When he was in England, the English would actually claim him for one of themselves, in the face of positive denial from his own countrymen; though I must do him the justice to say that he made no merit of this, and never allowed newspaper paragraphs to be written about it. In France he was frequently taken for a Frenchman; and in Italy his fine statuesque features and rich dark beard, with the aid of a good Roman accent, might easily cause him to pass for a descendant of one of the old patrician families. In consequence he was very apt to be looked upon as a foreigner during his occasional flights through his native land, and possessed accordingly a remarkable power over the hearts of sundry republican young women; for women love to pay homage to a judicious male superiority, and this is the reason the daughters of our nation delight in foreign manners, which assume that grandeur of the male that most Americans are too polite and timid to assert. These things being so, I do not wonder that Fearloe was a little conceited on one point--his success in impressing the female heart.

"You speak so well of the place," I continued, after a pause, "that I've a great mind to 'strike down' there myself. Do you advise it?"

"By all means, Middleby, after you've seen the Exposition. Paris will be hot, and you will need a change of some sort."

"I hope it won't be a change to rheumatism," I replied, with another laugh. I had not noticed that Steavens had come nearer to us as I spoke; but the word "rheumatism" seemed to attract him, and roused the only association with the Old World which he as yet enjoyed.

"You gentlemen have been to Europe before?" he said, advancing, and taking me in with a half-inquiring nod, as if my acquaintance with so foreign-looking a person as Fearloe was sufficient guarantee of my experience in travelling. "Now I would consider it a favor, gentlemen, if you would come down with me to the smoking-room. We can have a little something to drink, and then we can talk this thing over."

Fearloe smiled condescendingly.

"This thing?" inquired I (perhaps not with the utmost respect, since his sentence struck me as rather too informal for the very beginning of a chance acquaintance). "You mean the Bad--"

"The whole of it," broke in Mr. Steavens. "The European continent--Bad Peppers, Paris, and all the rest of it. You've been there, and know just what a fellow ought to see and do, and now I'm away from my store, I've got a little time to sit down and think over what _I_'ll do. So, if you don't object, gentlemen--"

"Not at all," Fearloe hastened to assure him, being always ready for novel encounters.

"I can't tell you anything about Pfeiffers's Baths," said I, trying to be companionable too, "for I never heard of them before; but whatever I do know is at your service."

As we moved toward the gangway the grocer turned to Fearloe, and asked, in an undertone, "What does he call it? Feiffers? That ain't right, is it? My friend that set me on going there, he said Peppers. I thought, first off, he meant they put red peppers in the water when you bathe; but he said no, it was the name of the man that started the place, he guessed."

"You can pronounce it either way," said Fearloe, magnanimously.

"Well, I prefer Peppers," declared Steavens, with an air of relief. "But it's kind of queer, now, that your friend, Mr. What's-his-name--"

"Middleby," I suggested, claiming my place in the colloquy.

"--Middleby," he continued, without embarrassment, transferring the remark to me. "Ain't it queer, Mr. Middleby, that you never heard of the place? I thought everybody knew about Bad Peppers."

I was foolish enough to be irritated at this presumption on the part of the child-like grocer, and had a great mind to hint that he preferred a wrong pronunciation of the name because peppers were in the line of his business; but I contented myself with saying that I thought there were places in Europe a good deal better known than the baths.

In the smoking-room we found the young German who had cast his critical eye upon Steavens at dinner. He introduced himself as Herr Scharlach, and in order to make matters clear, he drew from his pocket a printed list of the passengers, which had been distributed just before we sailed, on which he put a cross against each of our names and his own, as he had already done with several others in the catalogue. He was a young man somewhere in the thirties, with a clear blue eye that gleamed like a sword, a high forehead, and a soft complexion deepened by tropical sunburn. He could have been identified as a German anywhere, from the air he had of holding a balance of power in all earthly affairs; and when he checked off our names, I couldn't help thinking that he was collecting data for use in some future military campaign, or else for a biographical dictionary of the whole human race.

"Ain't from Philadelphia, are you?" queried Steavens, in a friendly tone, implying that the other probably _was_ from that city. "We have a good many Germans there."

"No," said Scharlach, "Brazil." After which he lit a cigarette he had been rolling in his thin fingers, and puffed smoke from his nostrils in such a way as to suggest that any aperture for confidential conversation was permanently closed.

"Now here," said our confiding acquaintance, after we had pledged one another in several mild beverages suited to a first day out on the briny deep--"here's a list of places my friend made out that I want to kind of take in on my way to the springs and back." And he produced from his pocketbook a narrow crumpled white paper, on which were pencilled the weighty names of Paris, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Dresden, Antwerp, Heidelberg, and Munich. I give them in the order in which they occurred. "I suppose that's all right, ain't it?" he concluded, glancing at each of us in turn, as if the success of his tour depended on our good opinion.

"Why, yes," said Fearloe, "the places are all right, but you'll have to travel a good deal to include them all. I don't see how you're to get at them on the way to the baths."

"Oh, of course I shall have to branch off a little; but then the distances over there don't compare with ours," returned Mr. Steavens, hopefully.

"I'm not so sure of that," rejoined my friend, with a malicious air of there being some slight room for doubt. "Your first jaunt, from Paris to Rome, will be five hundred miles--five times as far as from Philadelphia to New York. After that you must count at least a thousand to Madrid, a thousand more from there to Vienna, and then twelve hundred, or over, to St. Petersburg." Steavens almost turned pale. He hastily set down the glass which he was carrying to his lips. "Besides," continued Fearloe, "you can't go to Rome at all before winter."

"Hold on!" cried the other, looking as if the sense of solid reality were slipping away from him. "Has anybody got a map here? Let's settle one thing at a time. You know what I want to do first is to strike down to Bad Peppers. I'd like to settle just how that stands."

Scharlach immediately went to his state-room, and returned promptly with a large and perfect map of the Continent, showing all the railroads and post-roads. Seeing this, I was tempted to make some sarcastic remark about his thorough German equipment; but I remembered Sedan, and shuddered. He was soon busily engaged in tracing out certain lines of travel with his long pink finger, the nail of which was whitish, and edged with black--according strangely with the Prussian national colors. I thought Scharlach took a peculiar interest in Pfeiffers, and seemed oddly familiar with it. He furnished our fellow-passenger with full details about the place; how it was situated on the Tamina River--which Steavens, with a friendly reminiscence of New York politics, instantly transformed into "Tammany" River; how the mountains were piled around its wild gorge seven or eight thousand feet high; how the healing waters flow only in summer, and are brought to the hotel by an aqueduct; and so on. All this seemed to reassure the rheumatic grocer very much; and having got "Peppers" definitely fixed in his mind again, and becoming familiar with the map, he once more grew self-confident about his list of cities, and nothing could avail to dissuade him from adhering to the exact order in which his unknown adviser had jotted them down. So, for the time, we abandoned the attempt.

There is hardly a circle more merciless in its criticisms than a body of first-cabin passengers on one of the European steamers; and Steavens soon became an object of amusement to most of us. His simplicity, openness, and perfectly good-humored, almost joyous, ignorance, made him an easy prey. But he proved to be a "good sailor," and was very gallant toward the ladies. The strangest part of it was that they rather liked him, and took his side against our covert ridicule. I suppose I must admit that this, instead of altering our opinions concerning him, only added a slight bitterness to a spirit of fun which would otherwise have been quite innocent; and we got into a way of looking at him with sarcastic hostility. When I say "we" I refer more particularly to Fearloe, the German, Scharlach, and myself, who, having been thrown with him more than the others on the first day of the voyage, regarded him as a sort of comic exhibition under our special supervision.

This rather absurd bond of union between us led to some degree of intimacy with Scharlach, who disclosed--greatly to the enhancement of our interest in Steavens's journey--that he, likewise, was going to Pfeiffers. His errand, moreover, was a romantic one. Five years before he had fallen in love with the orphaned niece of a rich merchant in Berlin; but feeling his cause to be hopeless, at least as regarded the girl's uncle, so long as he had nothing but his personal appearance and a very elaborate education to support his suit, Scharlach had preferred to retain the hold of friendship while starting out to better his condition; and accordingly he had never made a positive declaration of his passion, but had gone to Brazil, where he succeeded in gaining a moderately handsome fortune. His friends had kept him informed of Fraeulein Raslaff's movements. As yet she had not married, from which he augured hopefully for his future; but her uncle had become an invalid, and they were now about resorting to Pfeiffers for his health, whither Scharlach, of course, purposed following them, in order to learn his fate.

He requested us urgently to say nothing about this to any of our fellow-voyagers, and we even kept the secret of his destination from Steavens. But that could not prevent Fearloe and myself from privately talking over Scharlach's prospects a little. My own opinion was that such cool self-possession as his course showed might not impress a woman so favorably as it did us, and I said I was by no means sure that Scharlach would win, after all. Fearloe did not agree with me here, and stroked his beard with an air of restrained certainty as he replied: "I see, Middleby, you fancy that women want something more startling romantic than that. But they are very practical, too; and I think you'll find Miss Raslaff will appreciate such sensible devotion as this of our Brazilian emigrant." As I have said, Fearloe knew the effect he could produce on women, and was proud of it; and when he uttered this remark it was plain that he thought he had settled the question.

II.

As I left the steamer at Southampton, and went up to London for a few days, I parted with Steavens before the voyage was completed. It was nearly a week later that I met Fearloe again, in Paris. We went together to dine at a neat little two-franc place in the Rue St. Honore, which we had formerly haunted, and during dinner he suddenly asked, with a roguish look, "Who do you think I saw yesterday?--Steavens!" And Fearloe here bent his head, bathing his beard in laughter. "Do you know, he has been in Paris three days and hasn't gone near the Exposition?"

"Well, that shows a healthy independence," said I. "Is he studying the Louvre?"

"No," was the answer; "he has discovered something far more important than the Louvre or the Exposition--something which seems to reward him for the whole trip."

"What can that be?" I queried, rather blankly.

"He has discovered," said Fearloe, "that _Paris is the place to buy shirts in_!"

This, it appeared, was the topic which had engrossed Steavens's mind when Fearloe met him. The erratic man, after reaching Bremen, had abruptly decided to come over to the French capital, which he might have done much more easily and cheaply from Southampton; and the result of this expensive detour had been a kind of shirt-intoxication. "You've no idea," added Fearloe, "how neatly he has gotten himself up. He really is making progress. And the magnificence of the fellow! Why, he says he shall merely take a single run through the Exposition, and leave all the rest of Paris till after he has been to Pfeiffers."

"Fearloe," I said, with a measure of solemnity, "don't scoff at a man like that. I never before have met an American with quite so much originality in his treatment of Europe. He must be a genius."

Nevertheless, we continued to laugh at him, with that superiority of being less naif and independent than he which so oddly seems to us a desirable thing nowadays. And if any one at that time had hinted that Steven Steavens, with his want of reserve and complete indifference to what is known as culture, possessed qualities of character more to be admired than our own, we should not have taken the trouble even to smile at the critic.

I did not happen to meet Steavens while in Paris; but in August I finally acted on Fearloe's chance hint aboard ship, and went to Pfeiffers myself, where I found not only our enthusiast in shirts, but also Scharlach and Miss Raslaff, together with that young lady's uncle, a shrivelled little old man, who had the air of being put away to keep in his thick white hair and whiskers, like a dried beetle in cotton-wool. To the rest of us indeed, the old gentleman was of no more account than a beetle, and appeared to have as little influence on the lives around him as an insect might. But, as a matter of fact, though he was so nearly dead, and scarcely stirred a limb, he clutched three lives in his faded fingers, and held them fast there--his niece's life, Scharlach's life, and Steavens's life. For I was not long in discovering that my rheumatic pilgrim had fallen in love with Fraeulein Raslaff almost at first sight. He himself took good care that I should not remain blind to the fact. He drew me aside, and poured his tale into my ear, though with somewhat more reserve than he had shown on the steamer in discussing his plans of travel.

"How long has this been going on?" I inquired, as we walked together up and down the hotel terrace overlooking the wild and picturesque valley.

"Three weeks and a half," he answered. "It's a short time, and it _seems_ like a short time. I've read in the story papers that when a man's in love, a few days seem to him like years, and so forth. But I don't believe it. I know exactly how long I've been here, and yet there's no doubt about it, I'm in love with that young lady, and am going to make her my wife if I can. The story papers are wrong, and I'm right."

I couldn't help reflecting that this was the same independence I had praised to Fearloe. "The man has the faculty of knowing exactly what he's about," thought I, "and that goes a good way toward securing success." Yet it seemed preposterous that he should have the least chance with a woman so far removed from him by tastes and traditions as Fraeulein Raslaff. I said to him merely, "Have you spoken to her?"

"I've tried to feel my way," was his reply. "But that uncle of hers--he's an old potato-bug, sir. He's _worse_ than a potato-bug. I don't know what to call him. He won't let any one come near her, and yet he don't seem to take any pleasure in her himself. He looks just about dead, but I tell you it's only shamming; the minute another man talks to Miss Raslaff, he wakes up; it puts life into him, and he flies around sharp. This is a good country to operate in, though; he can't take the walks we do with parties sometimes--up to Solitude, and the Belvedere, and around. I'd just like to see him in the gorge once; _that_ would finish him."

The gorge was a very peculiar and rather perilous cavern, higher up in the valley through which the Tamina runs.

"Then it's only the uncle that troubles you?" I queried. "You don't feel afraid of Scharlach?"

Steavens paused, looking anxious for an instant. Then the child-like expression which I had marked on my first glimpse of him came out strongly again. "Do you think he'd be mean enough to stand in my way?" he asked.

"But suppose you are standing in his?" I returned.

Steavens apparently considered this an unnatural view to take. "Scharlach can get along by himself all right," he asserted. "He might be disappointed, and it wouldn't ruin him. But me--why, take me, and what am I without _her_?" I must admit that this humbleness touched me with its pathos, and I began to range myself on Steavens's side. Then he concluded, without any pathos at all, "Well, I've got as good a right to try as he has, any way, and I'm bound to win in the end."

At length, wishing to soften a possible disappointment, I thought I ought to toll him how long Scharlach had been hoping to gain Miss Raslaff's heart. The information startled him considerably; but after a few moments' silence he struck me on the shoulder, and exclaimed, "Well, here we are! He's rich and I'm rich; let her choose between us for something else. If he hadn't made any money out there, I'd say to him, 'Here, my man, I've got the best of you, so I'll stand by, and you can just walk in and try your chances first.' But seeing we're neck and neck on that, I don't know that there's anything to do but go ahead."

And go ahead he assuredly did from that hour. He astounded the old uncle by remonstrating with him directly against his supervision of Miss Raslaff. "It ain't fair," he said. "You don't know how to manage things in this country. I don't say a woman ought to vote; but anyway she ought to have a right to listen to a man when he wants to tell her what he thinks of her. Do you suppose I could tell _you_?" (With a glance by no means politic in its contempt at the desiccated little figure before him.) "And how am I to talk to her about it when you are around?"

The result of this attack, which he made in my presence, was a violent outbreak from the old man; and the next day Steavens was asked to meet Miss Raslaff and her uncle in their _salon_, to receive from the young woman herself a confirmation of her uncle's objection to receiving any attentions from him. The girl was pale, but composed and very beautiful. I could not make out whether or not she had taken any fancy to my brusque compatriot, but she acted her part firmly. When at last she said, in pure English, "My uncle is right; you must not seek my acquaintance any more--more ardently; let us be quite as we were before," I declare so sweet a suspicion of a blush came over her checks, and her voice died away so delicately, like a soft echo heard among the very hills around us, that I almost fell in love with her myself. A great change instantly came over Steavens. All his jauntiness, his unreserve, his child-like confidence, were extinguished at a blow. After a moment he collected his voice, and said, with great gentleness, "Miss Raslaff, I will never do anything you ask me not to, so far as speaking is concerned; but that won't prevent my thinking about you just as much as ever, and I shall keep just as near the place where you stay as I can."

This was the end of the interview, and I thought my countryman had the best of it. He was very melancholy, though, while I remained at the baths; and the savage beauty of the place--the rough stream roaring out of the cavern against whose walls of black calcareous rock, glittering here and there with feldspar, the faint Alpine rose bloomed pensively, the shaggy heights above the hotel, and the glimpses of snowy peaks in the distance--was not suited to restore his cheer. One day we went into the gorge, with its rocky walls rising two or three hundred feet, and gradually closing together above, where a bridge of planks cornered into the solid stone runs for a distance of six thousand paces to the springs, slippery all the way from the flying river-foam. It was gloomy and depressing as a scene from the _Inferno_, and bad for a rheumatic patient, as I reminded Steavens; but he shook his head mournfully, and said he didn't care. What was worse was the danger of missing a foothold on the wet and mossy planks, and so being precipitated into the wild stream beneath; and I breathed more easily when we came out safely again. But it struck me that this would be a fearful place for two angry rivals, such as Steavens and Scharlach now were, to meet in.

It so happened that Scharlach that very day came to me with _his_ tale of despair. Thinking the field was his own, after Steavens's discomfiture, he had formally proposed for Miss Raslaff's hand, and had been rejected. He could not understand it. He had addressed the young lady with her uncle's permission, and she had refused him. I gathered from what he said that he had pressed his claim as a matter of right, that he considered himself to have bought her love by long patience and the accumulation of a competence, and had put forward this theory with undue bluntness; for he confessed that she had dismissed him with a cold anger and disdain that left no hope. We were sitting on the great stone steps hewn in the height above the hotel as he told me this. "No," he cried, springing to his feet, at the end, in a sort of fury. "If she had shown heat of temper, I might have kept up hope. But she petrified me with her contempt. I am no better than these rocks." He ground his teeth as he spoke, looking down at the hostelry, sunk at a fearful depth below us. Then he seized a heavy stone from the earth, and flung it down the steep, madly crying, "Yes, I am stone now, and there goes my heart rolling down to crush you!" It stopped before it had gone far; but the frenzied action was enough to show that the man had lost his balance. The pent-up force of years, so well controlled till now, had broken forth at a bound, and was carrying him away. "And it was that fool from America, that friend of yours," he added, fiercely, turning upon me all at once, as if I were an enemy--"it was he that did this. It is because he is a novelty, and because her uncle opposes it, that she has taken a fancy to him, and thrown aside the man who was a slave to her for eight years. That's it, I am sure. Take him away! Take your American away!"

I need not say that I did not obey this command; but I did take myself away. The truth is, the situation was getting altogether too serious for my liking. Yet, after I had gone, I felt an incessant curiosity to know how the affair had resulted. I heard nothing more for some time, until I came across an acquaintance during the winter, who had met Steavens in Paris again. This gentleman was telling me how Steavens had been to Rome early in the winter, and now went about complaining that it was a very dirty, one-horse town, which couldn't compare with Philadelphia. He also reported Steavens as gaining some notoriety for his romantic attachment to a young German lady, whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as Fraeulein Raslaff. It appeared, therefore, that he had as yet made no headway; but I indulged in a sense of approval when I learned that he was studying hard, to enlarge his education and his knowledge of European things. Still, my acquaintance described him as a man who could never become anything but an American. He had taken the baths under the necessity of improving his health; he was trying to take European manners, in the same way, for the sake of improving his chances with Fraeulein Raslaff. Yet he remained immutably hostile to everything foreign, and to prolong his stay abroad was, therefore, the strongest sort of devotion he could have shown.

III.

Fearloe knew nothing of these events, having gone to Egypt for the winter. But more than a year afterward, when I had been at home for some time, I was one day telling a lady at a dinner party something about Steavens's eccentricities and absurdities, when she exclaimed: "Oh, I have heard of that man before! Your friend Mr. Fearloe was telling me about him."

I was decidedly annoyed by this, because I had frequently made an anecdote of Steavens with great effect, and now here was Fearloe spoiling my fun by telling it in advance. Of course I had confined myself to narrating the rheumatic pilgrim's strange plan of travel, his excitement about Parisian shirts, and his unique view of Rome--things which invariably proved highly amusing--and said nothing of his romance. I now questioned my companion at dinner, to see if I could learn anything more about that part of his history, but I could get no information on that subject. My irritation continued all the evening, for it is no slight matter when a man who painfully hoards materials for small conversation, and uses them frequently, finds an insidious friend depriving him of them. But I had an ample revenge upon Fearloe afterward, as you shall see. When I next saw him, which was some months later, he had an experience to recount which certainly put him at my mercy. I will tell it in his own words.

"I was staying at North Conway for a few days, late in July, and there was a most beautiful woman there. I hardly know whether to call her girl or woman, Middleby, there was such an immortal freshness about her face and figure, combined with a reflective sadness that showed she had had more than a girl's experiences. She dressed in black; it was a cool thin black, that looked--perhaps on account of the calm, sweet face above it--more airy and summer-like than the most studied of the country costumes worn by other ladies at the hotel; and she wore bracelets and a pin of Irish bog-stone set in ebony, that harmonized deliciously with her personality. You know how that sort of stone sparkles, like a clouded diamond. Well, there was something about its dim, shrouded flash that was just like the mystery in her pale face with its surroundings of black. It struck into me very deep, and excited a desire to pierce the mystery, to find out what her face meant, and what was at her heart--and perhaps to place myself in the heart, too. I'll own it frankly. You know I'm not susceptible, though I've generally made my way pretty well with the ladies." (Here a flash of Fearloe's old self-complacence on this point came to light, but quickly died out again.) "I have always cared more for foreign women, though, than for our own; and this girl or woman was a German, so I was doubly taken with her. Her name was set down on the register as--Well, I won't tell you what the name was, just at present, but it was registered in such a way that I couldn't tell whether she was maid, wife, or widow. I fixed on the last, in my own mind, from her wearing black. There was no one with her; none of the people in the hotel, with whom I talked, knew anything about her. There could be no question that she was rich; but that was all I could find out concerning her.

"It was a delicate business, as you can imagine, to make her acquaintance in the face of such a state of things; but I managed it, fortunately, through doing her a little service on the 'piazza,' and from that I went on to press my society upon her cautiously. In a few days we were on very good terms, and took a few of the customary walks and drives in the neighborhood, with other persons at first, and then alone. I was puzzled to find her so easy as to this, being a foreigner; but I believe I convinced her of my trustworthiness, and she must have found out easily, from my acquaintances in the place, just who I was. Then she seemed to have outgrown foreign prejudices in some way; and I confess, besides, that I accounted for it at the time by fancying that I had begun to make some impression upon her.

"I determined there shouldn't be any doubt about it. Yes, it was a serious matter, Middleby; I had come to a point when I meant to offer myself to her the very next day. I got her consent to go to Artists' Falls, where I meant to lay my passion before her. Hideous name, by the way--Artists' Falls!" broke off Fearloe, testily. "No affair could have prospered in a spot with such a shoppy name."

He relapsed into gloomy reflections, from which I roused him, insisting that the story should be finished.

"It was the evening before our intended excursion," he then went on. "She and I were sitting on a retired part of the piazza, just about sunset. Everything about us was rarely beautiful; the flush of the evening just dying away from old Rattlesnake, and the line of the great peaks at the distant head of the valley, with Washington's dome in the midst, looking, to the fancy--as you have probably seen them--like giant ghosts of the great men they commemorate. Then, across the intervale, with its hundreds of little brooks and its soft elms, we looked at White-horse Cliff, and that waterfall that seems to flutter from the distant hill-side like a white banner. You remember? A single star was poised above it. I shall never forget that scene. It came upon me with a kind of surprise, after all, that we could have anything so lovely here, and I began contrasting it with Europe. I wanted to hint something about going back there, you know--lead up in a sort of way to my intended declaration in the morning. So it was natural that, in talking of the other side, and the voyage, and all that, I should begin to tell her about that odd fellow on the _Weser_ when we went over, you know--Steavens."

"Miserable man!" I exclaimed, at this point, remembering my discomfiture at that dinner. "You told her, and then you found she was some one I had already met and told before?"

Fearloe glared at me in amazement, then slowly smiled in a melancholy manner, and shook his head. "Don't be childish, Middleby," said he; "and please don't interrupt me. I fancy I know something more about Steavens than _you_'ve ever told. This particular time I'm describing to you I was surprised to find that my listener didn't seem to enter into the fun of the thing. I didn't mention his name, yet I almost suspected she knew something about the man. But as she didn't relish the absurd side of him, I thought I'd give her a proper dose of the serious. I went on to impart what I had learned about a desperate love affair of his at Bad Pfeiffers; and this, by the by, is news to you, Middleby."

"Not quite," I said, with a vain smile. (It must be kept in mind that Fearloe and I had claimed a joint ownership in Steavens as a comic spectacle, and I was jealous of any other kind of property in him as a sentimental one.)

"No?" rejoined Fearloe, rather surprised, but cool. "Well, then, you can judge how flat I felt on finding that the beginning of his romantic episode didn't seem to strike her much more than the rest I had said about him.

"'You seem rather to despise your compatriot,' she said, when I had got as far as telling her what I had heard about his rivalry with Scharlach for the favor of a young lady whom they met at the baths. 'But why shouldn't he feel the same love and devotion that another might, even if he were not the most accomplished of his nation?'

"I answered, 'Ah, that is like you, to defend a man for holding a generous sentiment. It is to be hoped you would be equally kind in judging a less out-and-out American who dared to love one of your race.' (I imagined she blushed just there.) 'But if you had seen this man Steavens, you would understand just how I look at him. You don't know much yet about such raw specimens of my kind.'

"The fact is, Middleby, I put something of a sneer into my words. I was angry at her liking the man even in fancy. However, I finished my story.

"'He certainly was very devoted;' I admitted that. 'He was quite as brave as the other man.'"

"'No braver, you think?' asked she, quietly, with a tone I did not comprehend.

"'You shall decide,' said I. 'The sequel was this: My German gentleman, Scharlach, got perfectly raving mad, I'm told. He looked upon the lady as his absolute right, and couldn't be quieted; while Steavens behaved so calmly that he began to get on terms with the lady and her uncle again, even after his rebuff. If you have ever been at Pfeiffers,' I said to her, 'you know the gorge of the Tamina; but you can't guess what's coming. It happened, one day, that Steavens went in there, when Scharlach had already gone to the spring, and was coming back along the foot-bridge.' I can tell you, Middleby, she looked interested when I came to this--just as you do now. She was startled, too. 'Now, by the strangest coincidence, the obdurate uncle and his niece also went down there shortly afterward, not knowing that either of the rivals was in the cave. They had gone some little way along the dangerous path, when they heard a terrible shout, like the cry of a wild man. They tried to make haste forward to see what it meant, after the first moment of terror, and came in sight of the two men just in time. Scharlach was making a rush upon Steavens, who stood perfectly still, with a pale face, but resolute and terribly stern.

"'He braced himself as well as he could. The shock came. There was a stout, short struggle, and suddenly Scharlach went over, plunging toward the rough torrent full of rocks, and was lost.'

"Then, Middleby, you should have seen that woman's eyes as she sat there in the twilight. How they flashed, as she rose in her chair! Yet there was an intense pain in her expression. 'This is too terrible,' she said. 'But no; I must speak now. Mr. Fearloe, did the person who told you this story also tell you how, when Scharlach fell, Steven tried to hold him--tried to save the man who had just been seeking his life? Ah, there his true and great nobility were seen!'

"'Good heavens, madam,' cried I, 'who are you? You saw them? Then you must be--'

"Just then, Middleby, the coach from the station had come up, and the passengers were getting out. Madame was exclaiming, without heed to my questions, 'Oh, I cannot bear this! That scene all comes back to me. Steven! Steven! why are you not here?' And, as if in answer to her words, the man came up behind her with his travelling-bag in his hand. I felt as if lightning had struck me! But to _her_, calmness returned in an instant. She rose, and with her arm in his she said, coldly, 'Steven, do you remember Mr. Fearloe?' He recalled me at once, and started to take my hand. But she checked him, and said to him, while looking at me like ice, 'Ah, it's a pity you remember him, for you must learn now to forget him!' And with that she wheeled away, carrying him with her."

"It was Miss Raslaff," I cried. "And how did it happen you didn't know her?"

"I had forgotten the name. Ah, my boy, I have been fearfully punished. I had a conceited contempt for that man, and see how it has been visited on me."

"Then she has married him?"

"By this time, yes. She clung to her savage old uncle till he died, then came over to marry Steavens, though by condition of the will she must forfeit all her uncle's money in doing so."

"Fearloe," I remarked, after a pause, "I think we will neither of us relate our funny encounter with Steavens any more. What did we, with all our fancied supremacy, gain by going to Europe, compared with this man? After all, it was a real inspiration of his to 'strike right down to Bad Peppers'!"

THREE BRIDGES.

I.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A HAT.

Within a distance of about ten miles Shagford River makes three long curves, each of which is crossed by a bridge.

The first is for the railroad. The second, thrown across at a point where the ground is lower, carries a country road from bank to bank. Still further down is the third, which is of stone, and forms a paved street connecting the two parts of the factory town of Shagford.

On the afternoon of a superb summer day a fast train from the north-west swept around the curve leading to the bridge-head, and emerged upon the open iron-work structure which bore the double track above the water. The fireman was shovelling coal, and the engineer had just withdrawn his hand from a cord which blew the whistle when he caught sight of a man, in a round Bombay hat, half way across and walking in the same direction the train was taking. Again he pulled the string, sending out four hoarse notes: "Lo-ook oout, a-head!" But the man did not step aside, as would have been expected, on to the line of plank provided for foot passengers between the tracks. The engineer turned on the air-brake and shouted; but there was a strong breeze blowing against him; and at best a voice could hardly rouse a traveller deaf to the steam notes. The last chance of escape appeared to have passed when the stranger, moved by an instinct of danger, though hearing nothing, turned his head.

For the space of a second he confronted the swift, trembling glitter of steel and brass and the pallid face of the engineer at the cab-window. A look of unutterable horror convulsed his own features, and he sprang wildly into the air. Falling again, without being hit by the engine, he went tumbling down through an interstice of the iron beams into the muddy water below. The train was soon stopped and reversed. Slowly the wheels revolved backward--with a solemn, funereal movement, as if conscious of the inanimate body that might soon be added to their freight.

But to the amazement of every one on board, staring frightened into the river, the hurt man was seen to be already struggling out of the current, and clambering--wet, hatless, with dripping hair--up the steep bank they had just left. On reaching the top he began to walk aimlessly away from the train, as if nothing had happened, but presently sat down on the ground looking weak and bewildered.

"Well, if he ain't the coolest hand!" exclaimed the brakeman. "Must be a new sort of water-rat." This same brakeman, however, was prompt to go with the conductor to the aid of the stranger. They found him conscious, but stupefied, and so helped him into the train, which then continued on its way, bearing him off to Shagford.

"Where are you bound?" asked the conductor.

The man, who was of middle age, with a sun-browned face and close iron-gray whiskers along the upper jaws, felt for his hat and, not finding it, looked uneasy. "There must be no delay," he said, half to himself. "I'll tell you in a moment," he added.

But he sat for some time without speaking; and it was evident that the shock of his terrible fall had worked confusion in his brain. Even on reaching Shagford he was unable to collect himself. But they persuaded him to consult the nearest physician, whom he sought under care of the young brakeman. This resulted in his being taken temporarily to the hospital, for, though seemingly without physical injury, he had suffered so peculiar a mental effect that rest and proper care were thought advisable.

Shortly after the occurrence of this singular accident a vehicle crossed the turnpike bridge, of which mention has been made. The vehicle was a buggy, occupied by a single figure--that of a man say about thirty-eight, clothed in a close-fitting suit of mixed brown. He was of prosperous but not portly aspect, and what was most noticeable in him was that his eyes scanned the river in a sudden, peculiar way. One might have said that, emerging from the softly massed trees upon the bank, he had an uneasy sense of being exposed to unexpected observation on the open stretch of the bridge. But perhaps the more likely explanation would be that he was an inquiring, energetic person, who habitually looked everywhere. Habit or chance, whichever it might be, his alert vision was not exercised in vain that day. He saw on the river, floating toward his point of vantage, an upturned hat. Now, this hat was the identical one which had quitted the head of the unlucky man at the railroad bridge; for, being made of cork, it was perfectly adapted to navigation.

"That's what comes of sharp eyes," said the driver of the buggy aloud, much as though he were stating a moral maxim which it did him good to hear. "Who knows but this may turn out important? If anybody's been drowned, or--" The alternative was lost in a clucking sound with which he accompanied the urging of his horse; for he had formed a plan.

The bridge was low; the hat was drifting toward one of the numerous rows of spiles, hence he believed he could fish it up with his long-handled whip. Dismounting, and watching his opportunity, he succeeded after a few moment's novel angling in bringing up, by a noose made of the lash-end, his piece of flotsam.

As I have said, this man wore a comfortable mien; his face was smooth, rosy, firm and beardless, and though the structure of his lips was rather hard and determined, the corners of the lips indicated constant readiness for a smile which, however, never culminated when he was alone. Still, at this moment, a beam of satisfaction rested on his features. The recovery of the hat presented itself to him in the light of a virtuous action. Looking into it he saw the owner's name written on the leather band: "Simeon Piper." As this conveyed no impression, he turned his attention to a small folded paper stuffed inside of the band and making a slight bulge in it. On examining what was inscribed upon the sheet, his countenance changed; the beaming look vanished, and his eyebrows, always describing an acute angle to the temples, grew sharper than ever. It was a movement analogous to that of an animal drawing back its lips before biting, or darting a fang out. His expression, in fact, had become wolfish.

What did it mean? Merely that the name he had seen this time was his own. "Martin E. Hounshell," he read, in a half voice, finding it for an instant even stranger than the strange name he had encountered just before. But he had seen other things on the page with his name; things which he would not articulate even here; certain names and dates for which he deemed silence the fittest atmosphere.

Hounshell's next act was to toss the hat back into the river, and he was about to tear up the paper scrap and send it after the hat, when he changed his mind. He put the memorandum into an inside pocket and buttoned up his coat, tapped the surface of the coat snugly, then got into his buggy and drove on--thoughtful and puzzled, but with equanimity returning and ready to spring his patent smile in a moment, should he meet an acquaintance.

Nevertheless, what had just happened was startling. If the paper which now lay over his heart had possessed the power of receiving a photograph from his brain he could not have been more astonished. The invisible had become visible; what had lain concealed for years in his own mind now confronted him from without. And who was Simeon Piper--a total stranger--in whose hat so mysterious a revelation had taken place? Hounshell's horse dragged that question along unconsciously to the end of the bridge, where, for the moment, it disappears from our pen unanswered.

The small waves flashed lightly around the spiles; a breeze rustled in the woods, perhaps looking for something it had lost there and never could find again. The two bridges were deserted; all was silent, dreamy. Then from the unseen bridge lower down a shrill clamor arose to break the serenity of the evening; a chorused shriek of twenty unearthly voices blended together. Unexpected and wild, loudly startling it was, so that there seemed something uncanny about it. One might have thought it the cry of monsters discovering human prey, or a mob of witches revelling in some crime that had been found out there. But as a matter of fact no one indulged in either of these impossible fancies. Everybody knew that the uproar came from the mills of Shagford, blowing the hour of release from work.

II.

FATHER, DAUGHTER, AND--WHO ELSE?

At this signal the operatives streamed forth like school-children; and from Hounshell's flannel-mill in particular came one elderly man, who threw himself with all the energy of a boy into a row-boat that lay at the waterside, and began oaring his way lustily up-stream. He had not gone far before he turned the bow into a secluded bay where water-lilies grew thickly. Here, paddling about and causing the boat to lurch violently as he stooped over the side, he pulled a few of the flowers. He looked tired and hard-worked; there was something indescribably pathetic in his making so much effort after the day's labor. But he did not seem to see this; and so, after getting a bunch of lilies, he continued up the river with a business-like stroke that implied some past familiarity with life on the water. The end of the course was soon reached; he moored the boat close to a little cottage that stood apart from the houses of the other working-people, and wore a peculiarly well-cared-for aspect.

On one side of the path was a tomato-patch; on the other a minute flower-garden; a grape-vine laid its flat leaves by one of the windows, and everything about the place was neat, cosey, sheltered. As the weaver came up toward it, however, he saw that there were two persons in the room behind the vine, instead of only one, as he had expected. He paused, looking in, and saw that it was Hounshell with his daughter. The mill-owner at that moment took her hand in a somewhat fervent way, addressing her eagerly, and led her toward the window. Instantly the girl withdrew her hand and came running out.

"Oh, father, dear, how lovely! Did you bring them for me?"

"Who else d'you s'pose, Addie? I'm not courting any one."

He looked at her quizzically as she received the lilies, his weather-worn face glowing mildly at the same time, with pride in her beauty and delight at having pleased her.

"That's mean of you, father," she said, half offended, yet smiling as she inhaled the delicate, sweet-almond scent of the blossoms.

"What? Not to be courting?" he asked, putting his arm fondly around her. "I can do better than that, lass, by coming home. Four bells have struck; time for a kiss, you know." Whereupon she put her lips to his faded, fatherly check.

Addie was certainly beautiful in her way, and Scofield thought there was no way to compare with it. She was tall, fresh, dark-eyed; her complexion was rich with the soft, clear brown which our American sun so deftly diffuses over a healthy face that ripens in its warmth; and she always looked as cool, as sparkling and lithe as if she had just stepped from a bath in the river. You felt that, were you to place your hand on her shoulder, she would resist springily, like a young bough in the woods.

"And you can do a good deal better than I can; that's certain," said Hounshell to Scofield, breaking in. He had come to the threshold and witnessed this little passage.

"You ought not to talk about it before me, anyway," declared Addie, whose code of propriety never allowed ceremony to stand in the way of truthfulness. And, having administered this rebuke, she blushed as if it were she who had offended modesty.

"Oh, well, don't take on about it!" said the mill-owner, apologetically. "I don't know how to talk when I get down here. Different up to the mill; ain't it, Scofield?" Here he winked at the father with humorous comradeship. Then, turning again to Addie: "All is, I want you to be my wife, and you know it, and so does the old man. So where's the harm, talking about? Lord! there ain't nothing high daddy about me. I worked my way up, and I like working-people; so, 'stid of going round among the high daddies, I come to you and say I want to marry you. I've seen you grow into a woman, just like"--the speaker, embarrassed, gazed helplessly round the garden for a comparison, and proceeded:--"Like one of those tomaytoes there, when it comes to fruit. And I know all about you."

"I don't believe I'm like a tomayto one bit," said Addie, with conviction. The next moment, allowing herself a saucy smile: "And I don't know all about you, you see. So there!"

Her mature admirer did not resent this, but stood really abashed and disconcerted. "What am I to do, Scofield?" he asked, stepping out on to the walk. "You see how it goes."

Addie seized the moment for escaping into the house, while her father, regarding his employer meditatively, replied: "Take soundings, and then try again. That's all I can say."

"I don't know," observed Hounshell, shaking his head. He tried to bring his regulation smile into play, but the springs would not work. He was really attached to the girl; and there was a painful longing in his mind, besides another motive, of which he could not speak. He was unnerved.

Presently they went into the house. "Won't you stay to supper?" suggested Scofield.

"No, thank'ee. I'm going. Addie!"

"Yes, sir." She looked at him from her cool, liquid eyes as steadily and with as much unconsciousness in her clear-lined face as if she had never heard him speak of marriage.

"I've a word to say, if you'll come out to the gate."

"All right." Addie put the cups on the table for her father and herself, and then followed Hounshell, who bade the weaver good-night.

"I want you to treat me differently," said the miller, when they were alone. "This is a very serious matter, and there's more in it than you think. You ought to consider your father."

The girl's eyes flashed. "You don't mean," she began, "that you--"

"No, I don't mean any harm to him, of course. Take me or leave me, he'll be all right. But if you take me, my father-in-law don't remain in the weaving-room, by a long shot. I'll make him my partner instid."

Addie appeared to weigh this.

"Well, that's right," she said. "He ought to be." Hesitatingly, she went on: "I know it's generous of you, but--but--"

"There's another reason, too," the suitor hastened to explain. "I can't tell you now, but I might afterward. It's very serious. Oh, I can't stand it, if you don't consent!" he almost groaned.

She was startled by his strenuous manner.

"What reason can it be?" she asked, quivering a little.

"It's been on my heart so long," Hounshell said, pressing both hands on his chest. "It's there now," he continued, sinking his voice. At the precise instant of speaking his fingers felt beneath the coat that fateful fold of paper which the river had brought him, and both arms fell as if he had been struck.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, staring at her.

It seemed to him that she, too, must have felt the paper and its tell-tale words.

"What have I been saying?" he asked, in a bewildered tone.

The change in him within a few moments had been extraordinary, and Addie experienced a shock. Any one who had seen the wolfish glare of his eyes on the bridge would have been surprised at the human emotion he now betrayed.

"You frighten me," said the girl, shrinking; but she was conscious of feeling more pity than fright.

"Don't be frightened," urged Hounshell, trying to speak gently; but his voice broke. It sounded abject rather than soothing. "I s'pose I'm making mistakes again. You can't understand me. Only this--think of this: I shall never get over it if you don't have me. You may do me a great wrong by turning me off. Can't you consider about this a little more?"

"I--I will try to consider, Mr. Hounshell," faltered Addie.

"Then I'll go; I'll bid you good-night," he said, regaining some of his customary stiffness.

"Good-night," she returned.

He got into the waiting buggy; there was a grinding of wheels, a puff of whitish dust from them, and then the dusk obliterated him, much to her relief. She went back into the house slightly paler than when she had left it.

"Father," she declared, "I never can marry that man."

"What! Hounshell?"

"Yes. There's something strange about him--and wrong."

"Careful! He's been our best friend, lass; there can't be anything wrong."

"All the same, I shall not marry him."

The old man was hurt.

"Have you thought over all?" he asked. "You wouldn't be the only gainer."

He glanced down at his arm, which still bore marks of sailor's tattooing, and at his hard hands all day in service at the loom; and then he sighed, as if despairing of rest.

"I know, dear father," said his daughter. "Mr. Hounshell would be very generous to you, so I wish I could do it. But oh, I can't, I can't!"

She put one hand on his arm and looked piteously into his face.

"I see how it is," said Scofield. "You have fixed your fancy on Jonah."

Addie softly moved away. All her color had returned, but she said nothing. They had barely seated themselves at the table when a knock was heard.

"Come in!" cried Addie, and on the entrance of the new-comer, "Oh--Jonah!"

"Did you think it was--well, never mind who."

Jonah, in whose spruce attire, as he now presented himself, it was not easy to recognize the brakeman of the afternoon train, made this enigmatical remark rather uneasily, and subsided into regretful silence.

"Sit down, Jonah, and have some supper," said old Scofield, with a slight lingering gruffness.

The young man, however, accepted without compunction; and in a twinkling Addie had spirited on to the table an extra cup, plate, knife and fork, which were suspiciously ready to her hand.

"We had a queer thing happen on the train this afternoon," said Jonah, as the hot tea roused him into talkativeness again. And he proceeded to relate the occurrence with which our narrative of these events began. "Man's name is Piper," he continued--"Simeon Piper. No one knows anything about him, and he can't tell why he was there or where he was going. The shock put a screw loose in his brain somewhere, the doctor says. May get over it, and may not. But they won't keep him at the hospital long, because there's nothing the matter with him much, except that."

"Poor fellow!" Addie murmured. "What will he do when they send him away, if he doesn't know where he wants to go?"

"Can't make it out," was Jonah's answer. "Some one ought to take hold and help him till he gets well."

Addie made a prompt resolution.

"We'll take hold; won't we, father? Couldn't you bring him out here, Jonah?"

The brakeman reflected a moment. Piper was not young; so there was no objection on that score.

"Yes," he said, "I'll bring him out when I get back from my run to-morrow. They say he seems pretty well-to-do, too. He'll pay board."

"Never mind if he does," said Miss Scofield, artlessly. "We can be kind to him just the same."

It was settled accordingly.

After supper the two men went out into the garden. They had a serious subject to talk over, and Jonah began it by saying:

"The men are pretty near all agreed, Mr. Scofield, and we've got to do something soon. How is it in your mill?"

"Hounshell's, you mean," corrected the ex-sailor and weaver, cutting a piece of tobacco. "Well, I suppose a good many of our hands will go with you, if it comes to a strike. But I can control a number, I guess; and I'm bound to tell you that we shall stick to work and stand out ag'in you."

"That's bad--bad," mumbled the young railroader, with a troubled air. He plucked a spear of tall grass and began biting it. "I can't see, Scofield," he burst out (dropping the "Mr." this time), "why you stick to that man against all your own interests and the interests of your fellow-workmen. What's Hounshell compared with them?"

"He's my friend and benefactor; that's all. Didn't he take care o' my poor wife the day she died? And when I come back from sea, after a long cruise and a shipwreck, and my wife was dead, didn't I find that he had taken my little girl in tow, and was eddicating her? Look here," Scofield pushed up the sleeve of his coat and shirt and displayed the dim blue anchor on his fore-arm; "as long as that stays there I'm going to be true to the man as was true to me," he said.

"I know all that," said Jonah. "He's done a lot. The others are a little jealous of you, sometimes; and that's one reason I want you to be with us. If you ain't, they'll say: 'Oh, yes, it's very fine for Scofield to stay out! The boss helped him to a nice cottage, and give his daughter a pianna. But the rest of us have got to look out for ourselves.' That's what they'll say. And as for me, I say it's barter and trade; that's what! Hounshell give Addie an education and a pianna, and now he wants her to give herself in exchange."

"That ain't the way to look at it," retorted Scofield. "It ain't fair. And if you mean to insult my daughter by your talk about barter and trade, why, you'd better--"

"You're the first to say 'insult,'" Jonah answered, in an angry, constrained tone. "I love Addie; and I don't believe she'd marry in any such way. And what's more, I--I kind of hope she'll marry me. There again, there's another reason why I wanted you to be on our side--now that we've got everything together, and the railroad hands and mill hands are ready to move at the same time. But I see it's no use; I've done my best."

"No; it's no use," assented the weaver. "I'm doing my best, too."

Thus it happened that the young man took his departure in some heat; but it was of her own accord that Addie followed this lover to the gate; and she did not let him go without a few sweet words to comfort him.

III.

LISTENING.

Martin Hounshell had three good causes for wishing to marry Addie Scofield. First, so far as in him lay, he loved her. Secondly, knowing that opposition was afoot among the men, he feared the influence that Jonah Brown might obtain over Scofield, should he succeed in his courtship of the daughter; for he relied much on the sailor-weaver's loyalty to fight off the trouble. Thirdly, he had some time since been guilty of a secret misdeed, which he hoped to repair by bestowing further benefits on the Scofields.

This evening, after going from the cottage and leaving his horse at home, he went down to the deserted mill, entered the office, locked himself in, and then spread out on his desk the discovered memorandum. The words with which it began were these: "Martin E. Hounshell. Property delivered, April 13th, 1877. Adelaide Scofield died same day. Husband returned--."

The date here was omitted. Below followed the names of certain persons in California, and two or three other brief notes.

To the mill-owner, sitting there in the dim candlelight, with a hand pressed nervously over his lips, this told the whole story. To any one it would at least suggest suspicion. Should he destroy the paper? He held it up toward the candle; then hesitated. It might be desirable first to find out who had written it, and to do this he would keep it as evidence. No place so unapproachable by others as his own pocket; so he put it away again.

The injury he had done to the unsuspecting Scofield had been crowned with success to himself, but it had tormented him, too. In spite of having given the man employment and having assisted the daughter, he could not escape his remorse. But when he should have wedded Addie, and lifted the weaver into a subordinate partnership, he felt sure that his mind would be at rest. "As it is," he muttered, "I have done more than most would have done, to make amends. I can't give up all--the whole thing. It ain't reasonable. And if I get to be his son-in-law, why, we're all together, and that squares it."

But who and where was this other man, this unknown Piper, who carried dangerous information which might at any moment, if disclosed, give a sudden check to the comforting plan thus formed? That must be learned without delay.

It was not until the next afternoon that, looking over the Shagford _Minute-Hand_ more carefully than he had had time to do in the morning, he saw an account of the accident at the railroad bridge, which accounted for the floating hat. Simeon Piper, then, was in the very town, at the hospital--perhaps at this instant telling some one the tale which had come to his knowledge! Preposterous unkindness of fate, to deal such a blow at this late day! Hounshell only half believed it could be dealt him; yet when he rose from his chair he felt very weak, and the solid walls of the mill as he passed outside seemed decidedly rickety. He very nearly expected them to fall over upon him. As directly as he could he made his way to the hospital, and by the time he reached it was aware that his interest in the stranger might appear somewhat singular. To prevent this he began carelessly, to the attendant:

"Queer sort of case, that one you had yesterday from the railroad."

"Yes, a very narrow escape."

"I read about it in the _Minute-Hand_. How's he getting along?"

"Very well indeed. He's left us."

"Left a'ready!" Hounshell wondered if his face looked as white as it felt. "There's no chance, then--"

"No chance to see him now," said the attendant, far from suspecting the anxiety under that word "chance," as used by Hounshell.

"He's lucky to get off so soon," remarked the latter, a cold perspiration on his back. "Gone from town, I s'pose."

"I believe so."

Hounshell was afraid to ask anything more. He covered his retreat by discussing his ostensible errand, which was to make arrangements for possibly sending to the hospital the invalid wife of one of his men. He had no intention of actually sending her, but he went away leaving an impression of his remarkable kindness.

How dear to him was all this false reputation, which cost so little except in secret mental twinges! He doubted whether a respectability honestly worked for would have yielded him nearly so keen an enjoyment; and he was determined to hold on to that which he had gained. Where to look for Piper, and just how to dispose of him, was the problem now before him. But he began to feel easier, and his thoughts returned to the impending labor revolt.

It was desirable to see Scofield in private, and with this end in view he drove out to the cottage again at evening.

On entering the little sitting-room he was annoyed to find a stranger there comfortably adjusted in a rocking-chair.

"I didn't know you had company here," he observed frigidly, eying Scofield.

"Oh, that won't interfere!" said Scofield. "It's only Mr. Piper; the man that--"

"Piper!" ejaculated Hounshell, in a voice harsh with horror.

The stranger looked up at him astonished.

"Yes," said the weaver. "Mr. Piper, this is our boss, Mr. Hounshell."

It was all over--so the miller thought. He stood staring, waiting for Simeon Piper to spring up with deadly denunciation on his lips. But that individual merely bowed and inspected his _vis-a-vis_ with a good-natured air. The only thing worthy of remark about him was that there was a sort of pained blankness in his face; and as he met Hounshell's fixed gaze he lifted one hand and pressed his forehead vaguely for an instant. The other man was quick to take the respite offered.

"I'm glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Piper," he said, exhibiting his smile with great success. "I've heard about your escape."

Then he looked at Scofield imperiously, and they went out together.

"What is that man there for?" he demanded, taking the weaver's arm sharply.

"Why, he's come out to board; that's all. Do you know him? You seemed a good deal shaken up."

"No; I don't know him. I s'pose this labor combination is making me nervous. I kind of suspect people."

"Pshaw! This man's an outsider; comes from California. He was a rancheero, or something, out there, I believe. I can tell you how we happen to have him here." And the explanation was given. "He's dropped the bottom out of his memory, like, and wants to wait till he can fit a new one to it."

"Oh, that's it!" exclaimed Hounshell, once more secure. He saw that his name had not been recognized by his enemy; and perhaps the memorandum in his pocket was the only connecting link that would ever lead to such a recognition. "Still," he said, "I don't like Jonah's bringing him here. It won't hurt if you let him go his way this side of next week."

They then proceeded to a discussion of the state of things in the mill; and Hounshell went home without attempting an interview with Addie. But first, after driving a little way, he stopped, went back on foot, and stealthily looked through the vine-hung window. Addie was reading something to the robust-looking invalid, who still sat in the rocking-chair, his face as blank as ever. Her father occupied himself with carving a small piece of wood, twisting his lips in sympathy with the knife. Everything was placidly reassuring.

Hounshell wondered at the thinness of the partition that stood between him and ruin; but he did not care if it was only an egg-shell, so long as it did not break.

But while he was still gazing through the pane, the sound of a distant train on the railroad came through the night. The watcher was scarcely aware of it until he saw Piper start up in his chair, listening, with a roused, intent expression. The girl ceased from her reading; Scofield stopped his work and looked at their guest. No one spoke in the little room. The noise of the train grew louder; now it became a rumbling hum or a rattle--busy, swift, determined in character. It was as if a gigantic shuttle were being driven through the woof of the darkness, to carry one more strand into that great web of civilization, woven day and night continually. But there was something mysterious and warning in the sound besides. Under the general subdued roar could be heard the sharp click of the wheels from rail to rail, in definite pulsations; the sound thus grew so precise one might have suspected that it would break into speech. Had it not some message to deliver of which this was the vague prelude?

That at least was what Piper seemed to hope as he rose excited, finally gaining his feet, with a quicker intelligence in his face than had been there before. As if it would be possible to catch the message more distinctly should he look out, he turned his eyes toward the window. Hounshell barely missed betraying himself there, but slid away into the dark swiftly.

"Was that a face?" Simeon Piper demanded. "No; I see it must have been an illusion," he added, despondently, once more putting his hand to his head.

The father and daughter exchanged looks of pity.

By this time the cars had got farther off and were less audible. Piper's agitation died away proportionately, and he sank back into his seat.

But the same sort of thing happened on the following day when he heard the distant movement of a train.

"Listen!" he cried to Addie, who was with him. "Don't you hear? It's going to say something. I shall get hold of the idea and find out what is the matter. Listen! listen!"

Then, as before, the hollow rumble diminished, gradually softened to a stir no louder than a sigh, and finally was quite lost. Only the baffled breeze continued its hopeless search among the leafy boughs by the river.

"What is it you think you might hear?" asked Addie, gently.

The strong man looked at her with tears in his eyes.

"A secret, young lady; a secret! I knew it, and now it is gone. It's strange that cars should excite me this way, but something has hurt my brain. You are very kind; and if you go on being so perhaps my mind will get right again."

A week passed. Piper listened each day to the passing trains; sometimes at night too, when he lay alone, and it seemed still more likely that through its relation with this sound the lost clew might disclose itself. But all in vain; he was unable to recover what had escaped him.

During these days Hounshell did not come out to the cottage, but the labor movement culminated, and all the railroad and mill employes demanded an advance of wages.

IV.

THE THIRD BRIDGE.

The employers met in conference, and agreed not to yield--so the strike began. Scofield, however, and a small group with him, stoutly refused to join the movement; and some work was still done at Hounshell's. This encouraged the other mill-owners and directors, and exasperated the men in revolt. At first everything was quiet and orderly; but as the success of the laborers grew more doubtful to them, anger and excitement gained sway.

"I feel almost afraid for father," said Addie to Simeon Piper, on the fourth day of the strike. For, in fact, there were now serious threats of riot.

"I don't believe they would do him any harm," said the Californian, easily. "The most they'll do will be to make him stop working, and then he'll have a holiday."

"But he won't stop," the girl affirmed, excitedly. "I know father better than you."

"Well, then," suggested Piper, still seeking an easy way out, "persuade your friend Brown--my friend, too--to come over to father's side."

Piper, with a Western taste for convenience and cordiality, had adopted this mode of referring to Scofield.

"But I--I don't want to," faltered Addie, with a soft blush.

"Hoity-toity!" cried Simeon. "What does that mean?"

"I want him--the strikers, that is--to win."

"Against father?" Piper raised his good-humored eyebrows.

"Oh dear, I wish they were on the same side! I only know I'm fearful. They'll hurt him; I know they will."

"Oh, look here," said Piper, "that's all foolishness! But I'll tell you what: we'll walk down to town and see how things are going."

"Shall we? Oh, how nice you are, Mr. Piper! Come on, then."

And they started.

A great many men were standing about the streets, looking ominous of ill; but as yet no disturbance was made. The mill stood at one end of the street-bridge; and as Piper and Addie came up to it they heard the noise of a crowd approaching around one corner of it. A moment after they had gained the entrance, this crowd, which numbered some twenty-five men, armed with thick sticks and some heavy stones, arrayed itself face to face with them.

"Where do you lot plan on going?" asked Piper, in a leisurely manner.

"In here," said some of the group, "to stop them working."

"I guess not," observed the Californian. His tone was even genial.

"We'll see," retorted a leader, moving forward.

The mill-door was fast, but at this moment the bolts were loosed, and Scofield made his appearance.

"Addie," he commanded, sternly, "come in, and out of the muss! and you, too, Piper."

"You can send daughter in," answered Piper, indicating Addie, who--far from quailing--looked as serene and fresh as ever. "But I'm going to stand in front of this door. Now," he continued, with determination, fronting the rioters, "you leave the old man and his girl alone. If you don't you've got to fight me. One of your locomotives run me off the bridge t'other day and didn't kill me; and I guess you can't, either. I promise to corral the whole herd, if you try to come in here."

Some of the men showed defiance, but those nearest were in no hurry to attack. It had suddenly become apparent to them that their antagonist's shoulders were particularly square and rugged. Scofield wondered whether his champion knew what he was about; the Piper certainly seemed to be in possession of all his faculties.

The leaders began to confer.

As luck would have it, the owner of the mill, who had been absent, and was not aware of the immediate danger, just then came up. He had not seen the crowd until within a few yards. At once a threatening cry arose:

"Hounshell!"

A strange sensation came over Piper; a loud, tumultuous noise following the word, filled his ears. Was it the rush of the river, or the thunder of a railroad train? He could not tell; but he shouted suddenly with fierce exultation:

"Hounshell--that's the name! Hounshell's the man!"

His memory had come back to him.

The strikers, diverted by this new object, turned as if to assault the "boss;" but Piper was before them. He had darted forward and toward Hounshell, who, blanched with fear, and thinking Piper in league with the men, took flight, making for the bridge; the Californian after him. The little mob, itself bewildered, followed; but Piper had already clutched the fugitive when it caught up with them.

"I've got him," he cried. "This man's a fraud. Do you want to know why? He took the money left to the other man--Scofield--hurrah! that's the other name. He stole the money, I tell you, and bought that mill, and it don't belong to him. The mill is Scofield's; d'you hear?"

"Let go," gurgled Hounshell, trying to wrench himself free. But his captor shook him once, and he was quiet.

The workmen crowded up to get a clearer understanding of this extraordinary statement; and as it broke fully upon them, "Throw him over the bridge," became their watchword. But by this time several other persons had advanced over the street bridge, among whom were Jonah and Scofield.

"No violence, boys," said Jonah, lifting his voice, which had authority. "You're disgracing the cause."

The men became silent, but Scofield was indignant with his ally of a moment before.

"What are you doing to the boss?" he demanded, hotly. "You must be crazy."

"Yes; he's crazy," said Hounshell, trying to assume the air of a composed and meritorious person placed at a disadvantage.

"You must have been yourself," the Californian vehemently declared, "when you took that legacy to pay to Mrs. Scofield, and then stole it because she died and no one knew about it. The mill belongs to Scofield, I say, and I can prove it in a little time."

"You've got no evidence," asserted Hounshell, very pale and a trifle wolfish.

"Evidence! I've got you, and you're chock full of it. I believe I could shake it right out of you if I tried."

Piper glared at him, and then, without releasing his hold, made a dive with one hand at his captive's breast.

"It's gone," said Hounshell, huskily. "I've burned it."

"Burned what?"

"The paper," Hounshell muttered; "your memo--"

"Oh, you had it, then! You've convicted yourself by that, my fine scamp."

"I give up," said the wretched criminal. "Let's go. Take me away--the mill! Bring Scofield. I give up."

Seeing that this was best, Simeon acceded.

"Come along, Scofield," he said.

Jonah pressed up to Scofield and congratulated him as they went, but the older man scarcely responded. When they were again at the mill one striker renewed the idea of coercing the workers. But Jonah imposed his veto.

"Not now," he said.

And Scofield added:

"Boys, if the mill belongs to me it's settled beforehand. You get your advance."

This sent them off with a cheer and the prophecy that the rest of the bosses would have to follow suit.

The four men, left alone, entered the office.

"Is it true?" asked Scofield.

Hounshell winced, but replied steadily:

"It's all true."

The weaver went to the window and put his head on his arm. It was he, the innocent man, who was overwhelmed by the disgrace of the one who had wronged him.

"But how did you find it out?" Jonah asked of Piper.

"Roundabout," was the answer. "First off, from a man I was hiring on my ranche. He came from here and spoke about Scofield; said he was a weaver. I'd heard something about that rich brother in 'Frisco that hadn't seen the rest of the Scofields for years, and left 'em his money; so I saw there might be something wrong. I looked it up, and came on here."

Jonah took his hand.

"But you must have known the Scofields, or had some interest in them," he said, after a moment.

Simeon Piper looked down; then he looked away; finally he twirled his thumbs.

"I could afford the time," he said. "Got money enough. Well, yes, I suppose you might call it interest. Fact is, I knew Scofield's wife's sister when she was young. I--didn't marry her. But, then, I never married any one, you see."

And with this he faced his questioner, turning upon him a pair of eyes that beamed as if he had just set forth a remarkably cheerful circumstance.

On further inquiry it was understood how Piper had taken the wrong train for Shagford, and, finding that it branched off, had started foolishly to walk along the track when overtaken on the bridge. He was now convinced that a hat was not a good place in which to deposit important documents.

Finding that evidence for his conviction could soon be obtained, in addition to his confession, Hounshell executed a deed of the mill to Scofield.

"And what do you propose to do with me?" he asked. "Are you going to get me locked up?"

The others held a conference, before answering. Scofield was in favor of letting the malefactor go, but the decision was at last given to Piper, who said:

"I'm sorry for you, Hounshell. It would have been better for you if you had emigrated some time ago. But as it is, I guess the law'll have to decide where you're to locate."

And, subsequently, it did so.

"Well," said the deposed malefactor, when sentence had been passed, "I'm almost glad of it."

A soft summer rain was falling as they led him out of court to go to prison; and, strangely enough, he had not felt so happy for years. Once more he was open to the charm of the pattering drops, the sweetness of refreshed flowers, the cool air, as he had been in boyhood.

"It's only fair to you," Scofield remarked, forgivingly, "to say that you showed conscience."

"Yes--if I'd only followed it," Hounshell answered. "A man ought to trust his conscience instead of letting it trust him. I tell 'ee it's an awful sharp creditor when the time does come to pay up."

IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES.

I.

John Crombie had taken a room at the new apartment building, The Lorne; having advanced so far in his experience of New York as to be aware that if he could once establish himself in a house associated by name with foreign places and titles his chance of securing "position" would be greatly increased. He did not, however, take his meals in the expensive cafe of that establishment, finding it more economical to go to an outlandish little French restaurant, some distance away, which had been nicknamed among those of his acquaintance who resorted to it, "The Fried Cat." This designation, based on a supposed resemblance to the name of the proprietor, Fricat, was also believed to have value as a sarcasm.

It was with no pleasant sensations, therefore, that Crombie, waking on a gray and drizzling morning of November, remembered that he must hie him to the "Fried Cat" for an early breakfast. He was in a hurry that day; he had a great deal to do. His room was very small and dark; he bounced up and dressed himself, in an obscure sort of way, surreptitiously opening the door and reaching vaguely for his shoes, which stood just outside, ready blacked. Nor did it add to his comfort to know that the shoes were very defective as to their soles, and would admit the water freely from the accumulated puddles of the sidewalks. In fact, he had been ashamed to expose their bad condition to the porter when he put them out every night, as he was forced to do, since they were his only pair. Drawing them on hastily, in order to conceal his mortification from even his own mind, he sallied forth; and though at the moment of putting them on a dim sense of something unfamiliar crossed his mind, it was not until he reached "The Fried Cat" that he became fully aware that he had carried off some one else's shoes. He turned up the soles, privately, underneath the low-hanging table-cloth, and by a brief examination convinced himself that the gaiters did not belong to him. The test was simple: his feet were unaccountably dry, and there were none of those breaks in the lower surface of their leather covering which he had so often been obliged to contemplate.

He saw at once that the porter of The Lorne had made a mistake, and must have deposited at another apartment his own very insufficient foot-gear; but there was no chance now to remedy the confusion. Crombie had barely time to reach the office where he was employed.

On an ordinary occasion he would perhaps have gone back to The Lorne and effected an honorable exchange. This particular day, however, was by no means an ordinary occasion. Crombie had made up his mind to take a momentous step; and it was therefore essential that he should appear at his desk exactly on time.

He was a clerk in an important engraving company. For several years he had occupied that post, without any opportunity having presented itself for a promotion. At the best, even should he rise, what could he expect? To be cashier, perhaps, or possibly, under exceptional circumstances, a confidential private secretary. This prospect did not satisfy him; he was determined to strike for something higher.

It will naturally be inferred that he was ambitious. I am not in a position to deny this; but all I can be certain of is, that he was in love--which is often about the same thing.

Several times at The Lorne he had met in the hallways or in the elevator a young lady, who was in no small degree beautiful, and charmed him still more by her general presence, which conveyed the idea of a harmonious and lovely character. She had light hair and blue eyes, but these outward attributes were joined with a serenity and poise of manner that indicated greater stability than is attributed, as a rule, to individuals of her type.

Once he happened to arrive at the main entrance just as this vision of beauty emerged to take her place in a coupe which was waiting by the curbstone. She dropped her card-case upon the sidewalk, and Crombie's heart throbbed with delight as he picked it up, gave it to her, and received her smiling thanks for his little service. Another time, as he was descending in the elevator, a door opposite the shaft, on the second floor, stood open, and he caught a glimpse of the apartment to which it gave access. The room was finished in soft tints, and was full of upholstery and hangings that lent it a dim golden atmosphere. In the middle of it stood the young girl, clad in the palest blue, above which her hair shone like a golden cloud on some dim evening sky.

Slight occurrences of this sort had affected him. He learned that she was the daughter of Littimer, the rich, widowed banker: her name was Blanche.

II.

In these new, stout shoes that did not belong to him Crombie trod with a buoyancy and assurance strongly in contrast with the limp and half-hearted pace to which his old, shabby gaiters had formerly inclined him. He rattled down the stairs of the elevated station with an alacrity almost bumptious; and the sharp, confident step that announced his entrance into the company's office made the other clerks quite ashamed of their own want of spirit.

He worked at his desk until noon; but when the bells of Trinity rang twelve in solemn music over the busy streets, he dropped his pen, walked with a decisive air the length of the room, and, opening a door at the other end, presented himself before Mr. Blatchford, the treasurer, who was also an influential director.

"Crombie, eh? Well, what is it?"

"I want to speak with you a moment, sir."

"Anything important? I'm busy."

"Yes, sir; quite important--to me. Possibly it may be to you."

"Fire away, then; but cut it short." Mr. Blatchford's dense, well-combed gray side-whiskers were directed toward the young man in an aggressive way, as if they had been some sort of weapon.

Crombie nonchalantly settled himself in a chair, at ease.

"I am tired of being a clerk," he said. "I'm going to be a director in this company."

"I guess you're going to be an inmate of a lunatic asylum," Mr. Blatchford remarked, with astonished cheerfulness.

"That seems as unlikely to me as the other thing does to you," said Crombie.

Hereupon Mr. Blatchford became sarcastically deferential. "And just about when do you propose to become a director?" he asked.

"In the course of a month. The election, I believe, takes place in December."

"Quite right," said his senior, whose urbanity was meant to be crushing. "Meanwhile, you will need leisure to attend to this little matter. Suppose I oblige you by saying that the company has no further need of your services?"

"Suppose you do. What then?"

Mr. Blatchford gave way to his anger. "What then? Why, then you would have to go; that's all. You would be thrown out of employment. You would have to live on your principal, as long as there was any; and afterward you would be obliged to find some other work, or beg, or borrow, or--"

"That's enough," said Crombie, rising with dignity.

"No, it isn't," the treasurer declared, "for you don't seem to understand even now. I discharge you, Mr. Crombie, on the company's behalf, and you may leave this office at once."

Crombie bowed and went out. "I'm going to be a director, all the same," he told Mr. Blatchford before he closed the door. Then he collected the few articles that belonged to him from his desk, and departed, a free man. He had his future to himself; or else he had no future worth speaking of; he wasn't sure which. Nevertheless, he felt quite happy. Such a result as this had seemed to him, in the prospect, hardly possible; but now that it had arrived he was not discomfited. Unbounded courage seemed to rise from the stout soles of the alien boots, percolating through his whole system. He was surprised at himself. He had intended to use more diplomacy with Mr. Blatchford, and it was no joke to him to lose his place. But instead of feeling despondent, or going at once in search of new employment, he cheerfully went about making calls on several gentlemen who, he thought, might be induced to aid in his ambitious project. His manner was that of a person sure of his powers and enjoying a well-earned leisure. It had its effect. Two or three stockholders of the company joined in agreeing with him that improved methods could be introduced into its management, and that it would be a good thing to have in the board, say, two young, fresh, active men--of whom Crombie, by reason of his experience and training, should be one.

"I own a little stock," said the deposed clerk, who had taken the precaution to obtain a couple of shares by great effort in saving. "Besides, not having any other engrossing interests at present, I could give my whole attention to the company's affairs."

"Quite so," said the merchant whom he was addressing, comfortably. "We must see if we can get together a majority; no time to be lost, you know."

"No, sir. I shall go right to work; and perhaps you will speak to some of your friends, and give me some names."

"Certainly. Come in again pretty soon; will you?"

Crombie saw that he had a good foundation to build upon already. Blatchford was not popular, even among the other directors; and sundry stockholders, as well as people having business with the company, had conceived a strong dislike of him on account of his overbearing manners. Therefore it would not be hard to enlist sympathy for a movement obnoxious to him. But it was imperative that the self-nominated candidate should acquire more of the stock; and to do this capital must be had. Crombie did not see quite how it was to be got; he had no sufficient influence with the bankers.

The afternoon was nearly spent, and he trudged up-town, thinking of the ways and means. But though the problem was far from solved, he still continued in a state of extraordinary buoyancy. Those shoes, those shoes! He was so much impressed by their comfort and the service they had done him in making a good appearance that he resolved to get a new pair of his own. He stopped and bought them; then kept on toward The Lorne, carrying his purchase under his arm without embarrassment. The cold drizzle had ceased, and the sunset came out clear and golden, dipping its bright darts into the shallow pools of wet on the pavement, and somehow mingling with his financial dreams a dream of that fair hair that gave a glory to Miss Blanche's face.

On regaining his modest apartment he sent for the boot-boy, and inquired the whereabouts of his missing shoes.

"Couldn't tell you, sir," said the servant. "Pretty near all the men's boots in the house has gone out, you see, and they'll only be coming back just about now. I'll look out for 'em, sir, and nab 'em as soon as they show up."

"All right. Whose are these that I've been wearing?"

The boy took them, turned them over, and examined them with the eye of a connoisseur in every part.

"'Them?' I should say, sir, them was Mr. Littimer's."

Crombie blushed with mortification. Of all the dwellers in The Lorne, this was the very one with whom it was the most embarrassing to have such a complication occur; and yet, strange inconsistency! he had been longing for any accident, no matter how absurd or fantastic, that could bring him some chance of an acquaintance with Blanche.

"Take these boots, dry them right away, and give 'em a shine. Then carry them up to Mr. Littimer's rooms." He gave the boy a quarter: he was becoming reckless.

Now that he had embarked upon a new career, he perceived the impropriety of a future director in the Engraving Company going to dine at the "Fried Cat," and so resolved to take his dinner in the gorgeous cafe of The Lorne. While he was waiting for the proper moment to descend thither, he could not get the shoe question out of his mind. Surely, the boot-boy could not have been so idiotic as to have left that ancient, broken-down pair at Littimer's threshold! And yet it was possible. Crombie felt another flush of humility upon his cheeks. Then he wandered off into revery upon the multifarious errands of all the pairs of boots and shoes that had gone forth from the great apartment-house that day. Patter, patter, patter! tramp, tramp!--he imagined he heard them all walking, stamping, shuffling along toward different parts of the city, with many different objects, and sending back significant echoes. Whither had his own ruinous Congress gaiters gone?--to what destination which they would never have reached had he been in them? Had they carried their temporary possessor into any such worriment and trouble as he himself had often travelled through on their worn but faithful soles?

Breaking off from these idle fancies at length, he went down to the cafe; and there he had the pleasure of dining at a table not far from Blanche Littimer. But, to his surprise, she was alone. Her father did not appear during the meal.

III.

The fact was that the awful possibility, mere conjecture of which had frightened Crombie, had occurred. Littimer had received the young man's shoes in place of his own.

They happened to fit him moderately well; so that he, likewise, did not notice the exchange until he had started for his office. He believed in walking the entire distance, no matter what the weather; and to this practice he made rare exceptions. But he had not progressed very far before he became annoyed by an unaccustomed intrusion of dampness that threatened him with a cold. He looked down, carefully surveyed the artificial casing of his extremities, and decided to hail the first unoccupied coupe he should meet. It was some time before he found one; and when finally he took his seat in the luxurious little bank parlor at Broad Street, his feet were quite wet.

His surprise at this occurrence was doubled when, on taking off the shoes and scrutinizing them more closely, he ascertained that they were the work of his usual maker. What had happened to him? Was he dreaming? It seemed to him that he had gone back many years; that he was a poor young man again, entering upon his first struggle for a foothold in the crowded, selfish, unhomelike metropolis. He remembered the day when _he_ had worn shoes like these.

He sent out for an assortment of new ones, from which, with unnecessary lavishness, he chose and kept three or four pairs. All the rest of the day, nevertheless, those sorry Congress boots of Crombie's, which he had directed his office-boy to place beside the soft-coal fire, for drying, faced him with a sort of haunting look. However much he might be occupied with weightier matters, he could not keep his eyes from straying in that direction; and whenever they rested on that battered "right" and that way-worn "left," turned up in that mute, appealing repose and uselessness at the fender, his thoughts recurred to his early years of trial and poverty. Ah! how greatly he had changed since then! On some accounts he could almost wish that he were poor again. But when he remembered Blanche, he was glad, for her sake, that he was rich.

But if for her sake, why not for others? Perhaps he had been rather selfish, not only about Blanche, but toward her. His conscience began to reproach him. Had he made for her a large life? Since her mother's premature death, had he instilled into her sympathies, tastes, companionships that would make her existence the richer? Had he not kept her too much to himself? On the other hand, he had gratified all her material wants; she could wear what she pleased, she could go where she chose, she had acquaintances of a sort becoming to the daughter of a wealthy man. Yet there was something lacking. What did she know about old, used-up boots and all that pertains to them? What did she know about indigence, real privation, and brave endurance, such as a hundred thousand fellow-creatures all around her were undergoing?

Somehow it dawned upon the old banker that if she knew about all these things and had some share in them, albeit only through sympathy and helping, she might be happier, more truly a woman, than she was now.

As he sat alone, in revery, he actually heaved a deep sigh. A sigh is often as happy a deliverance as a laugh, in this world of sorrows. It was the first that had escaped Littimer in years. Let us say that it was a breathing space, which gave him time for reflection; it marked the turning of a leaf; it was the beginning of a new chapter in his life.

Before he left the bank he locked the door of the private parlor, and was alone for two or three minutes. The office boy was greatly puzzled the next morning, when he found all the new pairs of shoes ranged intact in the adjoining cupboard. The old ones were missing.

Littimer had gone away in them, furtively. He was ashamed of his own impulse.

This time be resolutely remained afoot instead of hiring a carriage. He despatched a messenger to Blanche, saying that sudden business would prevent his returning to dinner, and continued indefinitely on his way--whither? As to that he was by no means certain; he knew only that he must get out of the beaten track, out of the ruts. For an hour or two he must cease to be Littimer, the prosperous moneyed man, and must tread once more the obscure paths through which he had made his way to fortune. He could hardly have explained the prompting which he obeyed. Could it have had anything to do with the treacherous holes in the bottoms of those old shoes?

As it chanced, he passed by the "Fried Cat;" and, dingy though the place was, he felt an irresistible desire to enter it. Seating himself, he ordered the regular dinner of the day. The light was dim; the table-cloth was dirty; the attendance was irregular and distracted. Littimer took one sip of the sour wine--which had a flavor resembling vinegar and carmine ink in equal parts--and left the further contents of his bottle untasted. The soup, the stew, and the faded roast that were set before him, he could scarcely swallow; but a small cup of coffee at the end of the well-nigh Barmecide repast came in very palatably.

In default of prandial attractions, Littimer tried to occupy himself by looking at the people around him. The omnifarious assembly included pale, prim-whiskered young clerks; shabby, lonely, sallow young women, whose sallowness and shabbiness stamped them with the mark of integrity; other females whose specious splendor was not nearly so reassuring; old men, broken-down men, middle-aged men of every description, except the well-to-do.

"Some of them," Littimer reflected, "are no worse than I am. But are any of them really any better?"

He could not convince himself that they were; yet his sympathies, somehow, went out toward this motley crowd. It appeared to him very foolish that he should sympathize, but he could not help it. "And, after all," was the next thought that came to him, "are we to give pity to people, or withhold it, simply because they are better or worse than ourselves? No; there is something more in it than that."

Leaving the "Fried Cat" abruptly, he betook himself to an acquaintance who, he knew, was very active in charities--a man who worked practically, and gave time to the work.

"Do you visit any of your distress cases to-night?" he asked.

"Yes, I shall make a few calls," answered the man of charity. "Would you like to go along?"

"Very much."

So the two started out together. The places they went to were of various kinds, and revealed a considerable diversity of misfortune. Sometimes they entered tenement-houses of the most wretched character; but in other instances they went to small and cheap but decent lodgings over the shops on West Side avenues, or even penetrated into boarding-houses of such good appearance that the banker was surprised to find his friend's mission carrying him thither. All the cases, however, had been studied, and were vouched for; and several were those of young men and women having employment, but temporarily disabled, and without friends who could help them.

"You do well to help these beginners, at critical times," said the banker, with satisfaction, "I take a special interest in them."

It was almost the same as if he were receiving relief himself. Who knows? Perhaps he was; but to the outward eye it appeared merely that, with his friend's sanction, he was dispensing money and offers of good will to the needy. What a strange freak it was, though, in Littimer! He kept on with the work until quite late in the evening, regardless of the risk he ran by continuing out-of-doors when so ill shod.

I think he had some idea in his mind that he was performing an act of penance.

IV.

Having waited a reasonable length of time after dinner, Crombie again left his room, resolved to make a call upon Mr. Littimer, on the plea of apologizing for having marched away with his shoes.

He would not run the risk, by sending his card, of being denied as a stranger; so, notwithstanding much hesitation and tremor, he approached the door which he had once seen standing open, and knocked. A voice which he now heard for the second time in his life, but which was so sweet and crept so naturally into the centre of his heart that the thought of it seemed always to have been there, answered: "Come in." And he did come in.

"Is Mr. Lit--is your father at home?" It seemed to bring him a little nearer to her to say "your father."

Blanche had risen from the chair where she was reading, and looked very much surprised. "Oh," she exclaimed, with girlish simplicity, "I thought it was the waiter! N-no; he hasn't come home yet."

"I beg pardon. Then perhaps I'd better call later." Crombie made a feeble movement toward withdrawal.

"Did you want to see him on business? Who shall I tell him?"

"Mr. Crombie, please. It's nothing very important."

"Oh," said Blanche, with a little blush at her own deception, "haven't I seen you in the house before? Are you staying here?"

She remembered distinctly the incident of the card-case, and how very nice she had thought him, both on that occasion and every time she had seen him. But as for him, his heart sank at the vague impersonality with which she seemed to regard him.

"Yes, I'm here, and can easily come in again."

"I expect my father almost any moment," she said. "Would you like to wait?"

What an absurd question, to one in his frame of mind! "Well, really, it is such a very small matter," he began, examining his hat attentively. Then he glanced up at her again, and smiled: "I only wanted to--to make an apology."

"An apology!" echoed Blanche, becoming rather more distant. "Oh, dear! I'm very sorry, I'm sure. I didn't know there'd been any trouble." She began to look anxious, and turned her eyes upon the smouldering fire in the grate. So this was to be the end of her pleasant, cheerful reveries about this nice young man. And the reveries had been more frequent than she had been aware of until now.

"There has been no trouble," he assured her, eagerly. "Just a little mistake that occurred; and, in fact, I was hardly responsible for it."

Blanche's eyes began to twinkle with a new and amusing interpretation. "Ah!" she cried, "are you the gentleman who--" Then she stopped short.

Crombie was placed in an unexpected embarrassment. How could he possibly drag into his conversation with this lovely young creature so commonplace and vulgar a subject as shoe-leather! Ignoring her unfinished question, he asked: "Do you know, Miss Littimer, whether the--a--one of the servants here has brought up anything for your father--that is, a parcel, a--"

"A pair of shoes?" Blanche broke in, her eyes dancing, while her lips parted in a smile.

"Yes, yes; that's what I meant."

"They came up just after dinner," Blanche returned. "Then you _are_ the gentleman."

"I'm afraid I am," Crombie owned, and they both laughed.

Blanche quietly, and with no apparent intention, resumed her chair; and this time Crombie took a seat without waiting to be invited again. Thus they fell to talking in the friendliest way.

"I can't imagine what has become of papa," said Blanche. "He sent word, in the most mysterious manner, that he had an engagement; and it is so unusual! Perhaps it's something about the new house he's building--up-town, you know. Dear me! it does make so much trouble, and I don't believe I shall like it half as well as these little, cosey rooms."

The little, cosey rooms were as the abode of giants compared with Crombie's contracted quarters; but he drew comfort from what she said, thinking how such sentiments might make it possible to win even so unattainable an heiress into some modest home of his own.

"You don't know till you try it," he replied. "Just think of having a place all to yourself, belonging to you."

Blanche lifted her eyebrows, and a little sigh escaped her. She was reflecting, perhaps, that a place all to herself would be rather lonely.

"You have never met my father?" she asked.

"No. I have seen him."

"Well, I think you will like him when you know him."

"I don't doubt it!" Crombie exclaimed with fervor, worshipping the very furniture that surrounded Blanche. "I hope we may become better acquainted."

"Only I think, Mr. Crombie, he will owe _you_ an apology now."

"Why?"

"For keeping your shoes out so late."

"_My_ shoes!" said the young man, in vehement surprise.

"Why, yes. Didn't you know they came to him? The porter said so."

Crombie grew red with the sense of his disgrace in having his poverty-stricken boots come to the knowledge of the banker. Really, his mortification was so great that the accident seemed to him to put an end to all his hopes of further relations with Blanche and her father.

"Oh, I assure you," he said, rising, "that makes no difference at all! I'm sorry I mentioned the matter. Pray tell Mr. Littimer not to think of it. I--I believe I'd better go now, Miss Littimer."

Blanche rose too, and Crombie was on the point of bowing a good-night, when the door opened, and a weary figure presented itself on the threshold; the figure of a short man with a spare face, and whiskers in which gray mingled with the sandy tint. He had a pinched, half-growling expression, was draped in a light, draggled overcoat, and carried an umbrella, the ribs of which hung loose around the stick.

"There's papa this moment!" cried Blanche.

Crombie perceived that escape was impossible, and, in a few words, the reason of his presence there was made known to the old gentleman.

Littimer examined the visitor swiftly, from head to foot--especially the foot. He advanced to the fire, toasted first one and then the other of the damp gaiters he had on, and at length broke out, in a tone bordering on reproach: "So you are the owner, are you? Then my sympathy has all been wasted! Why, I supposed, from the condition of these machines that I've been lugging around with me half the day, that you must be in the greatest distress. And, lo and behold! I find you a young fellow in prime health, spruce and trim, doing well, I should say, and perfectly happy."

"I can't help that, sir," retorted Crombie, nettled, but speaking with respect. "I confess I was very happy until a moment or two ago."

"What do you mean by that?" the other demanded, with half-yielding pugnacity. "Till I came in--is that the idea?"

"Oh, papa!" said Blanche, softly.

"Well, honey-bee, what's the matter?" her father asked, trying to be gruff. "Can't I say what I like, here?" But he surrendered at once by adding: "You may be sure I don't want to offend any one. Sit down, Mr. Crombie, and wait just a few moments while I go into the other room and rejuvenate my hoofs, so to speak--for I fear I've made a donkey of myself."

He disappeared into an adjoining room with Blanche, who there informed him artlessly of Crombie's consideration and attentiveness in restoring the errant shoes. When they came back Littimer insisted upon having the young man remain a little longer and drink a glass of port with him. Before taking his departure, however, Crombie, who felt free to speak since Blanche had retired, made a brief statement in satisfaction of conscience.

"You hinted," he said, "that you judged me to be doing well. I don't want to leave you with a false impression. The truth is, I am not doing well. I have no money to speak of, and to-day I lost the position on which I depended."

"You don't tell me!" Littimer's newly roused charitable impulses came to the fore. "Why, now you begin to be really interesting, Mr. Crombie."

"Thanks," said Crombie; "I'm not ambitious to interest people in that way. I told you only because I thought it fair."

"Don't be touchy, my dear sir," answered the banker. "I meant what I said. Come, let's see what can be done. Have you any scheme in view?"

"Yes, I have," said Crombie, with decision.

Littimer gave a grunt. He was afraid of people with schemes, and was disappointed with the young man's want of helplessness. Dependence would have been an easier thing to deal with.

"Well," said he, "we must talk it over. Come and see me at the bank to-morrow. You know the address?"

V.

The next day Crombie called at the bank; but Littimer was not there. He was not very well, it was said; had not come down-town. Crombie did what he could toward organizing his fight for a directorship, and then returned to The Lorne, where he punctually inquired after Mr. Littimer's health, and learned that the banker's ardor in making the rounds among distressed people the night before had been followed by reaction into a bad cold, with some threat of pneumonia. Blanche was plainly anxious. The attack lasted three or four days, and Crombie, though the affair of the directorship was pressing for attention, could not forbear to remain as near as possible to Blanche, offering every aid within his power, so far as he might without overstepping the lines of his very recent acquaintance. But the Littimers did not, according to his observation, number any very intimate companions in their circle, or at least had not many friends who would be assiduous in such an emergency. Perhaps their friends were too busy with social engagements. Consequently, he saw a good deal of Blanche, and became to her an object of reliance.

Well, it was simply one of those things that happen only in fairy-tales or in romances--or in real life. Littimer recovered without any serious illness, and, after a brief conference with Crombie, entered heartily into the young man's campaign. Crombie showed him just what combinations could be formed, how success could be achieved, and what lucrative results might be made to ensue. He conquered by figures and by lucid common-sense. Littimer agreed to buy a number of shares in the Engraving Company, which he happened to know could be purchased, and to advance Crombie a good sum with which to procure a portion of the same lot. But before this agreement could be consummated, Crombie, with his usual frankness, said to the banker:

"I will conceal nothing from you, Mr. Littimer. I fell in love with Blanche before I knew her, and if this venture of mine succeeds, I shall ask her to become my wife."

"Let us attend to business," said Littimer, severely. "Sentiment can take care of itself."

Their manoeuvre went on so vigorously that Blatchford became alarmed, and sent an ambassador to arrange a compromise; but by this time Crombie had determined to oust Blatchford himself and elect an entirely new set of men, to compose more than half the Board, and so control everything.

He succeeded.

But Littimer did not forget the charitable enthusiasm which had been awakened by a circumstance on the surface so trivial as the mistake of a boot-boy. He did not desist from his interest in aiding disabled or unfortunate people who could really be aided. Some time after Crombie had achieved his triumph in the Engraving Company, and had repaid Littimer's loan, he was admitted to a share in the banking business; and eventually the head of the house was able to give a great deal of attention to perfecting his benevolent plans.

When the details of their wedding were under discussion, Crombie said to Blanche: "Oughtn't we to have an old shoe thrown after the carriage as we drive away?"

She smiled; looked him full in the eyes with a peculiar tenderness in which there was a bright, delicious sparkle of humor. "No; old shoes are much too useful to be wasted that way."

Somehow she had possessed herself of that particular, providential pair; and, though I don't want anybody to laugh at my two friends, I must risk saying that I suspect Mrs. Crombie of preserving it somewhere, to this day, in the big new house up-town.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's True and Other Stories, by George Parsons Lathrop