← catalogue

A Thoughtless Yes

by Helen H. Gardener · English · Gutenberg #18892 · 312,176 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Thoughtless Yes
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Thoughtless Yes

Author: Helen H. Gardener


        
Release date: March 13, 2013 [eBook #18892]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18892

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A THOUGHTLESS YES ***




Produced by David Widger






A THOUGHTLESS YES

By Helen H. Gardener

Author Of

"Men, Women, and Gods;" "Sex in Brain;" "Pulpit, Pew, and Cradle;" "Is
this Your Son, my Lord?" "Pushed by Unseen Hands," "Pray you, Sir, whose
Daughter?" "An Unofficial Patriot," and "Facts and Fictions of Life."

Tenth Edition.

Copyright, 1890,




Dedication.

To the many strangers who, after reading such of these stories as have
before been printed, have written me letters that were thoughtful or gay
or sad, I dedicate this volume.

These letters have come from far and near; from rich and from poor; from
Christian and from unbeliever; from a bishop's palace and from behind
prison walls.

If this collection of stories shall give to my friends, known and
unknown, as much pleasure and mental stimulus as their letters gave to
me, I shall be content.

HELEN H. GARDENER.


CONTENTS

A Splendid Judge of a Woman

The Lady of the Club

Under Protest

For the Prosecution

A Rusty Link in the Chain

The Boler House Mystery

The Time-lock of Our Ancestors

Florence Campbell's Fate

My Patient's Story




PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.

In issuing a new edition of this book, it has been thought wise to state
that an unauthorized edition is now on the market, and it is desirable
that the public shall know that all copies of this book not bearing the
imprint of the Commonwealth Company are sold against the will and in
violation of the rights of the author.

Since some persons have been puzzled to make the connection between
the title of the book and the stories themselves, and to apply Colonel
Ingersoll's exquisite autograph sentiment more clearly, a part of "An
Open Letter," which was written in reply to an editorial review of the
book when it first appeared, is here reprinted, in the hope that it may
remove the difficulty for all.




AN OPEN LETTER.

I have, this morning, read your review of "A Thoughtless Yes." I wish
to thank you for the pleasant things said and also to make the
connection--which I am surprised to see did not present itself to your
mind--between the title and the burden of the stories or sketches.

It is not so easy as you may suppose to get a title which shall be
exactly and fully descriptive of a collection of tales or sketches,
each one of which was written to suggest thoughts and questions on some
particular topic or topics to which people usually pay the tribute of a
thoughtless yes. With one--possibly two--exceptions each sketch means to
suggest to the reader that there may be a very large question mark put
after many of the social, religious, economic, medical, journalistic, or
legal fiats of the present civilization.

You say that "in 'The Lady of the Club' she [meaning me] does not show
how poverty results from a thoughtless yes. Perhaps she does not see
that it does." I had in my mind exactly that point when I wrote the
story and when I decided upon the title for the book. No, I do not
attempt in such sketches to show _how_, but to show _that_, such and
such conditions exist and that it is wrong. I want to suggest a question
of the justice and the right of several things; but I want to leave each
person free to think out, not my conclusion or remedy, but a conclusion
and a remedy, and at all events to make him refuse, henceforth, the
thoughtless yes of timid acquiescence to things as they are simply
because they are. In the "Lady of the Club" I meant to attack the
impudent authority that makes such a condition of poverty possible,
by calling sympathetic attention to its workings. There are one or two
other ideas sustained by authority, to which, to the readers of that
tale, I wished to make a thoughtless yes henceforth impossible. At least
I hoped to arouse a question. One is taxation of church property. I
wished to point out that by shirking their honest debts churches heap
still farther poverty and burden upon the poor. I hoped, too, to
suggest that the idea of "charity," to which most people give a warmly
thoughtless yes, must be an indignity or impossibility where, even they
would say, it was most needed. I wanted to call attention to the fact
that a physician and a man of tender heart and lofty soul were compelled
to make themselves criminals, before the law, to even be kind to the
dead. That conditions are so savage under the present system that such a
case is absolutely hopeless while the victims live and outrageous after
they are dead. To all of these dictates of impudent authority, to which
most story readers pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes, I wanted to
call attention in such a way that henceforth a question must arise in
their minds. I hoped to show, too, that even so lofty a character
as Roland Barker was tied hand and foot--until it made him almost a
madman--by a system of economics and religion and law which so interlace
as to sustain each other and combine to not only crush the poor but to
prevent the rich from helping along even where they desire to do so.

These were the main points upon which that particular tale was intended
to arouse a mental attitude of thoughtful protest There are other, minor
ones, which I need not trouble you to recall. If you will notice, nearly
all of the tales end (or stop without an end) with an open question for
the reader to settle--to settle his way, not mine. Indeed, I am not yet
convinced that my own ideas of the changes needed and the way to bring
them about are infallible. I am still open to conviction. I have tried
to grasp the Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, Single-tax, Free-land, and
other ideas and to comprehend just what each could be fairly expected
to accomplish if established--to see the _pros_ and _cons_ of these
and other schemes for social improvement. These, and the varying cults
ranged between, each seems to me to have certain strong points and
certain weak ones. Each seems to me to overlook some essential feature;
and yet I have no system to offer that I think would be better or would
work better than some of these. Indeed, I do most earnestly believe that
_the_ inspired way is yet to be struck out, and I do not believe that
I am the one to do it Meanwhile I can do some things. I can suggest
questions, and, sometimes, answers. But I am not a god, and I do not
want all people to answer my way. I do want to help prevent, now and
henceforth, the tribute of a thoughtless yes from being given to a good
many established wrongs.

Since such able thinkers as you are have--in the main--already refused
such tribute, I am perfectly satisfied to let each of these answer the
questions I have suggested or may suggest in my fiction in the way that
seems most hopeful to him.

Meantime, the vast majority of story readers have not yet had their
emotions touched by the dramatic presentation of "the other side."
Fiction has--in the main--worked to make them accept without question
all things as authority has presented them. Who knows but that a lofty
discontent may be stirred in some soul who can solve the awful problems
and at the same time reconcile the various cults of warring philosophers
so that they may combine for humanity and cease to divide for
revenue--or personal pique? I do not believe that the province of a
story is to assume to give the solution of philosophical questions that
have puzzled and proved too much for the best and ablest brains. I have
no doubt that fiction may stir and arouse to thought many who cannot
understand and will not heed essays or argument or preaching, while
it may also present the same thoughts in a new light to those who do.
Personally I do not believe in tacking on to fiction a "moral" or an
"in conclusion" which shall switch all such aroused thoughts into one
channel. Clear thinking and right feeling may lead some one, who is new
to such protest, to solutions that I have not reached. So let us each
question "impudent authority," whether it be in its stupid blindness to
heredity or to environment; and I shall be content that you solve the
new order by an appeal to Anarchism _via_ free land; or that Matilda
Joslyn Gage solve it by the ballot for women and hereditary freedom from
slavish instincts stamped upon a race bom of superstitious and subject
mothers.

Personally I do not believe that all the free land, free money or
freedom in the world, which shall leave the mothers of the race (whether
in or out of marriage) a subject class or in a position to transmit to
their children the vices or weaknesses of a dominated dependent, will
ever succeed in populating the world with self-reliant, self-respecting,
honorable and capable people.

On the other hand, I do not see how the ballot in the hands of woman
will do for her all that many believe it will. That it is her right
and would go far is clear; but after that, your question of economics
touches her in a way that it does not and cannot touch men, and I am
free to confess that as yet I have heard of no economic or social plan
that would not of necessity, in my opinion, bear heaviest upon those who
are mothers. So you will see that when I suggested the desirability in
"For the Prosecution" of having mothers on the bench and as jurors where
a case touched points no man living does or can understand in all its
phases, I do not think that would right all the wrong nor solve all the
questions suggested by such a trial; but I thought it would help push
the car of right and justice in the direction of light which we all hope
is ahead.

You believe more in environment than in heredity; I believe in both, and
that both are sadly and awfully awry, largely because too many people
in too many ways pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless
yes.

It is one of the saddest things in this world to see the brave and
earnest men who fight so nobly for better and fairer economic conditions
for "Labor," pay, much too often, the tribute of a thoughtless yes to
the absolute pauper status of all womanhood They resent with spirit
the idea that men should labor for a mere subsistence and always be
dependent upon and at the financial mercy of the rich. They do not
appear to see that to one-half of the race even that much economic
independence would be a tremendous improvement upon her present status.
How would Singletax or Free-land help this? You may reply that Anarchism
would solve that problem. Would it? With maternity and physical
disabilities in the scale? To my mind, all the various economic schemes
yet put forward lack an essential feature. They provide for a free
and better manhood, but they pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes to
impudent authority in the case of womanhood, in many things. And so long
as motherhood is serfhood, just so long will this world be populated
with a race easy to subjugate, weak to resist oppression, criminal
in its instincts of cruelty toward those in its power, and humble and
subservient toward authority and domination. Character rises but little
above its source. The mother molds the man. If she have the status, the
instincts, and the spirit of a subordinate, she will transmit these,
and the more enlightened she is the surer is this, because of her
consciousness of her own degradation.

Look at the Kemmler horror. People all marvel at his "brutish nature
and his desire to kill." No one says anything about the fact, which was
merely mentioned at his trial, that his "father was a butcher and his
mother helped in the business." Did you know that this is also true of
Jesse Pomeroy; the boy who "from infancy tortured animals and killed
whatever he could?"

Would all this sort of thing mean absolutely nothing to women of the
same social and scientific status enjoyed by the men who assisted at the
trials of these two and at the legal murder of one? In ordinary women,
of course, it would not stir very deep thought But these were not
ordinary men. They were far more than that, Almost all the women who
have spoken or written to me of the Kemmler horror have touched that
thought Have you heard a man discuss it? Is there a reason for this? Do
we pay the tribute of a thoughtless yes to all that clusters about the
present ideas on such subjects and about their criminal medicolegal
aspects? But this letter grows too long.

With great respect and hearty good wishes,

I am sincerely,

Helen H. Gardener.




A SPLENDID JUDGE OF A WOMAN.

_"We look at the one little woman's face we lovey as we look at the
face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own
yearnings."_--George Eliot.


"But after all it is not fair to blame her as you do, Cuthbert. She is
what she must be. It is not at all strange. Midge--"

"I am quite out of patience with you, Nora;" exclaimed Cuthbert Wagner,
vehemently. "How can you excuse her? Midge, as you call her, has been no
friend to you. She was deceitful and designing all along. She even tried
in every way she could think of to undermine you in _my_ affections!" He
tossed his head contemptuously and strode to the window where he stood
glaring out into the moonlight in fierce and indignant protest. His wife
had so often spoken well of Margaret Mintem. She did not appear to hold
the least resentment toward the school-friend of her past years, while
Cuthbert could see nothing whatever that was good or deserving of
praise in the character of the young lady in question. He was bitterly
resentful because Margaret Mintem had spoken ill of his wife while she
was only his betrothed, and Cuthbert Wagner did not forgive easily.

Nora crossed the room with her swift, graceful tread, and the sweep of
her lace gown over the thick rug had not reached her husband's ear as he
stood thumping on the window pane. He started a little, therefore, when
a soft hand was laid upon his arm and a softer face pressed itself close
to his shoulder.

"It is very sweet of you, dear," she said in her low, gentle voice,
"It is very sweet of you to feel so keenly any thrust made at me; but
darling, you are unfair to Midge, poor girl! My heart used often to
bleed for her. It must be terribly hard for her to fight her own nature,
as she does,--as she _must_,--and lose the battle so often after all."

"Fight fiddle-sticks!" said Cuthbert, and then went on grumbling in
inarticulate sounds, at which his wife laughed out merrily.

"Oh, boo, boo, boo," she said, pretending to imitate his unuttered
words.

"I don't believe a word of it. _I know Margaret Mintern_. Did I not
room with her for three long years? And do I not know that she is a good
girl, and a very noble one, too, in spite of her little weakness of envy
or jealousy?

"She can't help that. I am sure she must be terribly humiliated by it.
Indeed, indeed, dear, I know that she is; but she cannot master it. It
is a part of her. I do not know whether she was bom with it or not; but
I do know that all of her life since she was a very little girl she has
been so situated that just that particular defect in her character is
the inevitable result. Don't you believe, Cuthbert, that all such things
are natural productions? Why, dearie, it seems to me that you might as
reasonably feel angry with me because my hair is brown as toward Midge
because her envy sometimes overbears her better qualities. The real
fault lies--"

"O Nora, suppose you take the stump! Lecture on 'Whatever is is right,'
and have done with it."

"Aha, my dear," laughed his wife, "I have caught you napping again. I do
not say that it is right; but I do say that it is natural for Margaret
to be just what she is. That is just the point people always overlook,
it seems to me. Nature is wrong about half of the time--even inanimate
nature. Just look over there! See those splendid mountains and the
lovely little valley all touched with moonlight; but, oh, how the
eye longs for water! A lake, a splendid river, the ocean in the
distance--something that is water--_anything_ that is water! But no, it
is valley and mountain and mountain and valley, until the most beautiful
spot in the world, when first you see it, grows hateful and tiresome and
lacking in the most important feature."

Cuthbert laughed. "A lake would look well just over there by McGuire's
barn, now, wouldn't it? And, come to think of it, how a few mountains
would improve things over at Newport or Long Beach." He stopped to thump
a bug from his wife's shoulder.

"How pretty you look in that black lace, little woman. I don't believe
nature needed any improver once in her life anyhow--when she made you."

Nora smiled. A pleased, gratified little dimple made itself visible at
one corner of her mouth. Her husband stooped over and kissed it lightly,
just as the portiere was drawn aside and a guest announced by James, the
immaculate butler.

"We've just been having a quarrel, Bailey," said Mr. Wagner, as he
advanced to greet the visitor, "and now I mean to leave it to you if--"

"Yes," drawled Mr. Bailey, "I noticed that as I came in. You were just
punctuating your quarrel as James drew back the portiere. That is the
reason I coughed so violently as I stepped inside. Don't be alarmed
about my health. It isn't consumption. It is only assumption, I do
assure you. I assumed that you assumed that you were alone--that there
wasn't an interested spectator; but, great Scott! Bert, I don't blame
you, so don't apologize;" and with a low bow of admiration to his
friend's wife, he joined in the laugh.

"But what was the row? I'm consumed to hear it," he added, as they were
seated. "I should be charmed to umpire the matter--so long as it ended
that way. Now, go on; but I want to give you fair warning, old man, that
I am on Mrs. Wagner's side to start with, so you fire off your biggest
guns and don't attempt to roll any twisted balls."

"_Curved_ balls," laughed Nora, "not twisted; and it seems to me you
mixed your games just a wee bit. There isn't any game with guns and
balls both, is there?"

"Oh, yes, yes indeed," replied Mr. Bailey, promptly. "The old, old game
in which there is brought to bear a battery of eyes."

"Oh, don't," said Cuthbert. "I am not equal to it! But after all, I
can't see that you are well out of this, Ned. Where do the balls come
in?"

"What have you against eyeballs that roll in a fine frenzy when a
battery of handsome eyes is trained upon a bashful fellow like me?" he
asked quite gravely, and then all three laughed and Cuthbert pretended
to faint.

"I shall really have to protest, myself, if you go any farther, Mr.
Bailey," said Nora.

"You are getting into deep water, and if you are to be on my side in the
coming contest, I want you to have a cool head and--"

"A clean heart;" put in Cuthbert.

"Mrs. Wagner never asks for impossibilities, I am sure," said Mr.
Bailey, dryly.

"But she does. That is just it. She wants to make me believe that a girl
who traduced her and acted like a little fiend generally, is an adorable
creature--a natural production which couldn't help itself--had to behave
that way. We--"

"I believe I started in by saying that I should be on your side, Mrs.
Wagner," said their guest, assuming a judicial attitude and bracing
himself behind an imaginary pile of accumulated evidence, "but I'm
beginning to wobble already. If Bert makes another home run like that, I
warn you, madam, that while I shall endeavor to be a fair and impartial
judge, I shall decide against you."

Nora's eyes had a twinkle in their depths for an instant, but her face
had grown grave.

"Wait. Let me tell you." she said. "Even Cuthbert does not know just
how it was--what went to make my old school-friend's character precisely
what it became. It was like this: When she was a very little girl her
father died, and the poor little mother went back home with her four
young children, and her crushed pride, to be an additional burden to
the already overburdened father, who was growing old and who had small
children of his own still to educate and pilot through society.
He had lost his hold on business when he went into the army; and
although he came home a general, quite covered with glory, a large
family cannot live on glory, you know, and fame will not buy party
dresses for three daughters and a grandchild."

"I've noticed that," remarked Mr. Bailey, dryly.

"The added importance of his position and the consequent publicity made
the handsome party gowns all the more necessary, however," said Nora,
not heeding the interruption, "and so the family had to do a great many
things that were not pleasant to make even one end meet, as poor Midge
used to say. The General loved brains and his granddaughter was very
bright."

Cuthbert gave a low whistle. He would not compromise. If he found one
thing wrong in an acquaintance all things were wrong. It followed,
therefore, in his mind, that since Margaret Min-tern had been guilty of
envy, she was altogether unlikely to possess fine mental capabilities.
He would not even allow that she was stylish and sang well.

His wife took no notice of his outburst, but her color deepened a little
as she went on.

"She was the most clever girl mentally that I have ever known and she
was a vast deal of service to me in the years we were together. She
sharpened my wits and stimulated my thoughts in a thousand ways, for
which I am her debtor still. But I am getting ahead of my story. As I
say, the old General worshipped brains, but he also adored beauty; and,
alas, his granddaughter was quite plain--"

"Ugly as a hedge-fence, and I never could see that she was so
superhumanly brilliant or stylish, as you claim, either," put in
Cuthbert Wagner, as he leaned back in his deep chair with his eyes drawn
to a narrow line.

"She was almost exactly the same age of her Aunt Julia, the General's
youngest daughter; but Julia was a dream of beauty and of stupidity."

"Situation is now quite plain," said Mr. Bailey. "The lovely Julie got
there. She always does, and--"

"Ah, but you must remember that in this case 'there' was the heart of
the father of one and the grandfather of the other," said Nora, smiling.

Her husband laughed outright and faced Mr. Bailey.

"I rather think she has got you now, old man. In a case like that
I'm hanged if I know how it would turn out--who would get there. The
elements won't mix. It is not the usual thing.

"The beautiful stupid and the brilliant but plain are all
right,--regular stage properties, so to speak,--but the grandfather!
I'll wager if we tossed up for it, and you got heads and I got tails
we'd both be wrong.

"There is something actually uncanny in the aged grandparent ingredient
in a conundrum like that. Now if it were a young fellow,--only the
average donkey,--why of course the lovely Julia would bear off the
palm and leave Midge, as Nora calls her, to pine away. But if it were a
level-headed, middle-aged chap like me, brains would take precedence."
He waved his hand lightly toward his wife, who parted her lips over a
set of little white teeth and a radiant smile burst forth.

"You are a bold hypocrite, Bert," said Mr. Bailey. "You did not have to
make any such choice, and you are not entitled to the least credit in
the premises. You got both."

"This is really quite overwhelming," laughed Nora; "but--"

"Why on earth did you call her attention to it, Ned," exclaimed Mr.
Wagner, with great pretence of annoyance. "She would have swallowed it
whole. I wonder why it is a woman so loves to be told that you married
her for her intellect, when in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out
of eight hundred and forty you did nothing of the kind, and she knows
it perfectly well. You married her because you loved her, brains or no
brains, beauty or no beauty, and that's an end of it. Isn't that so,
Ned?"

"Well, I'm not prepared to say, yet. I am umpire. I have not made up my
mind which I shall marry--the lovely Julia, or the brilliant niece; but
I think I shall in the long run."

"God help you if you do!" said Cuthbert, dramatically. "I don't know
Julia, the beautiful; but I'd hate to see you married to a cat with
uncut claws, Ned, much as I think you need dressing down from time to
time."

"Mrs. Wagner," said Mr. Bailey, turning to her, gravely, "I'm not paying
the least attention to him, and I am eager to hear how the grandfather
got out of it."

"The _grandfather!_" exclaimed Nora, "why I had no idea of telling his
story. It was the two girls I was interested in--or at least, in one of
them; but that is just like a man. He--"

She allowed her feather fan to fall in her lap and looked up helplessly.
"But come to think of the other side, his story _would_ be worth
telling, wouldn't it? It must have been a rather trying situation for
him, too."

She took the fan up again, and waved it before her, thoughtfully. "I
wonder why I never thought of that before. I have always rather blamed
him for developing his granddaughter's one sad defect. I thought he
should have guarded her against it. And--I do wonder if it is because I
am a woman that I never before thought how very difficult it must have
been for him?"

"No doubt, no doubt," said her husband, dryly. "But now that we have
shed a few tears over our mental shortcomings and lack of breadth of
sympathy in overlooking the sad predicament of the doughty General,
proceed. The umpire sleepeth apace, and I've got to have my shy at the
charming Midge before we've done with her," and he shut his paper-knife
with a wicked little click.

"You can see how it would be," Nora began again, quite gravely, and the
gentlemen both smiled. "You can see how it would be. The granddaughter
was made to feel that she was in the way--was a burden. Her mother
would urge her to become indispensable to the old General. To read to
him, talk brightly to him, sing and play for him, watch his moods and
meet them cleverly. It was all done as a race for his affections. Julia
raced with her, setting her beauty and the other great fact that she was
the child of his old age over against the entertaining qualities of her
rival."

Mr. Bailey drew his handkerchief across his brow and looked helplessly
perplexed, while Cuthbert responded with a dreary shake of the head.

"It is a clear case of 'The Lady or the Tiger,' yet, so far as I can
see," said he. "Who got there, Bailey?"

Mr. Bailey smiled despairingly, and shook his head, but said nothing.

"It went on like that day after day, week after week, month after month,
year after year," continued Nora, looking steadily in front of her and
shivering a little, "until they were both young ladies. The General
gave a party to present them both to society at the same time. His
granddaughter tried to make him feel that he was repaid for the
expense and trouble by the display of her exceptional powers as a
conversationalist--Julia, by the display of her neck and shoulders, her
exquisite rose-leaf face, and her childishly pretty manners. This sort
of rivalry would have been well enough, no doubt, if it had not been
for the fact that from childhood up to this culmination there had been
a dash of bitterness in it, an un-der-current of antagonism; and poor
Midge had always been the main sufferer, because she was very sensitive
and she was made to feel that all she received was taken from her aunt
Julia. To stand first with her father, Julia would do almost anything;
and the ingenuity with which she devised cruel little stabs at Midge was
simply phenomenal. To be absolutely necessary to him became almost a
mania with his granddaughter."

"If this thing goes on much longer, I am going to have a fit," Cuthbert
announced, placidly.

"The girl you judge so harshly, poor child, had a great many of them,"
said Nora, with an inflection in her voice that checked a laugh on Mr.
Bailey's lips. "Fits of depression, fits of anger, fits of sorrow, fits
of shame and of indignation with herself and with others. For there were
times when she stooped to little meannesses which her sensitive soul
abhorred. If intense effort resulted, after all, in failure, envy of
her successful rival grew up in her heart; and, sometimes, if it were
carefully cultivated by the pruning hook of sarcasm or an unkind look of
triumph, she would say or do a mean or underhand thing, and then regret
it passionately when it was too late."

Cuthbert gave a grunt of utter incredulity.

"Regretted it so little she'd do it again next day," he grumbled. Nora
went steadily on.

"It grew to be the one spring and impulse of her whole nature--the
necessity of her existence--to stand _first_ with the ruling spirit
wherever she was, whoever it might be. At school I have known her to
sit up all night to make sure that she would be letter-perfect in her
lessons the following morning. Not because she cared for her studies so
much as because she _must_ feel that she stood first in the estimation
of her teachers. And then, too, her grandfather would know and be proud
of her. It got to be nature with her (I do not know how much of the
tendency may have been born in her) to need to stand on the top wherever
she was. (It has always seemed to me that the conditions surrounding her
were quite enough to explain this characteristic without an appeal to a
possible heredity of which I can know nothing.) Even where we boarded,
although she disliked the women and looked down upon the young men, she
made them all like her, and even went the length of allowing one young
fellow to ask her to marry him simply because she saw that he was
interested in me."

"Humph! She--" began Cuthbert, but his wife held up her hand to check
him, and did not pause in her story.

"Up to that time she had not given him a thought, and she was very angry
when he finally asked the great question. She thought that he should
have known that such a girl as she was could not be for a man of his
limitations. She felt insulted. She flew up stairs and cried with
indignation. 'The mere idea!' she said to me. 'How dared he! The common
little biped!' I told her that she had encouraged him, and had brought
unnecessary pain upon him as well as regret upon herself. Then she was
angry with me. By and by she put her hand out in the darkness and
took mine and pressed it. Then she said, 'Nora, it _was_ my
fault; but--but--' and then she began to sob again. 'But, Nora, I
don't--know--why--I--did--it--and,' there was a long pause. 'And,
beside, I _thought_ he was in love with you,'" she sobbed out.

"That was the whole story," said Cuthbert, resentfully. "She simply
wanted to supplant you and--"

"Yes, that _was_ the whole story, as you say, dear," said his wife,
gently; "but the poor girl could not help it. And--and she did not
understand it herself at all."

"You make me provoked, Nora," said Cuthbert, almost sharply. "She wasn't
a fool. She tried the same game on me a year or two later; but that
time it didn't work. She even went the length of talking ill of you to
me--saying little cutting things--when she found I had utterly succumbed
to your attractions. I have to laugh yet when I think of it,--that is,
when it don't make me too angry to laugh,--how I gave her a good round
talking to." He laughed now at the recollection.

"She must have taken me for her delightful old grandparent the way I
lectured her. But when I remembered how loyal you were to her, it just
made my blood boil and I told her so."

Mr. Bailey shifted his position and began to contemplate giving a
verdict emphatically against the absent lady, when Nora checked him by a
wave of her fan.

"Yes, I know she did, Cuthbert, and I know everything you said to her.
You were very cruel--if you had understood, as you did not and do not
yet. She came and told me all about it." Cuthbert Wagner gave a low,
incredulous whistle, and even Mr. Bailey looked sceptical.

"She came back from that drive with you the most wretched girl you ever
saw. Her humiliation was pitiful to see. Her self-reproach was touching
and real. I believe she would have killed herself if I had seemed to
blame her."

Cuthbert snapped out:

"Humph! Very likely; and gone and done the same thing again the next
day."

"Possibly that is true--if there had been a next day with a new
temptation that was too strong for her on the shore where she landed
after death If--"

"If the Almighty had shown a preference for some one else, hey?" asked
Mr. Bailey, flippantly.

"No doubt, no doubt," acquiesced Nora. "But suppose you had a weak leg
and it gave way at a critical moment--say just when you were entering
an opera box to greet a lady. Suppose it dropped you in a ridiculous or
humiliating manner. You would rage and be distressed, and make up your
mind not to let it occur again, except in the seclusion of your own
apartments; but--well, it would be quite as likely to serve you the same
trick the following week, in church."

"The illustration does not strike me as quite fair," said Mr. Bailey,
judicially.

"Good, Ned! Don't let her argue you into an interest in that little cat.
She was simply a malicious little--"

"Wait, then," said Nora, ignoring her husband's outburst and looking
steadily at Margaret Mintem's new judge, who was showing signs of
passing a sentence no less severe than if it were delivered by Cuthbert
Wagner himself.

"Suppose we take your memory. Are there not some names or dates that
_will_ drop out at times and leave you awkwardly in the lurch?"

"Well, rather," said Mr. Bailey, disgustedly. This was his weak spot.

"Now, don't you see that a person who has a perfect memory might be as
unfair to you as you are to my old school friend in her little moral
weakness--if we may call it by so harsh a term as that? That was her one
vulnerable spot. It may have been born in her. That I do not know; but
I insist that it _was_ trained and drilled into her as much as her
arithmetic or her catechism were, and with a result as inevitable. She
loathed her fault, but it was too strong for her. Her resolution to
conquer it dropped just short of success very often, indeed; and oh! how
it did hurt her when she realized it and thought it all over, for her
motives were unusually pure, and her moral sense was really very high
indeed."

"Moral sense was a little frayed at the edges, I think."

"Don't, Cuthbert. You are such a cruelly severe judge. I know Mr. Bailey
is on my side, now, and will think you very unfair. He does not mean
to be, I assure you, Mr. Bailey, and if she had not spoken ill of me he
would see the case fairly. But what _are_ you thinking?"

"That it is a rather big question. That I--that I have overstayed my
time. I just came over to ask you to dine with us next Thursday. My
mother has some friends and wants you to meet them. May I leave my
judicial decision open until then?"

"Certainly. Pray over it," said Cuthbert, rising; "and if you don't come
out on my side, openly,--as I know you are in your mind,--buy a wire
mask. I won't have any dodging."

"Come early. There is a secret to tell," laughed Mr. Bailey as he
withdrew, and then he blushed furiously. "Mother's secret," he added, as
he closed the door behind him.

The evening of the dinner the Wagners were later than they had intended
to be, and Mrs. Bailey took Nora aside and said quite abruptly:

"I've got to pop it at you rather suddenly. Why didn't you come earlier?
The lady whom Ned is to marry is here, and it is for her I have given
the dinner. Ned went to your house to tell you last week, but his heart
failed him. He said you were all in such a gale of nonsense that he
concluded to wait. It is a very tender subject with him, I assure you.
His case is quite hopeless. He is madly in love, and I am very much
pleased with his choice. She seems as nearly perfect as they ever are,
and she is unusually talented. But here is Ned now. I have told her all
about it, my son, come and be congratulated."

He came forward shyly enough for a man of his years and experience, and
took Nora's hand in a helpless way. But Cuthbert relieved matters at
once by a hearty "Well, it is splendid, old fellow. I'm delighted. I--"

"But before the others come down," broke in Mr. Bailey, as if to get
away from the subject, "I want to get my discharge papers in that case
you plead before me last week. It lies heavy on my soul, for I am very
sorry to say, Mrs. Wagner, that I am compelled to give judgment against
you and your client. I think she was--I'm with Cuthbert this time. She
impresses me as almost without redeeming qualities. I do not wish to
make her acquaintance. I am sure that I could never force myself to take
even a passing interest in that sort of a moral acrobat. Really, the
lovely but selfish Julia would be my choice in a team of vicious little
pacers like that. I'm sure I should detect your friend's fatal weakness
in her every action. I should be unable to see anything but the hideous
green-eyed monster even in the folds of her lace gowns or the coils of
her shining hair. He would appear to me, ghost-like, peering over her
shoulder in the midst of her most fascinating conversation. I should
feel his fangs and see the glitter of his wicked eyes while I tried to
say small nothings to her, and--"

"Oh, not at all," protested Nora. "You would never detect it at all
unless she happened to be fighting for your esteem or admiration where
she felt that odds were against her. She--"

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wagner, but I am quite sure that I should.
Envy is to me the very worst trait in the human character. I could more
easily excuse or be blinded to anything else. I _know_ that I should
detect it at once. I always do--especially in a woman."

"Certainly. Anybody could. You know very well, Nora, that I saw--" began
Cuthbert quite gleefully; but as a salve to her wounded feelings Mr.
Bailey added in a tone of conciliation to Nora:

"However, I shall agree to let you test me some day. Present your friend
to me, _incog._, and I'll wager--oh, _anything_ that I shall read her
like a book on sight. I'm a splendid judge of a woman. Always was from
childhood. I'm sure that I should feel creepy the moment I saw the
brilliant but envious granddaughter of the unfortunate old warrior. And
by the way, _he_ continues to be the one for whom you have enlisted my
sympathy. I wonder that he was able to live two weeks in the same house
with such a--"

"Cat," said Cuthbert, with a vicious jab at a paper-weight which
represented a solemn-looking Chinese god in brocade trousers. He was
just turning to enter into a cheerful and elaborate statement of his
side of the controversy, as Mrs. Bailey swept down the room with her
son's betrothed upon her arm, smiling and happy.

"Margaret Mintern!" exclaimed Nora, in dismay, and then--

"I am so glad to see you again, dear, and to be able to congratulate
you, instead of some fair unknown, upon the fact that you are to have so
dear a friend of ours for a husband. We think everything of Mr. Bailey.
He is Bert's best friend and--"

Cuthbert had turned half away in utter confusion when he saw the ladies
coming down the room, and feigned an absorption in the rotund Chinese
deity which he had never displayed for the one of his own nation. But he
bowed now, and mumbled some inarticulate sounds as he looked, not at
the future Mrs. Bailey, but at the ridiculously happy face of her lover,
whose usually ready tongue was silent as he hung upon the lightest tone
of the brilliant woman beside him. As they passed into the dining-room,
Nora managed to say to her husband:

"Thank heaven we did not mention her name to him, and he evidently does
not suspect. Pull yourself together and stumble through your part the
best you can, dear, without attracting his attention. And then you know
that he and you agree perfectly about the--cat," she added wickedly, and
then she smiled quietly as she took her seat next to the blissful lover
and the relentless judge of the school friend of her youth.




THE LADY OF THE CLUB.

     "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
     That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
     How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
     Your loop'd, and window'd raggedness, defend you
     From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
     Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
     Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
     That thou may'st shake the super flux to them,
     Show the heavens more just."

     Shakespeare.




I.

The old and somewhat cynical saying, that philosophers and reformers can
bear the griefs and woes of other people with a heroism and resignation
worthy of their creeds, would have fitted the case of Roland Barker only
when shorn of the intentional sting of sarcasm. It is, nevertheless,
true that even his nobly-gifted nature, his tender heart, and his alert
brain sometimes failed to grasp the very pith and point of his own
arguments.

He was a wealthy man whose sympathies were earnestly with the poor and
unfortunate. He believed that he understood their sufferings, their
ambitions, and their needs; and his voice and pen were no more truly on
the side of charity and brotherly kindness than was his purse.

It was no unusual thing for him to attend a meeting, address a club, or
take part in a memorial service, where his was the only hand unused to
toil, and where he alone bore all expense, and then--after dressing
himself in the most approved and faultless manner--become the guest
of honor at some fashionable entertainment. Indeed, he was a leader in
fashion as well as in philosophy, and at once a hero in Avenue A and on
Murray Hill.

On the evening of which I am about to tell you he had addressed a
club of workingmen in their little dingy hall, taking as his subject
"Realities of Life." He had sought to show them that poverty and toil
are not, after all, the worst that can befall a man, and that the most
acute misery dwells in palaces and is robed in purple.

He spoke with the feeling of one who had himself suffered--as, indeed,
he had--from the unsympathetic associations of an uncongenial marriage.
He portrayed, with deep feeling, the chill atmosphere of a loveless
home, whose wealth and glitter and lustre could never thrill and
enrapture the heart as might the loving hand-clasp in the bare, chill
rooms where sympathy and affection were the companions of poverty.

I had admired his enthusiasm as he pictured the joy of sacrifice for the
sake of those we love, and I had been deeply touched by his
pathos--a pathos which I knew, alas, too well, sprang from a hungry
heart--whether, as now, it beat beneath a simple coat of tweed or, as
when hours later, it would still be the prisoner of its mighty longing,
though clothed with elegance and seated at a banquet fit for princes.

The last words fell slowly from his lips, and his eyes were dimmed, as
were the eyes of all about me. His voice, so full of feeling, had hardly
ceased to throb when, far back in the little hall, arose a woman,
thin and worn, and plainly clad, but showing traces of a beauty and
refinement which had held their own and fought their way inch by inch
in spite of poverty, anxiety, and tears. The chairman recognized her and
asked her to the platform.

"No," she said, in a low, tremulous tone which showed at once her
feeling and her culture--"no, I do not wish to take the platform; but
since you ask for criticism of the kind speech we have just listened to,
it has seemed to me that I might offer one, although I am a stranger to
you all."

Her voice trembled, and she held firmly to the back of a chair in front
of her. The chairman signified his willingness to extend to her the
privilege of the floor, and there was slight applause. She bowed and
began again slowly:

"I sometimes think that it is useless to ever try to make the suffering
rich and the suffering poor understand each other. I do not question
that the gentleman has tasted sorrow. All good men have. I do not
question that his heart is warm and true and honest, and that he truly
thinks what he has said; but"--and here her voice broke a little and her
lip trembled--"but he does not know what real suffering is. He cannot.
No rich man can." There was a movement of impatience in the room, and
some one said, loud enough to be heard, "If she thinks money can bring
happiness she is badly left."

There was a slight ripple of laughter at this, and even the serious face
of Roland Barker grew almost merry for a moment. Then the woman went on,
without appearing to have noticed the interruption:

"I do not want to seem ungracious, and heaven knows, no one could mean
more kindly what I say; but he has said that money is not needed to make
us happy--only love; and again he quotes that baseless old maxim, 'The
love of money is the root of all evil.'" She paused, then went slowly on
as if feeling her way and fearing to lose her hold upon herself: "I know
it is a sad and cruel world even to the more fortunate, if they have
hearts to feel and brains to think. To the unloving or unloved there
must be little worth; but they at least are spared the agony that sits
where love and poverty have shaken hands with death"--her voice broke,
and there was a painful silence in the room--"where those who love are
wrung and torn by all the thousand fears and apprehensions of ills that
are to come to wife and child and friend. The day has passed when all
this talk of poverty and love--that love makes want an easy thing to
bear--the day has passed, I say, when sane men ought to think, or wise
men speak, such cruel, false, and harmful words. He truly says that
money without love cannot bring happiness; but that is only half the
truth, for love with poverty can bring, does bring, the keenest agony
that mortals ever bore."

There was a movement of dissent in the hall. She lifted her face a
moment, contracted her lips, drew a long breath, and said:

"I will explain. Without the love, poverty were light enough to bear.
What does it matter for one's self? It is the love that gives the awful
sting to want, and makes its cruel fingers grip the throat as never vise
or grappling-hook took hold, and torture with a keener zest than fiends
their victims! Love and Poverty! _It is the combination that devils
invented to make a hell on earth._"

All eyes were fastened on her white face now, and she was rushing on,
her words, hot and impassioned, striking firm on every point she made.

"Let me give you a case. In a home where comfort is--or wealth--a mother
sits, watching by night and day the awful hand of Death reach nearer,
closer to her precious babe, and nothing that skill or science can
suggest will stay the hand or heal the aching heart; and yet there is
comfort in the thought that all was done that love and wealth and skill
could do, and that it was Nature's way. But take from her the comfort of
that thought. She watches with the same poor, breaking heart, but
with the knowledge, now, to keep her company, that science might, ah!
_could_, push back the end, could even cure her babe if but the means to
pay for skill and change and wholesome food and air were hers. Is that
no added pang? Is poverty no curse to her?--a curse the deeper for
her depth of love? The rich know naught of this. It gives to life its
wildest agony, to love its deepest hurt."

She paused. There was a slight stir as if some one had thought to offer
applause, and then the silence fell again, and she began anew, with
shining eyes and cheeks aflame. She swayed a little as she spoke and
clutched the chair as for support. Her voice grew hoarse, and trembled,
and she fixed her gaze upon a vacant chair:

"But let me tell you of another case. A stone's throw from this hall,
where pretty things are said week after week--and kindly meant, I
know--of poverty and love--of the blessedness of these--there is a
living illustration, worth more than all the theories ever spun, to tell
you what 'realities of life' must be where love is great and poverty
holds sway. Picture, with me, the torture and despair of a refined and
cultured woman who watches hour by hour the long months through, and
sees the creeping feet of mental wreck, and physical decay, and knows
the mortal need of care and calm for him who is the whole of life to
her, and for the want of that which others waste and hold as dross he
must work on and on, hastening each day the end _he_ does not see, which
shall deprive him of all of life except the power for ill.... She will
be worse than widowed and alone, for ever by her side sits Want, for
him, tearing at every chord of heart and soul--not for herself--but for
that dearer one, wrecked in the prime of life and left a clod endowed
only with strength for cruel wrong, whose hand would sheath a knife in
her dear heart and laugh with maniac glee at his mad deeds. She saw the
end. She knew long months ago what was to be, if he must toil and strain
his nerve and brain for need of that which goes from knave to knave, and
hoards itself within cathedral walls, where wise men meet to teach
the poor contentment with their lot! She knew _he_ must not know; the
knowledge of the shadow must be kept from _his_ dear brain until the
very end, by smiles, and cheer, and merry jest from her. Who dare tell
_her_ that riches are a curse? and prate of 'dross' and call on heaven
to witness that its loss is only gain of joy and harbinger of higher,
holier things? Who dare call _her_ as witness for the bliss of poverty
with love?"

She slowly raised her hand and, with a quick-drawn breath, pressed it
against her side, and with her eyes still fastened on the vacant chair,
and tears upon her cheeks, falling unchecked upon her heaving bosom, she
held each listener silent and intent on every word she spoke. The time
allotted anyone was long since overrun; but no one thought of that, and
she went on:

"'With love!' Ah, there is where the iron can burn and scar and open
every wound afresh each day, make poverty a curse, a blight, a scourge,
a vulture, iron-beaked, with claws of burning steel, that leave no nerve
untouched, no drop of blood unshed.

"'With love!' 'Tis there the hand of Poverty can deal the deadliest
blows, and show, as nowhere else on earth, the value of that slandered,
hoarded thing called wealth."

There blazed into her face a fierce, indignant light, her voice swelled
out and struck upon the ear like fire-bells in the dead of night:

"'The root of evil!'--'poverty with love!' Hypocrisy, in purple velvet
robed, behind stained glass, with strains of music falling on its ears,
with table spread in banquet-hall below, bethought itself to argue thus
to those itself had robbed; while, thoughtless of its meaning and its
birth, the echo of its lying, treacherous words comes from the pallid
lips of many a wretch whose life has been a failure and an agony because
of that which he himself extols. A lie once born contains a thousand
lives, and holds at bay the struggling, feeble truth, if but that lie be
fathered by a priest and mothered by a throne--_as this one was!_ 'The
root of evil' is the spring of joy. Decry it those who will. And those
who do _not_ love, perchance, may laugh at all its need can mean; but
to the loving, suffering poor bring no more cant, and cease to voice the
hollow words of Ignorance and Hypocrisy. It is too cruel, and its deadly
breath has long enough polluted sympathy and frozen up the springs
of healthy thought, while sheathing venomed fangs in breaking hearts.
Recast your heartless creeds! Your theories for the poor are built on
these."

She sank back into her chair white and exhausted.

There was a wild burst of applause. A part of the audience, with that
ear for sound and that lack of sense to be found in all such gatherings,
had forgotten that it was not listening to a burst of eloquence which
had been duly written out and committed to memory for the occasion.

But Roland Barker sprang to his feet, held both his hands up, to command
silence, and said, in a scarcely audible voice, as he trembled from head
to foot: "Hush, hush! She has told the truth! She has told the awful
truth! I never saw it all before. Heaven help you to bear it. It seems
to me I cannot!"

Several were pale and weeping. I turned to speak to the woman who had
changed an evening's entertainment into a tragic scene; but she had
slipped out during the excitement. I took Barker's arm and we walked
towards the Avenue together. Neither of us spoke until we reached
Madison Square. Here the poor fellow sank into a seat and pulled me down
beside him.

"Don't talk to me about theories after that," he said. "Great God! I am
more dead than alive. I feel fifty years older than when I went to that
little hall to teach those people how to live by my fine philosophy,
and I truly thought that I had tasted sorrow and found the key to
resignation. Ye gods!"

"Perhaps you have," I said.

"Yes, yes," he replied, impatiently; "but suppose I had to face life day
by day, hour by hour, as that woman pictured it--and she was a lady with
as keen a sense of pain as I--what do you suppose my philosophy would do
for me then? Do you think I could endure it? And I went there to teach
those people how to suffer and be strong!"

"Look here, Barker," I said, "you'd better go home now and go to bed.
You are cold and tired, and this won't help matters any."

"What will?" he asked.

I made no reply. When we reached his door he asked again:

"What will?"

I shook my head and left him standing in the brilliant hall of his
beautiful home, dazed and puzzled and alone.




II.

The next time I met Roland Barker he grasped my hand and said excitedly:
"I have found that woman! What she said is all true. My God! what is
to be done? I feel like a strong man tied hand and foot, while devilish
vultures feed on the flesh of living babes before my eyes!"

"Stop, Barker," I said; "stop, and go away for a while, or you will go
mad. What have you been doing? Look at your hands; they tremble like the
hands of a palsied man; and your face; why, Barker, your face is haggard
and set, and your hair is actually turning gray! What in the name of all
that's holy have you been doing?"

"Nothing, absolutely nothing!" he exclaimed "That is the trouble!
What _can_ I do? I tell you something is wrong, Gordon, something is
desperately wrong in this world. Look at that pile of stone over there:
millions of dollars are built into that. It is opened once each week,
aired, cleaned, and put in order for a fashionable audience dressed in
silk and broadcloth. They call it a church, but it is simply a popular
club house, which, unlike other club houses, hasn't the grace to pay
its own taxes. They use that club house, let us say, three hours in all,
each week, for what? To listen to elaborate music and fine-spun theories
about another world. They are asked to, and they give money to send
these same theories to nations far away, who--to put it mildly--are
quite as well off without them. Then that house is closed for a week,
and those who sat there really believe that they have done what is right
by their fellow-men! Their natural consciences, their sense of right
and justice, have been given an anaesthetic. 'The poor ye have with you
always,' they are taught to believe, is not only true, but _right_. I
tell you, Gordon, it is all perfectly damnable, and it seems to me that
I cannot bear it when I remember that woman."

"She is only one of a great many," I suggested.

Roland Barker groaned: "My God! that is the trouble--so many that the
thing seems hopeless. And to think that on every one of even these poor
souls is laid another burden that that stone spire may go untaxed!"

"Barker," I said, laying my hand on his arm, "tell me what has forced
all this upon you with such a terrible weight just now."

"Not here, not now," he said. "I have written it down just as she told
it to me--you know I learned stenography when I began taking an interest
in public meetings. Well, I've just been copying those notes out. They
are in my pocket," he said, laying his hand on his breast. "They seem to
burn my very soul. I would not dare to trust myself to read them to you
here. Come home with me."

When we were seated in his magnificent library, he glanced about him,
and with a wave of his hand said, with infinite satire: "You will notice
the striking appropriateness of the surroundings and the subject."

"No doubt," I said. "I have often noticed that before, especially the
last time I heard a sermon preached to three of the Vanderbilts,
two Astors, five other millionaires, and about sixty more consistent
Christians, all of whom were wealthy. The subject was Christ's advice to
the rich young man, 'Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.' But never
mind; go on; the day has passed when deed and creed are supposed to hold
the slightest relation to each other; and what is a $20,000 salary for
if not to buy sufficient ability to explain it all sweetly away and
administer, at the same time, an anæsthetic to the natural consciences
of men?"

I settled myself in a large Turkish chair on one side of the splendidly
carved table; he stood on the other side sorting a manuscript. Presently
he began reading it. "'When I married Frank Melville he was strong and
grand and brave; a truer man never lived. He had been educated for the
law. His practice was small, but we were able to live very well on
what he made, and the prospect for the future was bright. We loved each
other--but, ah! there are no words to tell that. We worshipped each
other as only two who have been happily mated can ever understand. We
lived up to his salary. Perhaps you will say that that was not wise. We
thought it was. A good appearance, a fairly good appearance at least,
was all that we could make, and to hold his own in his profession, this
was necessary. You know how that is. A shabby-looking man soon loses his
hold on paying clients. Of course he would not dress well and allow me
to be ill-clad. He--he loved me. We were never able to lay by anything;
but we were young and strong and hopeful--and we loved each other.'"
Barker's voice trembled. He looked at me a moment and then said very
low: "If you could have seen her poor, tired, beautiful eyes when she
said that."

"I can imagine how she looked," I said. "She had a face one remembers."

After a little he went on: "We had both been brought up to live well.
Our friends were people of culture, and we--it will sound strange to you
for me to say that our love and devotion were the admiration and talk of
all of them.

"'By-and-by I was taken ill. My husband could not bear to think of me as
at home alone, suffering He stayed with me a great deal. I did not know
that he was neglecting his business; I think he did not realize it then;
he thought he could make it all up; he was strong and--he loved me. At
last the doctors told him that I should die if he did not take me away;
I ought to have an ocean voyage. It almost killed him that he could not
give me that. We had not the money. He took me away a little while where
I could breathe the salt air, and the good it did me made his heart only
the sadder when he saw that it was true that all I needed was an ocean
voyage. The climate of his home was slowly killing me. We bore it as
long as we dared, and I got so weak that he almost went mad. Then we
moved here, where my health was good. But it was a terrible task to get
business; there were so many others like him, all fighting, as if for
life, for money enough to live on from day to day. The strain was
too much for him, and just as he began to gain a footing he fell ill,
and--and if we had had money enough for him to take a rest then, and
have proper care, good doctors, and be relieved from immediate anxiety,
he would have gotten well, with my care--I loved him so! But as it
was--' Shall I show you the end?" Barker stopped, he was trembling
violently, his eyes were full of tears. I waited. Presently he said,
huskily: "Shall I tell you, Gordon, what I saw? I have not gotten over
it yet. She laid her finger on her lips and motioned me to follow. The
room where we had been was poor and bare. She took a key from her bosom,
opened a door, and went in. I followed. Sitting in the only comfortable
chair--which had been handsome once--was a magnificent-looking man, so
far as mere physical proportions can make one that.

"'Darling,' she said tenderly, as if talking to a little child.
'Darling, I have brought you a present. Are you glad?'

"She handed him a withered rose that I had carelessly dropped as I went
in.

"He arose, bowed to me when she presented me, waved me to his chair,
took the flower, looked at her with infinite love, and said: 'To-morrow,
little wife; wait till to-morrow.'

"Then he sat down, evidently unconscious of my presence, and gazed
steadily at her for a moment, seeming to forget all else and to struggle
with some thought that constantly eluded him. She patted his hand as if
he were a child, smiling through her heart-break all the while, kissed
him, and motioned me to precede her from the room.

"When she came out she locked the door carefully behind her, sank into a
chair, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed as if her heart would
break. After a while she said: 'A little money would have saved, him and
now it is too late, too late. Sometimes he is violent, sometimes like
that. The doctors say the end is not far off, and that any moment he
may kill me, and afterwards awake to know it! It is all the result of
poverty _with love!'_ she said. Then, passionately: 'If I did not love
him so I could bear it, but _I cannot, I cannot!_ And how will _he_ bear
it if he ever harms me--and I not there to help him?'"

Barker stepped to the window to hide his emotion. Presently he said, in
a voice that trembled: "If she did not love him so she could let him
go to some--asylum; but she knows the end is sure, and not far off,
and that the gleams of light he has are when he sees her face. She has
parted with everything that made life attractive to keep food and warmth
for him. She is simply existing now from day to day--one constant agony
of soul and sense--waiting for the end. She allowed me to take a doctor
to see him; I would have come for you, but you were out of town. He only
confirmed what others had told her a year ago. He advised her to have
him put in a safe place before he did some violence; but she refused,
and made us promise not to interfere. She said he would be able to harm
no one but her, if he became violent at the last, and she was ready for
that. It was easier far to live that way and wait for that each day
than to have him taken away where he would be unhappy and perhaps
ill-treated. He needed her care and love beside him every hour, and she
--she needed nothing."

Here Barker flung himself into a chair and let his head fall on his
folded arms on the table.

"That is the way love makes poverty easy to bear," he said, bitterly,
after a time, and his trembling hands clinched tight together.

"Did you give her any money?" I asked.

He groaned. "Yes, yes, I--that is, I left some on the table under her
sewing. She isn't the kind of woman one can offer charity. She--"

"No," I said, "she isn't, and beside, for the pain that tortures her it
is too late now for money to help. Only it may relieve her somewhat to
feel sure that she can get what he needs to eat and wear and to keep him
warm and allow her to be free from the necessity of outside work. I am
glad you left the money. But--but--Barker, do you think she will use it,
coming that way and from a stranger?"

He looked up forlornly. "No, I don't," he said; "and yet she may. I will
hope so; but if she does, what then? The terrible question will still
remain just where it was. That is no way to solve it; we can't bail out
the ocean with a thimble. And what an infamous imposition all this talk
is of 'resignation' to such as she; for her terrible calm, as she talked
to me, had no hint of resignation in it. She is simply, calmly, quietly
desperate now--and she is one of many." He groaned aloud.

"Will you take me there the next time you go?" I asked.

"She said I must not come back; she could not be an object of
curiosity--nor allow him to be. She said that she allowed me to come
this time because on the night we first saw her she had stepped into
that little hall to keep herself from freezing in her thin clothes as
she was making her way home, and she saw that I was earnest in what I
said, and she stayed to listen--" his voice broke again.

Just then the drapery was drawn back, and his wife, superbly robed,
swept in, bringing a bevy of girls.

"Oh, Mr. Barker," said one, gayly, "you don't know what you missed
to-night by deserting our theatre party; it was all so real--love in
rags, you know, and all that sort of thing; only I really don't like to
see _quite_ so much attention paid to the 'Suffering poor,' with a big
S, and the lower classes generally. I think the stage can do far better
than that, don't you? But it is the new fad, I suppose, and after all I
fancy it doesn't do much harm, only as it makes that sort of people more
insufferably obtrusive about putting their ill-clad, bad-smelling woes
before the rest of us. What a beautiful vase this is, Mrs. Barker! May I
take it to the light?"

"Certainly, my dear," laughed Mrs. Barker; "and I agree with you, as
usual. I think it is an exquisite vase--and that the stage is becoming
demoralized. It is pandering to the low taste for representations of
low life. I confess I don't like it. That sort of people do not have the
feelings to be hurt--the fine sensibilities and emotions attributed to
them. Those grow up in refined and delicate surroundings. That is what I
often tell Roland when he insists upon making himself unhappy over some
new 'case' of destitution. I tell him to send them five dollars by mail
and not to worry himself, and I won't allow him to worry me with his
Christie-street emotions."

Barker winced, and I excused myself and withdrew, speculating on certain
phases of delicacy of feeling and fine sensibility.




III.

I did not see Barker again for nearly three weeks, when one night my
bell was rung with unusual violence, and I heard an excited voice in my
hall. "Be quick, John; hurry," it said, "and tell the doctor I must see
him at once. Tell him it is Roland Barker."

John had evidently demurred at calling me at so late an hour.

"All right, Barker; I'll be down in a moment," I called from above. "No,
come up. You can tell me what is the matter while I dress. Is it for
yourself? There, go in that side room, I can hear you, and I'll be
dressed in a moment."

"Hurry, hurry," he said, excitedly, "I'll tell you on the way. I have my
carriage. Don't wait to order yours, only hurry, hurry, hurry."

Once in the carriage, I said: "Barker, you are going to use yourself up,
this way. You can't keep this sort of thing up much longer. You'd better
go abroad."

"Drive faster," he called, to the man on top. Then to me, "If you are
not the first doctor there? there will be a dreadful scene. They will
most likely arrest her for murder."

"Whom?" said I. "You have told me nothing, and how can I prevent that if
a murder has been committed?"

"By giving her a regular death certificate," said he, coolly, "saying
that you attended the case, and that it was a natural death. I depend
upon you, Gordon; it would be simply infamous to make her suffer any
more. I cannot help her now, but you can, you _must_. No one will know
the truth but us, and afterwards we can help her--to forget. She is not
an old woman; there may be something in life for her yet."

"Is it the Lady of the Club?" I asked. We had always called her that
"What has she done?"

"Yes," he said, "it is the 'Lady of the Club.' and she has poisoned her
husband."

"Good God!" exclaimed I; "and you want me to give her a regular death
certificate and say I attended the case?"

"You must," he said; "it would be infamous not to. She could not bear it
any longer. She found herself breaking down, and she would not leave him
alive without her care and love. He had become almost helpless, except
when short violent spells came on. These left him exhausted. He almost
killed her in the last one. Her terror was that he would do so and
then regain his reason--that he would know it afterwards and perhaps be
dragged through the courts. She had been working in a chemist's office,
it seems, when she was able to do anything. She took some aconitine, and
to-night she put everything in perfect order, gave him the best supper
she could, got him to bed, and then--gave him that. She sent for me and
told me as calmly as--God! it was the calm of absolute desperation.
She sat there when I went in, holding his poor dead hand and kissing it
reverently. She laid it down and told me what I tell you. There was
not a tear, a moan, a sigh. She said: 'Here is the money you left--all
except what I paid for his supper to-night. We had gotten down to that
before I had the chance to steal the poison or the courage to give it to
him. I had not meant to use any of the money; the rest is here. I would
like it used--if you are willing--to bury him decently, not in the
Potter's Field, and I would like--if you will take the trouble--to have
it done absolutely privately. We have borne enough. I cannot bear for
even his ashes to be subjected to any further humiliation.'"

Roland Barker paused to command himself. "Of course I promised her," he
went on, after a time. "She does not realize that she may be arrested
and have his poor body desecrated to find the cause of death. That would
make her insane--even if-- Drive faster!" he called out again to the
man outside. When we reached the house he said: "Be prepared to see her
perfectly calm. It is frightful to witness, and I tremble for the result
later on."

When we knocked on her door there was no response. I pushed it open and
entered first. The room was empty. We went to the inner doer and rapped
gently, then louder. There was no sound. Barker opened the door, and
then stepped quickly back and closed it. "She is kneeling there by his
bed," he said; "write the certificate here and give it to me. Then I
will bring an undertaker and--he and I can attend to everything else. I
did want you to see her. I think you should give her something to make
her sleep. That forced calm will make her lose her mind. She is so
shattered you would not recognize her."

"Stay here, Barker," I said; "I want to see her alone for a moment. I
will tell her who I am and that you brought me--if I need to."

He eyed me sharply, but I stepped hastily into the inner room. I touched
the shoulder and then the forehead of the kneeling form. It did not
move. "Just as I expected," I muttered, and lifting the lifeless body
in my arms I laid it gently beside her husband. In one hand she held
the vial from which she had taken the last drop of the deadly drug, and
clasped in the other her husband's fingers. She had been dead but a few
moments, and both she and her husband were robed for the grave.

When I returned to the outer room I found Barker with a note in his
hand, and a shocked and horrified look on his face. He glanced up at me
through his tears.

"We were too late," he said. "She left this note for me. I found it here
on the table. She meant to do it all along, and that is why she was so
calm and had no fears for herself."

"I thought so when you told me what she had done," said I.

"Did you? I did not for a moment, or I would have stayed and tried to
reason her out of it."

"It is best as it is," said I, "and you could not have reasoned her out
of it. It was inevitable--after the rest. Take this certificate too; you
will need both."

When all was safely over, as we drove home from the new graves two days
later, Barker said: "Is this the solution?"

I did not reply.

Presently he said: "To the dead, who cannot suffer, we can be kind and
shield them even from themselves. Is there no way to help the living? A
few hundred dollars, two short years ago, would have saved all this, and
there was no way for her to get it. She knew it _all_ then, and there
was no help!"

"Why did she not, in such a case as that, push back her pride and go
to some one? There must be thousands who would have gladly responded to
such a call as that," I argued.

He buried his face in his hands for a moment and shuddered. At last
he said: "She did--she went to three good men, men who had known, been
friendly with, admired her and her husband. Two of them are worth their
millions, the other one is rich. She only asked to borrow, and promised
to repay it herself if she had to live and work after he were dead to do
it!"

He paused.

"You do not mean to tell me that they refused--and they old friends and
rich?" I asked, amazed.

"I mean to say just this: they one and all made some excuse; they did
not let her have it."

"She told them what the doctors said, and of her fears?"

"She did," he answered, sadly.

"And yet you say they are good men!" I exclaimed, indignantly.

"Good, benevolent, charitable, every one of them," he answered.

"Were you one of them, Barker?" I asked, after a moment's pause.

"Thank God, no!" he replied. "But perhaps in some other case I have done
the same, if I only knew the whole story. Those men do not know this
last, you must remember."

"And the worst of it is, we dare not tell them," said I, as we parted.

"No, we dare not," he replied, and left me standing with the copy of the
burial certificate in my hand.

"Natural causes?" I said to myself, looking at it. "Died of natural
causes--the brutality and selfishness of man--and poverty with love.
_Natural_ causes! Yes." And I closed my office door and turned out the
light.




UNDER PROTEST.

_"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you._

_"Much more, perchance, might be said; but I hold him, of all men, most
lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale."_

Bret Harte.


When the new family moved into, and we were told had bought, the cottage
nearest our own, we were naturally interested in finding out what kind
of people they were, and whether we had gained or lost by the change of
neighbors.

In a summer place like this it makes a good deal of difference just what
kind of people live so near to you that when you are sitting on your
veranda and they are swinging in hammocks on theirs, the most of the
conversation is common property, unless you whisper, and one does not
want to spend three or four months of each year mentally and verbally
tiptoeing about one's own premises. Then, on the other hand, there
are few less agreeable situations to be placed in than to be forced to
listen to confidences or quarrels with which you have nothing whatever
to do, or else be deprived of the comforts and pleasures of out-door
life, to secure which you endure so many other annoyances.

Our new neighbors were, therefore, as you will admit, of the utmost
interest and importance to us, and I was naturally very much pleased, at
the end of the first week, when I returned one day from a fishing party,
from which my wife's headache had detained her, by the report she gave
me of their attitude toward each other. (From her glowing estimate, I
drew rose-colored pictures of their probable kindliness and generosity
toward others.) Up to this time they had been but seldom outside of
their house, and we had not gathered much information of their doings,
except the fact that a good deal of nice furniture had come, and they
appeared to be greatly taken up in beautifying and arranging their
cottage. This much promised well, so far as it went; but we had not
lived to our time of life not to find out, long ago, that the most
exquisitely appointed houses sometimes lack the one essential feature;
that is, ladies and gentlemen to occupy them.

"They are lovely!" said my wife, the moment I entered the door, before
I had been able to deposit my fishing-tackle and ask after her headache.
"They are lovely; at least he is," she amended. "I am sure we shall
be pleased with them; or, at least, with him. A man as careful of, and
attentive to, his wife as he is can't help being an agreeable neighbor."

"Good!" said I. "How did you find out? And how is your headache?--Had
a disgusting time fishing. Glad you did not go. Sun was hot; breeze
was hot; boatman's temper was a hundred and twenty in the shade; bait
wouldn't stay on the hooks, and there weren't any fish any way. But how
did you say your head is?"

"My head?" said my wife, with that retrospective tone women have, which
seemed to indicate that if she had ever had a head, and if her head had
ever ached, and if headache was a matter of sufficient importance to
remember, in all human probability it had recovered in due time. "My
head? Oh, yes--Oh, it is all right; but you really never did see any one
so tractable as that man. And adaptable! Why, it is a perfect wonder. Of
course I had no business to look or listen; but I did. I just couldn't
help it. The fact is, I thought they were quarrelling at first, and I
almost fainted. I said to myself, 'If they are that kind of people
we will sell out. I will not live under the constant drippings of
ill-temper.' Quarrelling ought to be a penitentiary offence; that is,
I mean the bickerings and naggings most people dignify by that name. I
could endure a good, square, stand-up and knock down quarrel, that had
some character to it; but the eternal differences, often expressed by
the tones of voice only, I can't stand." I smiled an emphatic assent,
and my wife went on.

"Well, I must confess his tones of voice are, at times, against him; but
I'm not sure that it is not due to the distance. _All_ of his tones may
not carry this far. I'm sure they don't, for when I first heard him,
and made up my mind that it was a horrid, common, plebeian little row,
I went to the west bedroom window--you know it looks directly into their
kitchen--and what do you suppose I saw?"

The question was so sudden and wholly unexpected, and my mental
apparatus was so taken up with the story that I found myself with no
ideas whatever on the subject Indeed I do not believe that my wife
wanted me to guess what she saw, half so much as she wanted breath; but
I gave the only reply which the circumstances appeared to admit of, and
which, I was pleased to see, in spite of its seeming inadequacy, was
as perfectly satisfactory to the blessed little woman as if it had been
made to order and proven a perfect fit.

"I can't imagine," said I.

"Of course you can't," she replied, pushing my crossed legs into
position, and seating herself on my knees.

"Of course you can't. A man couldn't. Well, it seems their servant left
last night, and that blessed man was washing the dishes this morning.
The difference of opinion had been over which one of them should do it."

"Why, the confounded brute!" said I. "He is a good deal better able to
do it than she is. She looks sick, and so long as he has no business
to attend to down here, he has as much time as she and a good deal more
strength to do that kind of work."

"Well, I just knew you'd look at it that way," said my wife, with an
inflection of pride and admiration which indicated that I had made a
ten strike of some kind, of which few men--and not many women--would be
capable.

"But that was not it at all," continued she.

I began laboriously to readjust my mental moorings to this seemingly
complicated situation, and was on the verge of wondering why my wife was
so pleased with me for simply making a mistake, when she began again,
after giving me a little pat of unqualified satisfaction and sympathy.

"They both wanted to do it. She said she wasn't a bit tired and could do
it alone just as well as not, and he'd break the glasses with his funny,
great, big fingers; and he said he'd be careful not to break anything,
and that the dish-water would spoil her hands."

"Good," said I, "I shall like the fellow. I------"

"Of course you will," my wife broke in, enthusiastically; "but that
isn't all. I went to sleep after that, and later on was awakened by a
loud--and as I thought at the time--a very angry voice. I went to
the window again only to see a laughing scuffle between them over the
potato-knife. She wanted to scrape them and he wanted to scrape them. Of
course he got the knife, and it really did look too comical to see him
work with those little bulbs. He put his whole mind on them, and he
didn't catch her picking over the berries until she was nearly done.
Then he scolded again. He said he did the potatoes to keep her from
getting her thumb and forefinger black, and here she was with her whole
hand covered with berry stain. He seemed really vexed, and I must say
his voice doesn't carry this far as if he was half as nice as he is.
I think there ought to be a chair of voices attached to every
school-house--so to speak--and the result of the training made one of
the tests of admission to the colleges of the country. Don't you?"

Again I was wholly unprepared for her sudden question, and was only
slowly clambering around the idea she had suggested, so I said--somewhat
irrelevantly, no doubt--"It may be."

She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then said, as she
got up and crossed the room: "You didn't hear a word I said, and you
don't begin to appreciate that man anyway."

"I did hear you, dear," I protested; "I was listening as hard as I
could--and awfully interested--but a fellow can't skip along at that
rate and have well-matured views on tap without a moment's warning.
You've got to be like the noble ladies in the 'Lay of the Last
Minstrel,' 'and give me heart and give me time.' Now _they_ understood
men. We're slow."

She laughed and tied the last pink bow in the lace of a coquettish
little white gown and dragged me out on the veranda.

Our new neighbors were out ahead of us.

"I don't think so at all, Margaret," we heard him say, as we took our
chairs near the edge of the porch to catch any stray breeze that might
be wandering our way.

"Sh--," we heard her say; "don't talk so loud. They will think you are
going to scalp me."

"Oh, don't bother about the neighbors; let 'em hear," said he, "let 'em
think. Who cares? If they haven't got anything better to do than sit
around and think, they'd better move away from our neighborhood."

"Sh--said she again, looking at him with a good deal of emphasis in her
eyes.

"Well, it is too bad, isn't it?" acquiesced he, in a much lower voice,
and one from which every vestige of the tone of protest had vanished.

"It _is_ too bad that these summer cottages are built so close together
that you can't tie your shoes without being overheard by the folks next
door? It makes me nervous. I feel as if I had to sit up straight all
the time and smile like a crocodile, or else run the risk of being
misunderstood."

"It _is_ trying, dear," she said, "and destroys a good deal of the
comfort and ease of one's outing."

"Nothing of the kind," began he, so explosively as to make my wife jump.

"Sh--," whispered the lady next door, but he went on.

"Nothing of the kind. I don't let it bother me in the least. They can
attend to their own affairs, and I----"

"Sh--," said his wife; "suppose we walk down to the beach." She began to
adjust her wrap.

"It is a good deal more comfortable here," he protested, "and besides
I'm tired."

"So you are, of course," she said, regretfully. "I forgot. Such unusual
work for a man would tire him;" and she loosened the lace veil she had
drawn over her head and reseated herself.

"Well, are you ready?" questioned he, clapping on his hat and suddenly
starting down the steps.

"Ready for what?" asked she, in surprise.

"The deuce, Margaret. I thought you said that you were going to the
beach!"

She got up, readjusted her veil, took her wrap on her arm, and ran
lightly after him.

"I wonder if I shall need this wrap?" she said as she passed our gate.

"Heavens! no," he replied, "and it will heat you all up to carry it.
Here, give it to me. I don't see what on earth you brought it for. I'm
certainly hot enough without loading me up with this."

"I will carry it," she said, cheerfully; "I don't feel the heat on my
arm as you do--or I'll run back and leave it on the porch. You walk
slowly. I can easily catch up."

She started; but he took the shawl from her, threw it lightly over his
shoulder, and, pulling her hand through his arm, said gayly, and in the
most compliant tone: "It isn't very warm. I won't notice this little
thing and, besides, you'll need it down there, as like as not."

When they were out of hearing my wife drew a long breath and said: "I
wonder if we ever sound like that to other people?--and yet, they seem
to be devoted to each other," she added hastily.

"They are, no doubt," said I, "only he appears to be a chronic kicker."

"A comic what?" said my wife, in so loud a tone that I involuntarily
exclaimed "Sh--!"

We both laughed. Then she said: "But really, dear, I didn't understand
what you said he was. There doesn't seem to me to be anything comic
about him, though. And----"

"Comic! Well, I should think not," said I. "I should think it would be
anything but comic to that little woman to go through that sort of thing
every time she opened her mouth. What I said was that he seems to be
a chronic kicker, and I might add--with some show of fairness--that he
impresses me as the champion of Kicktown at that."

"Sh--," laughed my wife, "they're coming back."

"I don't agree with you at all. There is no need to do anything of the
kind," were the first words we heard from a somewhat distant couple, and
my wife concluded that our new neighbors were not very far off. "It
would be no end of trouble for you. You'd get all tired out; and
besides, what do we owe to the Joneses that makes it necessary for you
to disturb all our little comforts to ask them down here?" he continued.
We could not hear her reply; but his protest and evident deep
dissatisfaction with the whole scheme went bravely on.

She passed into the house and left him on the steps. When she came out
a few moments later he said, sweetly: "As I was just saying, it will be
quite a diversion for you to see the girls, and I'd enjoy the old man
hugely. He's a jolly old coon; and then we owe it to them after all they
did for you."

"What girls? What old man is a jolly coon?" asked she, in an utterly
bewildered tone.

"Margaret! The Joneses, of course. Whom have we been talking about for
the last half-hour?" exploded he.

"Oh," said she, having evidently quite given over asking the Joneses,
and become occupied with other thoughts, "I thought the idea did not
please you. But I'm so glad. It will do you good to have him here, and I
shall be delighted."

"Do me good!" exploded he. "Do me good! Tiresome old bore, if there ever
was one. Women are queer fish to deal with, but I'm sure I don't care
whom you invite here."

Our neighbors withdrew for the night and we sighed with relief. About
two o'clock my wife touched me to find if I was asleep. The movement
was so stealthy that I inferred at once that there were burglars in the
house. I was wide awake in an instant.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Well, I'm glad you're awake. I want to know what that was you called
the man next door. I forgot what it was, and I couldn't sleep for trying
to remember."

I laughed. "I believe I said that he impressed me as one so addicted
to the reprehensible habit of protest--on general principles, as
it were--that it had now become the normal condition of his mental
constitution."

"You didn't say any such thing," said she. "You--"

"I believe that at the time of which you speak I allowed myself to be
guilty of a habit you do not wholly admire; but I really had no idea it
would keep you awake. I used slang. I said that he was a chronic kicker,
and--"

"That's it! That's it!" exclaimed she, with deep satisfaction. "He's a
'chronic kicker.' Well, if you'll believe me, he hasn't stopped kicking
long enough to say his prayers decently since we went to bed. First
about what time it was; then about which room they'd sleep in; then
there was too much cover; then the windows were wrong; then--oh,
heavens!--I wonder if he kicks in his sleep? He always comes around to
reason in time; but if there was ever anything more maddening to meet
than that constant wall of protest--for the sake of protest--I don't
know what it could be."

"Nor--I," said I, half asleep.

Presently her hand grasped mine vigorously, and I sprang up startled,
for I had been sound asleep again. "What's the matter?" I said, in a
loud tone.

"Sh--," whispered my wife. "Don't speak in that tone. I'd rather people
would think you stayed out nights, than to suppose you stayed at home
and nagged me. He's at it again. I'd most gone to sleep and his voice
nearly scared the life out of me. She wanted to close the window. He
objected, of course; said he'd smother--sh--"

Just then we heard our neighbor's wife ask sleepily: "What are you
doing, dear?"

"Closing this detestable window. Lets in too much salt air. 'Fraid
you'll get chilled. I am. Where's another blanket?"

The window went down with a bang, and we heard no more of our neighbors
that night. But the next morning the same thing began again, and I do
not believe that during that entire summer he ever agreed with his wife
the first time she spoke, nor failed to come around to her view after he
took time to think it over. I remember when I was introduced to him,
a week later, his wife said: "This is our nearest neighbor, you know,
Thomas, and--"

"No, he isn't, Margaret; the people back of us are nearer," he said.
Then to me: "Pleased to meet you. I believe our wives have become quite
good friends. I'm very glad for Margaret's sake, too. It's dull for her
with only an old fellow like me to entertain her, and she not very well.
And then, as she says, you are our nearest neighbor, and we really ought
not to be too ceremonious at such a place as this."

"I thought, Thomas," suggested his wife, "that you said one could not
be too particular. Why, you quite blustered when I first told you I had
made advances to some of the other--"

"Nonsense! I did nothing of the kind," broke in he. "What on earth ever
put such an idea into your head, Margaret? You know I always say that
without pleasant neighbors, and friendly relations with them, a summer
cottage is no place for a white man to live."

My wife hastened to change the subject. Nothing on earth is more
distasteful to her than a family contest, of even a very mild type,
especially when the tones of voice seem to express more of indignation
and a desire to override, than a mere difference of opinion. She thought
the surf a safe subject.

"Was not the water lovely to-day? You were in, I suppose?" she inquired
of our neighbor's wife.

"Yes, we were in," she began, enthusiastically. "It was perfect and--"

"I don't know what you call perfect," broke in he, "I called it beastly.
It was so cold I felt like a frog when I got out, and you looked half
frozen. The fact is, this is too far north to bathe for pleasure in the
surf. It may be good for one's health, but it is anything but pleasant.
Now at Old Point Comfort it is different. I like it there."

"Why, James," said his wife, "I thought you preferred this because of
the more bracing and exhilarating effect."

After a little more objection, which he seemed to think firmly
established his independence, he ended his remarks thus:

"Of course, as you say, it is more bracing. Yes, that's a fact,
Margaret. I couldn't help noticing when I came out this morning that I
felt like a new man, and you--why, 'pon my word, you looked as bright
and rosy as a girl of sixteen. Oh, the surf here is great. It really is.
I like it; don't you?"

This last he had addressed to me. I was so occupied in a study of, and
so astonished by, the facility with which he took his mental flops,
after enjoying his little "kick," that I was taken off my feet by his
sudden appeal to me, and was quite at a loss for a reply which would do
justice to the occasion, and at the same time put a stop to the contest
between husband and wife.

But, as usual, my wife hastened to my rescue and covered my confusion by
her gay little laugh and explanation.

"Ha, ha, ha," she laughed, "you have caught my husband napping already.
I know exactly where he was. He was lumbering along through an elaborate
speculation on, and a comparison of, the relative merits of--" here
she began telling them off on her fingers to the great amusement of our
neighbors--"first, fresh and salt water bathing; second, the method,
time, place, and condition of each as affected by the moon, stars,
and Gulf Stream. He was, most likely, climbing over Norway with
a thermometer, or poking a test-tube of some kind into the
semi-liquefaction which passes itself off as water to those unfortunates
who are stranded along the shores of the Mississippi. Just wait; one of
these days he will get down to our discussion and he'll agree with us
when he gets there. But don't hurry him."

We all joined in the laugh at my expense; and I remarked that I had
served so long as a target for my wife's fun that even if I could skip
around, mentally, at as lively a rate as she seemed to expect, I would
pretend that I couldn't, in order not to deprive her of her chief source
of amusement. At this point our neighbor's new cook came to the edge
of their porch and asked her mistress if she might speak to her for a
moment. She arose to go.

"Oh, thunder, Margaret, I hope you don't intend to allow that worthless
girl to call you home every time you go any place. Tell her to wait. It
can't be much she wants," said our neighbor.

"Jane," said his wife sweetly, reseating herself, "you can wait until I
come home. It won't be long."

"I wonder if you'd better do that, Margaret," said he, just as our wives
had begun to discuss something relative to housekeeping. "Jane is a
good girl, and she wouldn't call you if it were not something important,
Don't you think we had better go at once?"

"I did think so," said she, and bidding us goodnight our neighbors
crossed the lawn and re-entered their own door and closed it for the
night.

After a long pause my wife said, in a stage whisper: "I suppose it is
his way of showing that he is 'boss,' as the boys say--the final
appeal in his own household--his idea of the dignity of the masculine
prerogative."

A sudden stop. I thought she expected me to say something, so I began:

"I don't know. I doubt it. It looks to me like a case of--"

"Don't! don't!" exclaimed my wife, in tragic accents "oh, _don't_ catch
it. I really couldn't live with a chronic objector. Anything else. I
really believe I could stand any other phase of bullying better than
that--to feel that at any minute I am liable to run against a solid wall
of 'I don't agree with you!' If it were _real_ I wouldn't mind it so
much; but to hear that man 'kick,' as you say, just for the sake
of asserting himself, and then come around as he does, is perfectly
maddening. The very first symptom I see in you I shall look upon it as a
danger signal--I'll move."

At that moment, before our quiet little laugh, at their expense, had
died away, there floated out from the bedroom window of our neighbors'
cottage, this refrain:

"Well, goodness knows, Margaret, _I_ didn't want to come home. I knew it
was all perfect nonsense. If you--"

My wife suddenly arose, took me by the hand and said quite seriously:
"Come in the house, dear. This atmosphere is too unwholesome to endure
any longer."

The next day she said to me, "Let's go to Old Point Comfort next year."

"All right," said I; "but what shall we do with the cottage? You know we
hold the lease for another year, with the 'refusal' to buy."

"Rent it to your worst enemy, or, better still, get him to buy it. Just
think of the exquisite revenge you could take that way. Twenty-four
hours every day, for four long months each year, to know that you had
him planted next door to a 'chronic kicker.' Or don't you hate anybody
bad enough for that?" and my wife actually shuddered.

"I don't believe I do, dear," said I; "but I'll do my level best to
_rent_ it to him for one season. You know I wouldn't care to murder him;
if he's hopelessly maimed I'll be satisfied."

We both laughed; but the next day I advertised the lease of a cottage
for sale very cheap, and gave as a reason my desire to go where there
were fewer people. I think this will catch my enemy. He likes a crowd,
and he'd enjoy nothing better than to feel that I was forced to pay half
of his rent. So I marked the paper and sent it to him, and confidently
await the result.




FOR THE PROSECUTION.

_"So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer
for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human sufferings that
even Justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution
that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited
pain."_--George Eliot.




I.

Shortly after Fred Mathews began the practice of law he was elected to
the office of Prosecuting Attorney in the Western town to which he had
gone when first admitted to the bar.

Of course, every law student becomes familiar with the jests and
gibes cast at the members of the profession as men who are peculiarly
economical of the truth. He smiles with those who hint that a lawyer is
always lavish of advice that leads to litigation.

That students of Blackstone and Coke hear much merrymaking over and some
serious criticism of the quibbles to which the best of them are
supposed to resort--of making little of real evidence and much
of trivialities--goes without saying. Nor are they unaware of the
fact--alas! sometimes too well founded upon strong evidence--that
the general public appears to be convinced that laws are made for the
purpose of shielding the rich and oppressing the poor or unfortunate.

No student of average ability enters practice uninformed that there is
a widespread belief that a man of social position or financial power
has little to fear as a result of his misdeeds, while his less fortunate
neighbor could not hope to escape the worst legal consequences of his
most trivial lapse from rectitude.

Fred Mathews had made up his mind--as many a young fellow had done
before him--that he would do everything in his power to hold the scales
of justice level.

He determined that such ability as he possessed should be used for the
benefit of society, and that neither bribe nor threat should ever entice
him from the strict performance of his duty to the profession which he
had entered. He would never accept a case in which he did not honestly
believe. No man's money should buy him and no man's wrath intimidate. In
short, he intended to be a lawyer with a conscience as well as a man of
integrity, no matter what the result might be.

He made so good a beginning in the first two years of his practice that
it was at the end of the third, when he found himself holding the office
of Prosecuting Attorney, with a record clean, and fair sailing ahead,
that a piece of news which came to him caused him to doubt himself for
the first time.

The shock of that doubt thrilled every fibre in his nature, for with it
came the one fear that is terrible to a brave mind which is aroused for
the first time to its own possibilities--the fear to trust itself--the
dread lest it betray its own higher nature under the pressure of old
habits of thought or new social problems.

Right and wrong had always seemed to him to have the most decided and
clear-cut outlines. He had never thought of himself as standing before
them unable to distinguish their boundaries. He had felt that he could
answer bravely enough the question: "What would you do if required to
choose between honor and dishonor?" It was a strange thing to him that
his present perplexity should grow out of a simple burglary case. There
did not appear to him, at first, to be more than one side to such a
case. He was the Prosecuting Attorney. A store had been robbed. Among
other things a sealskin sacque was taken. By means of this cloak the
burglary had been traced--it was claimed--to a certain young man high
in social life. The duties of his office had led the State's attorney to
prosecute the investigation with his usual vigor and impartiality until
he had succeeded beyond his fairest hopes. Indeed, the chain of evidence
now in his possession was so strong and complete that he--for the first
time in his career--recognized that he shrank from using the testimony
at his command.

He felt that it was his duty to cause to be apprehended a young man who
had up to the present time borne a spotless reputation; who had been a
fellow student at college; whose social position was that of a leader,
and who was soon to marry one of the most charming girls in the town.
The situation was painful, but Fred Mathews felt that his own honor was
at stake quite as truly as was that of his old schoolfellow. Here was
his first opportunity to show that he held his duty above his desires.
Here was the first case in which social influence and financial power
were on the side of a criminal whom it was his duty to prosecute to the
end.

His professional pride, as well as his honor, was enlisted; for this
was the third burglary which had been committed recently, and so far the
"gang"--as the newspapers assumed and the police believed the offenders
to be--had not been caught.

Fred Mathews now thought he had every reason to believe that the same
hand had executed all three crimes and that the recklessness of
the last--the almost Wanton defiance of perfectly natural means of
precaution and concealment--had led to the discovery of this burglar in
high life.

After long deliberation, however, the young prosecutor made up his
mind that he would so far compromise with his conscience as to make a
personal, private call upon the young man who was under suspicion and
boldly accuse him of the theft of the tell-tale cloak that had been
traced to him, and take the consequences.

He was well aware that in case this course should lead to the escape of
the criminal he would be compelled to bear the abuse and suspicion which
would surely follow, for the evidence had passed through other hands
than his own.

He knew that he was taking a method which would be called in question,
and that he would not take it if the suspected man lived in a less
fashionable street or had the misfortune to be low born.

All this he knew quite well, and still he argued to himself that it was
the right thing for him to do, or at least that it was the best possible
under the circumstances, and that after giving Walter Banks a private
chance to clear himself--if such a thing were possible--he would still
be in a position to go on with the case, if that should be necessary.

That night, for the first time in his career, he allowed himself to be
kept awake, not by the fear that he should fail through inexperience in
his duty to his client--as had happened sometimes to trouble him earlier
in his professional life--but by a dread that he should wilfully betray
his trust to the public. At two o'clock he lay staring at the wall,
asking himself if he was becoming corrupt; if he, too, believed in
shielding guilt if only that guilt were dressed in purple and spoke with
a soft and cultured accent.




II.

"Mr. Banks will be down in a moment;" the trim maid had said, and left
the library door open as she withdrew.

The young prosecutor walked about the room uneasily. He had hoped at
the last moment that the object of his call would be from home--that he
would take fright and refuse to be seen--that action had been taken by
the police which would put it out of his power to give the warning that
he now felt he was here to give. But, no. "Mr. Banks will be down in
a moment." He had heard quite distinctly, and there had not been the
slightest accent of fear or annoyance in the voice that spoke.

In his agitation he had taken up a curiously wrought paper knife which
lay upon the table and had dropped it as if it had burned his fingers.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "_He_ was the college thief. It is no new
thing, then."

He took up the knife again and examined it closely. There could be no
mistake. It was a gold wrought, elaborately engraved blade, set in a
handle which had no duplicate, for the students, who had planned the
gift which had so mysteriously disappeared had devised and caused to be
engraved a secret symbol which was cut deep in the polished surface.

It was to have been a surprise for one of the favorites in the faculty.
It had disappeared--and here it was!

"Good morning, Mathews. This is really very kind. I--"

It was the voice of Walter Banks, but their eyes met over the fallen
paper knife, which had dropped from trembling fingers at the first word.

A great wave of color rushed into the face of young Banks. The
prosecutor stood mute and pale. Involuntarily he had tried to cover the
knife with a corner of the rug as he turned to meet his host. It vaguely
dawned upon him that he was a guest in a house where he was playing the
part of a detective. His hand was extended in the hearty western fashion
which had become second nature to him, but Walter Banks did not take it.

"Will you sit down?" said the host in a tone which was hoarse, and quite
unlike the frank, free voice that spoke a moment before.

As he seated himself he bent forward and took up the bit of tell-tale
gold and ivory. Then he said, slowly in a tone that was scarcely
audible:

"Yes, I took it. You are right. It _is_ the college knife."

"Don't! don't!" exclaimed Fred Mathews, rising. "I am-- You forget-- I
am-- My office. Think. I am for the prosecution!" His face was livid.
Young Banks leaned heavily against the table. The color began to die
out of his lips. His hand trembled as he laid the knife upon the table.
Neither spoke. The brain of the young prosecutor found only scraps
and shreds of thought, in which such words as duty, honor, pity,
hospitality, wealth, social order, floated vaguely here and there,
buffeted by the one insistent idea that he should go--go quickly--and
leave this man alone with his shame and humiliation.

Walter Banks was the first to speak.

"Come up to my room. Mother might come in here and--I suppose--you have
come about-- I--Is--? You say you are for the prosecution. Have they
traced the cloak to me?"

The lawyer stepped back again and looked at the man before him. What
could he mean by saying such a thing as that--_to him?_ They had never
been close friends, but now in spite of everything the thought that
he was the prosecutor kept itself steadily in the attorney's mind and
struggled with a pity and reluctance that were seeking to justify him by
a belief in the insanity of young Banks.

No one but a lunatic would have made that last remark. The thought was a
relief. He grasped at it eagerly and began to fashion his mental outlook
to fit the idea. Then suddenly came to him with overwhelming force all
he had ever heard or read of the failure of justice where criminals of
high degree were concerned.

He had followed his host to the stairs. Suddenly he turned, caught
up his hat from the stand where he had left it, and passed out of the
street door without a word. Once in the street he glanced involuntarily
up at the house. At the window of the room he had just left stood Walter
Banks. His arm was about his mother's shoulders, and both were very
pale. There was a strange likeness between them.




III.

Every conceivable form of pressure to prevent the trial of Walter Banks
was brought to bear in the next few weeks; but Prosecutor Mathews had
pushed the case vigorously in spite of it all. He felt not only that
justice was at stake, but that his own moral fibre was in pawn, as
well. He held aloof from his social friends--who were in many cases the
friends of the accused, also--lest he lose sight of his duty through
some fresh or new form of attack upon his integrity of purpose.

It had come to his knowledge that even the Judge who was to sit in the
case had been approached by the friends of the defendant, and it was
felt that it would be difficult to impanel a jury that would or could be
fair and impartial.

If but one man was drawn from the "upper class," the jury would be sure
to hang. On the other hand, if all of the talesmen were chosen from that
social caste which feels that it is usually the victim, it would go hard
with Walter Banks even if he were able--as seemed wholly unlikely--to
show a reasonably clear case in his favor.

The day came. The court-room held an unusual audience. There were many
ladies present who had never before seen the inside of such a room. They
held their breath and were filled with awe and fear--of they knew not
what.

Perhaps few men can realize what it is to a woman to face for the first
time the embodiment of all that her strong faith and utter ignorance has
carried to mature years as an ideal of justice and dignity--of solemn
obligation and fearful responsibility. To her there has been no reverse
side to the picture. She believes in courts as courts of justice. She
knows nothing of quibble, of technicality, of precedent. Nothing here
is light or humorous to her. Next to a death chamber the criminal
court-room is fullest of the thoughts which reach beyond mere human
responsibility and import, and all that passes there is freighted for
her with a sense of finality that few men can comprehend. _They_ think
of reversal of judgment.

The fiat of the court is the closing knell to a woman; and although she
may know the judge in private life to be a fallible or--more incongruous
still--a jovial man, his presence _here_ is overpowering. Of the jury
she feels vaguely, dread. Of the judge, awe.

The mother of the prisoner sat near him. Her sad, pale, refined face
troubled the young prosecutor sorely and he tugged at his conscience and
spurred on his resolution after each glance at her.

The case was so plain, the evidence so clear, the defence so weak that
the whole tide of public sentiment swung rapidly from the side of the
prisoner to that of the people.

The indignation for him which had been felt by the society women who had
come to show themselves as his friends changed into scorn and contempt.
The whole mental atmosphere of the room underwent a revolution. When
court opened few besides the officers believed him guilty. As the
case drew near its close no one believed him innocent. He had not been
allowed by his counsel to take the stand in his own behalf, and this had
told strongly against him in the minds of both jury and spectators. The
prosecuting attorney had made a telling speech, and the charge of the
judge was plainly indicative of his opinion that there was but one
verdict to give.

The jury had taken but one ballot. They had needed no charge from the
judge at all.

"Guilty,"--came from the foreman's lips with a decided accent that
indicated a certain satisfaction in pronouncing it. The prisoner's face
grew a shade paler, but the puzzled light in his eyes lost nothing of
that weary, insistent questioning that had marked their depths all day.
Indeed, he seemed to be as much surprised, as the evidence had been
unfolded, as were the friends who were there to see him vindicated.

During the speech of the prosecutor and the charge of the judge young
Banks; mother had held her son's hand and tears had dropped unheeded
from her eyes.

The judge had spoken again, but no one moved. The attorney for the
prisoner bent forward and touched him on the shoulder.

"Stand up for sentence," he said. "The judge"--

"Sit still!" It was the woman beside him who spoke. She had dried her
tears. Every face in the room was turned toward her now. She staggered
to her feet. Her voice penetrated every corner of the room.

"_I_ am the thief, judge. Sentence me. I stole the cloak!"

"Mother, mother! Great God, it is not true! Mother, sit down! She never
saw the coat. Mother! Mother! Great God, what does it mean?"

The young fellow had sprung to his feet, but she eluded his grasp, and
before any one knew what she intended to do she passed onto the witness
stand.

There was a tense silence in the room. No one was prepared for the
scene. It had been so swiftly done--so wholly without warning--that
every one sat dumb.

She had caught up the Bible as she reached the stand and pressed it
to her lips. She was vaguely aware that this act was looked upon as
affecting the credibility of the witness. She also imagined that it gave
her a right to put in her evidence even at this stage of the trial. She
supposed that a trial was for the purpose of arriving at the facts and
that the Court sat with that object alone in view. She did not know that
it was too late. She was unaware that the case would have to be reopened
to admit her evidence. She did not know that it was possible for the
gate of justice to be swung shut in the face of truth. She supposed
that all trials were for the one purpose of getting at the bottom of the
case; so that it did not occur to her that her action was strange only
in so far as such a confession from such a woman must be so regarded by
all who knew her, and who was there in all the town who did not know and
respect her?

The young prosecutor sat mute. The eyes of the judge widened in
astonishment. For the moment he was the man and neighbor only. He forgot
his office. She was talking rapidly, and all were listening.

"I am the thief, judge. Let me tell you. It is not right that he should
suffer for my crime. Poor boy, his life has been a hell on earth for
_me--for me!_ And he has never understood. I could not tell him. I shall
now. He shall understand. _You_ shall, judge. Oh, God, if only a woman
sat where you do--a mother! But let me tell you; I can. I thought I
could not; but I can--even to _these_ gentlemen." She waved her hand
toward the jury and there was a widening of her nostrils as if her
breath and courage were leaving her. "Rather than have him punished,
disgraced, ruined, I can tell it all. He is _not_ guilty. It is I! It is
I!" She put her trembling hands to her temples and her eyes were those
of a hunted creature at bay.

"Before he came into the world--you'll let me tell you frankly, judge?
_I must_. Before he came into the world I made him what he is--a thief.
Did I or did his father? It was like this. I am ashamed to tell it, but,
oh, judge, I _loved_ him, and I longed to make the pretty things and
buy the dainty ones that would make his soft, white, dimpled flesh
look sweeter when he should lie before me. His father was--you knew his
father, judge. He was a good man, but-- You know how he loved money--and
power. He-- I-- I was the pauper most young wives are. I was too proud
to ask for money, and if I _had_ asked often-- But I was too proud, so,
perhaps, I need not tell about the if. Most women know it, and-- You
could not understand."

She paused. A panic had overtaken her nerves. She was becoming vaguely
conscious of her position. Her eyes wandered over the room; but when
they fell upon her son, sitting with his wretched face pinched and
startled, with his deep eyes staring at her, her courage came again.

"At first I had no thought of theft. I used to go each night after my
husband fell asleep and take a little money from his pocket. Only
a little. He never missed it--never. So he used to whip the boy for
stealing afterward and said he would disgrace us and-- I never told
him even then. Life was horrible. The growing certainty maddened me. He
would steal anything, everything about the house, even his own things.
He did not understand himself and he could not help it; but I did not
think it would ever come to _this_--through me--_through me!_"

She calmed herself again suddenly by a glance at her son.

"Every night I took only a little money. My motive was a good one.
I knew my husband did not understand how I longed to get the pretty
things. How-- Of course in one sense I had a right to the money. He was
rich even then, but--I _felt_ myself a--pauper--and a thief.

"I-- Do you think young mothers should be young paupers, judge? I've
sometimes thought that if they were not there might be less use for
courts like this--and prisons.

"I've sometimes thought if mothers sat on juries they'd know the reasons
why for crime and wrong and, maybe, work to cure the causes of
the crimes rather than simply punish those who have committed them
blindly--_often blindly_.

"I've sometimes thought the cost--in money--would be less; and then the
cost in love and sorrow! Oh, judge, be patient just a little longer.
Do not let them stop me. It means so much to _us!_ I'll go back to
the point. I'll tell the truth--all of it--all. But it is hard to do
it--here.

"I bought the little wardrobe; but remember, judge, the months and
months of daily building, bone on bone, fibre within fibre, thought on
thought that is moulded into shape for human beings!

"I knew your father, judge. Your eyes are like his, but all your mental
life--your temperament--you got from other blood than filled his veins.

"Your father's mother gave you your character. Your gentle heart is
hers--your patient thoughtfulness. I knew her well. I knew your mother,
too. She was the teacher of my motherhood. It was to her I told the
truth in my boy's childhood--when I first began to realize or fear
what I had done. You owe it all to her that you are strong and true. She
understood in time--and now you sit in judgment on my boy, whose mother
learned from yours too late the meaning and the danger of it all.
She saved my other children. I killed my pride for them. _I asked
for money_. The others may be _beggars_ some day--they never will be
thieves.

"That boy has never asked a favor. He simply cannot. His pride was
always stronger than anything--anything except his love for me.

"I knit that in his blood too. I loved him so I made myself a thief for
him. Of course I did not know--I did not understand the awful danger
then; but-- A young mother--I--it is hard to tell it here. You will not
understand--you cannot. Oh, God, for a mother on the jury! A mother on
the bench!"

She caught at her escaping courage again. The officer whose duty it
was to take her away moved forward a second time, and a second time the
judge motioned him back. She had been his mother's friend ever since
he could remember, and the ordinary discipline of the court was not for
her. He would do his duty, he said to himself, but surely there was no
haste. All this was irregular, of course, but if something should come
of it that gave excuse for a new trial no one would be more thankful
than he.

"Young mothers are so ignorant. They know so little of all the things of
which they should know much. They are so helpless. Judge, there will
be criminal courts and prisons--oh, so many of both--just as long as
motherhood is ignorant and helpless and swayed by feeling only. Don't
you know it is ignorance and feeling that leads to crime? If people only
understood! If only they were able to think it out to what it means,
crimes would not be--but they cannot, they cannot! Those trembling
lips you see before you are no more truly a copy of mine--the boy is
as responsible for the set and curve of those lips--as he is for his
hopeless fault. He has stolen from his infancy; but I, not he, am the
thief. Now sentence the real criminal, judge. Courts are to punish the
guilty--not to further curse the helpless victims. I am the criminal
here. Sentence me!"

"Mother! Mother! I never understood my-self before! Oh, mother, mother!"

It was a wild cry from Walter Banks as his mother had risen asking for
sentence on herself. He sprang forward, forgetting everything and took
her in his arms. There was a great stir in the room.

"Silence in the court!"

Mrs. Banks had fainted. Her son helped to carry her into another room.
No one attempted to prevent him. The young prosecutor returned with him
and stood dumb before the court.

"I am ready for sentence, your Honor. I committed the burglary." It was
the voice of the prisoner. He was standing with his arms folded and his
eyes cast down. Silence fell in the room. The women ceased to sob. There
was an uneasy movement in the jury box.

"In view of the new evidence--" began the foreman but the voice of the
judge, slow and steady, filled the room.

"It is the sentence of this court that you, Walter Banks, be confined at
hard labor in the state penitentiary for the term of four years."

The prisoner bowed and turned a shade paler.

"Do not tell mother that until she is better," he said to his attorney
and passed out in the custody of the sheriff.

"And at the end of four years, what!" a lady was saying to the young
prosecutor as the room slowly emptied.

"The brute!" was hurled after the judge by another, as his form vanished
through the door.

"Shows that law is not for the poor alone--"

"Good things for social order and--"

"Well, yes, I'm rather disappointed; but of course a judge can't go
behind the returns."

"Evidence all one way if--"

"Heavens, what a scene!"

"--my opinion no woman should ever be admitted to a court room except as
a prisoner. It--"

"Feather in the cap of the prosecutor."

"--re-election sure enough now."

"Whole thing in a nutshell--"

"Simple question. _Did_ he commit the burglary? If so--"

The young prosecutor hurried away from the sound of these voices and
the congratulations of his political friends. He was mentally sore and
perplexed because he had won his case.

That night he called upon the prisoner for the second time.

"I have made up' my mind to resign my office," he said, not looking at
the convict, who had risen to receive him.

Walter Banks was by far the calmer of the two, but he did not speak.

"I shall never be able to act for the prosecution again. I thought
this case was so clear. My duty seemed so plain--too plain to admit of
anything but the most vigorous course of action; but--"

"You did nothing but your duty, Mathews. We are all victims I
suppose--one way or another. You are going to be the victim of your
sensitive conscience. The result will be a course of vacillation that
will ruin your chances of success. I am sorry. You've got all the
elements for a leader--only you've got a conscience. That settles it. A
bit of heredity like that is as fatal as--as mine." He bit his lips.

"Don't let your part in my case worry you. The game of life has gone
against me. That is all. The dice were loaded before I ever got hold of
them. I did what I could to out-live--out-fight my awful--inheritance.
I wasn't strong enough. It got the best of me. Nature is a terrible
antagonist. Perhaps now that I understand myself better I shall be able
to keep a firmer hold. You did your duty, Mathews; good-by. Be-- Can't
you be a little kind to mother? She suffers so. Her punishment is
double--and her crime was ignorance!"

This time he took the hand that was held out to him.

"Only ignorance," he added. "It seems an awful punishment for that."

"Ignorance--and poverty and love," said the young prosecutor as the
door closed behind him, "and Nature did the rest! What a grip is at
our throats! And how we help blind Nature in her cruel work by laws and
customs and conditions! What a little way we've come from barbarism
yet! How slow we travel. But we are moving," he added with a deep sigh.
"Moving a little. There is light ahead. If not for us, then for those
who come after."

He heard the bolt slip behind him and shuddered.

"It might as easily have been I," he mused as he went down the steps,
and shuddered again.

"I doubt if it was fault of his or virtue of mine that determined which
of us two should be the prosecutor."




A RUSTY LINK IN THE CHAIN.


_"In the brainy that wondrous world with one inhabitant, there are
recesses dim and dark, treacherous sands and dangerous shores, where
seeming sirens tempt and fade; streams that rise in unknown lands from
hidden springs, strange seas with ebb and flow of tides, resistless
billows urged by storms of flame, profound and awful depths hidden
by mist of dreams, obscure and phantom realms where vague and fearful
things are half revealed, jungles where passion's tigers crouch, and
skies of cloud and hue where fancies fly with painted wings that dazzle
and mislead; and the poor sovereign of this pictured world is led by old
desires and ancient hates, and stained by crimes of many vanished years,
and pushed by hands that long ago were dust, until he feels like some
bewildered slave that Mockery has throned and crowned."_

Ingersoll.


When I called, last Sunday afternoon, as was my habit, upon my old
college friend--now a distinguished physician--I found him sitting in
his office holding in his hand a letter. His manner was unusually grave
and, I thought, troubled. I asked him, laughingly, if he had had bad
news from beyond the seas--from his Castle in Spain.

"No, it is worse than that, I fear," he said gravely. "It looks to
me very much like bad news from beyond the grave--from the Castle of
Heredity in the realm of an Ancestor."

"I hope, doctor, that you have not had,--that my little jest was not a
cruel touch upon a real hurt."

"Not at all, not at all, old fellow," he said, smiling a little.

"It is not my own trouble at all; but--well, it set me to thinking
strange thoughts. Shall I tell you about it? I should really like
to know just how it would impress you--an intelligent man out of the
profession."

He placed the letter on the table beside him, looked at me steadily for
a moment, and then began:

"It may be as well to say that I have never before ventured to tell the
story of George Wetherell's curious experience, simply because I have
always felt certain that to a really intelligent and well-in-formed
physician it would be a comparatively familiar, and not specially
startling (although a wholly uncomprehended) phase of human disorder;
while to many, not of the profession, it would appear to involve such
fearful and far-reaching results, that they would either refuse to
believe it possible at all, or else jump to the conclusion that numerous
cases which have only some slight point of similarity are to be classed
with it and explained upon the same basis.

"In regard to these latter persons, I do not intend to convey
the impression that I am either ambitious to shield them from the
consequences of their own nimble and unguarded reckonings, or that by my
silence in this particular instance I suppose that I have prevented them
from forming quite as erroneous opinions founded upon some other equally
misunderstood and ill-digested scrap of psychological and medical
information.

"But it has sometimes seemed to me that there were certain features
connected with the case of George Wetherell which, in the hands of the
ignorant or unscrupulous, might easily be used to the disadvantage of
their fellow-beings, and I have therefore hesitated to lay it before any
one who was not, in my opinion, both intelligent and honorable enough
to accept it as one of the strange manifestations in an individual
experience; and to understand, because of the innumerable conditions of
mental and physical heredity--which were not likely ever to occur again
in the same proportions--that therefore the same manifestations were,
not to be looked for in a sufficient number of persons to ever make this
case in any sense a type or a guide.

"Notwithstanding this, there are, as I said in the first place, certain
features connected with it which many members of the medical profession
will recognize; but they are none the less puzzling symptoms.

"The matter has been brought back with unusual force to my mind at this
time, by a circumstance connected with one of Wetherell's children,
which is detailed in this letter. It lends a new touch of interest
to the malady of the father. To enable you to obtain even a fairly
comprehensive idea of the strange development, it will be necessary for
me to tell you, first, something about the man and his surroundings.

"To be as brief as I may, then, he was the son of a merry, whole-souled,
stout, and, withal, mentally alert, Southern gentleman, who had taken
the law into his own hands and duly scandalized the reputable part of
the community in which he lived by giving his slaves (all of whom he or
his wife had inherited) their freedom at a time and under circumstances
which made it necessary for him to betake himself with some considerable
alacrity to a part of the country where it was looked upon as
respectable to pay for the voluntary services of one's fellowmen, rather
than to pay for the man himself with the expectation that the services
were to be thrown in.

"Of course it was imperative--not only for the peace, but for the safety
of all parties concerned--for him to transport both his family and his
freed-men to a place where it was at once honorable for a white man
to do such a deed and for a black man to own himself. This he did; and
while a number of the negroes remained in the service of the family, the
son (on whose account, and to prevent whom from believing in and being
enervated by the possession of slaves the step had, in great measure,
been taken) had grown to manhood with a curious mingling of Southern
sympathies and Northern reasoning and convictions.

"The outbreak of the war found the young fellow struggling bravely, with
all the fire and energy of a peculiarly gifted nature, to establish
a newspaper in a border State, and to convince his readers that the
extension of slavery would be a grave calamity, not only for the owned
but for the owner.

"His two associates were Eastern college-bred men, and it was therefore
deemed wisest to push young Wetherell forward as the special champion
of free soil, under the illusion that his Southern birth and sympathies
would win for him a more ready and kindly hearing on a subject which
at that time was a dangerous one to handle freely, especially in the
border-land then under dispute.

"But the three young enthusiasts had reckoned, as young people will,
upon a certain degree of reason about, and calm discussion of, a
question which at that time they still recognized as having two very
strong and serious sides; for they had not taken the stand of the
Abolition party at all. They called themselves free-soil Democrats, and
were simply arguing against the extension of an institution which they
were not yet prepared to believe it wise to attempt to abolish where
it was already established, and where there was seemingly no other
peaceable or fair solution than the one of limitation and gradual
emancipation, through the process of mental and moral development of the
ruling race. This position was not an unnatural one, surely, for young
Wetherell, and was only what might have been expected from the son of
a man who had given practical demonstration of the possibility of such
evolution in the slave-holding and slave-dependent class.

"But, as I have intimated, the confidence and reasonableness of youth
had led to a complete misconception as to the temper of the opposition.
It is quite possible that the frank, passionate, free-soil editorials,
if they had come from either of the Eastern men, might have been
accepted as the delusions of youth, the prejudice of section, or,
at worst, as the arguments of partisans; but from a man of Southern
birth--the son of a law-breaker (you must remember that the
enfranchisement of the slaves had been a serious infraction of the law,
strange as that sounds to the ears of the present generation)--from the
son of such a man they could mean only a malicious desire to stir up
strife and cause bloodshed by making restless slaves dangerous and
dangerous slaves desperate. The result was that one night, after the
issue of a paper containing an article of unusual force and power, young
Wetherell found himself startled from a sound sleep, in the back room of
his office, by the smell of smoke and gleam of flame.

"He understood their significance at a glance, and knew that escape by
the front door meant a reception by masked men, five minutes for prayer,
and--a rope.

"Springing from the back window into the river, he swam to the other
shore, and within a few days raised the first regiment of volunteers
that the State sent in response to the call of the President, and cut
adrift at once and forever from all effort to argue the case from an
ethical or a financial outlook.

"It is more than likely that anger may have had something to do with
his sudden conversion from a 'peace and argument,' to first a 'war
Democrat,' and shortly thereafter to a Republican; but be that as it
may, it is certain that at such crises as these, mental activity is
spurred and radical changes are made with a rapidity and decision
astonishing to contemplate in periods of quiet and peace.

"So it came about that this lad of twenty-three suddenly found himself
at the head of a regiment of somewhat desperate border men, most of whom
were more than twice his own age, wildly charging a battery in one of
the first battles of the war.

"He received three wounds, one of which was a slight abrasion of the
scalp, not looked upon as more than a scratch by either the surgeon or
himself; indeed, it would hardly be worth mentioning but for the strange
events which followed. Whether this wound had anything to do with the
condition of which I am about to tell, you will have to decide for
yourself; but I must warn you, in the beginning, that there was nothing
like a fracture of the skull, and the little path made by the bullet
through the scalp healed without trouble, almost without attention, and
never afterward gave the slightest pain.

"The hair, it is true, did not grow again over the parting, and, as
it was nearly in the middle of his head, it made him an involuntary
follower of the fashion of a certain effeminate type of youths for whom
he had an overwhelming contempt. Neither of the other two wounds was
serious, and after a very short period in the hospital he reported for
duty, was promoted, and given sole charge of a post of considerable
importance.

"Shortly thereafter his father received a some what discomposing
telegram. He had previously had several more or less lucid despatches
from his son while the patient was still in the hospital; but any
lack of clearness in their wording had been attributed to haste or
to carelessness in the transmission, and as they all indicated rapid
recovery, no undue anxiety had been felt. But the message in question
now produced the impression that there was something wrong. It read:
'Send me one thousand swords immediately.'

"After a few moments' consultation with the boy's mother, Mr. Wetherell
packed his hand-bag, and, armed with a letter from President Lincoln,
whose personal friend he was, started for the seat of war.

"Upon arriving at his destination, the son expressed no surprise
whatever, but much pleasure, at seeing his father. He asked, in the most
natural and affectionate way, about each member of the family, and then
suddenly put his hand to his head and appeared to be in deep thought.

"His eyes contracted in the manner peculiar to some persons when
attempting to recall a long-forgotten event; but in a moment this had
passed away and he appeared to be perfectly clear and natural.

"He attended to the affairs of his office in a manner which not only
escaped criticism, but won praise from his superiors, and conversed with
great freedom and marked intelligence on the stirring subjects of the
time.

"He had had some little fever while his wounds were fresh, but in no
degree to cause alarm, and even this had now almost entirely left
him. In short, he appeared to be in nearly perfect mental and physical
health. There was, however, one peculiarity which the father noticed as
unfamiliar in his son; but as it was not at all strange that so young a
man--or any man, indeed, who had suddenly been given control of matters
of such grave importance--should at times be very quiet and appear to be
struggling to recall some matter of moment, the habit was not given more
than passing attention, and it was not sufficiently marked to be noticed
at all by any one except a near relation. At these times young Wetherell
would contract his eyebrows, look steadily at some object near him,--as
the toe of his boot or the palm of his hand,--raise his head suddenly,
gaze at the distant horizon, bite his lip, and then appear to either
give it up or be satisfied with some mental solution of his puzzle.

"One day his father said: 'What is it, George?'

"The young fellow turned his eyes quickly upon his father and asked:

"'Have I forgotten anything? It seems to me there is something I just
fail to recall. I am on the edge of it constantly, but it slips. I can't
get quite enough hold on it to be sure what it is--or to be certain,
indeed, that it is anything. Can you think of anything I ought to do
that I have overlooked?'

"This all sounded natural enough, and was, seemingly, a condition not
unfamiliar to his father, so they began together going over the duties
pertaining to the son's office to see if, by a mischance, something had
been neglected. Everything was complete and in perfect order; but still
the look returned from time to time, until it became almost habitual.

"This was ten days after his father had reached camp, and his plan was
to leave for home that afternoon; for, as I said, the boy's wounds
were almost entirely healed, and he appeared to be in need of nothing
whatever. More and more his superior officers called him into their
councils, and more and more his clear judgment was commended by them.

"He was to walk to the train with his father. The moment they were
outside the limits of the camp George remarked, casually, 'I must stop
on the way and order those swords.'

"The remark recalled the queer telegram which had caused Mr. Wetherell
to come to his son, the wording of which had been wholly obliterated
from his mind by their meeting.

"'What swords?' inquired his father, now on the alert again.

"The young fellow turned and looked at his father for a moment, and then
said: 'I don't know. It is a secret order. Don't mention it. The general
told me to order them. They are to be sent to me.'

"This all seemed probable enough to Mr. Wetherell, and yet he somehow
felt, rather than saw, a queer change in his son's eyes, which he
thought he had noticed once or twice before.

"He decided not to return home for the present.

"When he told his son this, the boy took it quite as a matter of course,
and made no comment whatever on the sudden alteration of purpose.

"On the way back to camp George stepped into a military supply station
and ordered fourteen hundred swords to be delivered to him immediately.

"By this time his father had made up his mind that there were short
intervals in which the young colonel did not know exactly what he was
doing--or, rather, that while he did know and act intelligently--from
the outlook of the moment--it was a time wholly disconnected from
the rest of his life, and when the moment was past he had no farther
recollection of it.

"However, Mr. Wetherell was not sure enough of this to risk compromising
a probably brilliant future by a premature or unnecessarily public
announcement, and he therefore allowed the order to be made, and taken
in good faith, and walked back to camp with his son, who immediately
went about his duties in the most intelligent and scrupulously careful
manner.

"Mr. Wetherell, however, made a call upon the officer in command the
moment he could do so without attracting attention; and after a long
talk (in which the secret sword order was discovered to be a delusion),
it was decided that the recently recovered invalid should retire
from the field on the sick leave, which he had previously refused to
consider.

"When he was told of this arrangement, he agreed to it without a murmur,
and began, for the first time for many days, to have his wounds (which
were now past the need of it) dressed with much care. This he continued
every morning, but by the time they reached home he had become possessed
with the belief that his chief wound was in his side, where there had
not been a scratch.

"To humor him, the family physician applied bandages to the imaginary
injury every day regularly.

"All this time there was no clearer talker, no more acute reasoner, no
more simple, earnest, gentlemanly fellow to be found than Col. George
Wetherell, whom his townsmen were honoring and inducing to make public
speeches and write clear, firm, inspiring editorials for one of the
leading papers. No one except his own family and physician suspected for
a moment that he was not mentally as bright as he always had been, and
even the younger members of the family were without the least hint of
it.

"Indeed, his father and the doctor both thought that his only illusion
now was a belief in the wound in his side. Several weeks passed, and
even this indication was losing its force, for he no longer required
medical attention, and was as well and as rational as ever in his life,
so far as any one could perceive, when one day a stranger appeared and
asked for him. Mr. Wetherell requested the gentleman (who was evidently
laboring under great excitement) to be seated, and at the same time made
up his own mind to be present during the interview.

"Colonel Wetherell was summoned, and, on entering the room, looked in
a startled way at the stranger, smiled vaguely, extended his hand,
contracted his eyes into a long, narrow line, turned white, and throwing
both arms suddenly above his head, exclaimed: 'My God! my God! what have
I done? Where am I? How long has it been? Is she dead? Is she dead?' and
staggered back into his father's arms.

"His distress was so manifest, that the visitor lost his severity at
once, and said quite gently: 'No, she is not dead; but she is almost
insane with fright, and has been so exhausted with anxiety and tears,
that we had lost all hope for her reason, or even for her life, unless
I could find you. I have been through the lines, was delayed by the loss
of my passport, and it is now five weeks since I saw her. She is alive,
but--'

"Young Wetherell sprang to his feet, and turned on his father like
a madman. 'How dared you?' he demanded; 'how dared you keep back my
letters? You have killed her. You have murdered her, poor, delicate
girl, with anxiety and doubt of me.' And then with set teeth and white
lips he advanced upon his father, his arm uplifted, as if he held a
sword, and with a sweep which would have severed chords of steel, if the
weapon had really been within his grasp, he brought his arm across his
father's breast and sank upon the floor, senseless and still.

"Afterward, when he revived, he had no recollection of what had
occurred, except alone the fact that for many weeks previous he had
forgotten utterly the girl who was to be his wife, whose life and
love were all his world. While he had remembered everything else, had
carefully attended to the smallest details of daily life, the link of
memory that held the fact of her existence had been coated with a rust
of absolute oblivion. The single link in all the chain of memory that
had failed him had been the one the nearest to his heart--the dearest
one of all!

"They were married two months later, and he resumed command of his
regiment. Through an honorable and eventful life no sign of mental lapse
ever returned; but every day he dreaded it, and watched his wife and
children as a man might do who saw a creeping monster back of those he
loved while he stood paralyzed and dumb. He never seemed to fear that
other things might lose their hold upon his consciousness; but the
apprehension that his mind would slip the link which held his wife, and
leave her sick and faint with anxious fears, which he alone could still,
constantly haunted him.

"His wounds never troubled him again. He died not long ago. His career
was an exceptionally brilliant one. You would know him if I had given
his real name, for it was in the public ear for years.

"There were but six persons who ever knew the history of his case, and
they are still unable to explain it--its cause, its direction, its cure.
Or is it cured? Will his children be subject to it? Will it take the
same form? Was it caused by the wound? by the fever? Or were hereditary
conditions so grouped as to produce this mental effect, even if there
had been no wound--no illness? If the latter, will it be transmitted?
These questions come to me with renewed force, to-day, as I hold in my
hand this letter, asking me to give the family history of Col. George
Wetherell for the use of physicians in a distant city who are now
treating his son. This son has reached the precise age at which his
father had the strange experience of which I have just told you.

"There is a hint in the letter which, in the light of the father's
malady, appears to a physician to be of peculiar importance from a
medical outlook.

"We shall see, we shall see."

There was a long pause; then he asked: "Should you, a layman, look
to the wound to explain the condition? Or to the Castle of Heredity?
Suppose the son's malady is quite similar--as now appears--what then?"




THE BOLER HOUSE MYSTERY.

_"What would you do? what would you say now, if you were in such a
position?"_--Thackeray.

_"Thackeray is always protesting that no good is to be done by
blinking the truth. Let us have facts out, and mend what is bad if we
can"_--Trollope.


Mr. John Boler had been in the hotel business, as he phrased it, ever
since he was born. Before he could walk he had been the "feature" of his
father's summer hotel, where he was the only baby to be passed around
and hugged into semi-unconsciousness by all the women in the house.
Because of the scarcity of his kind, too, he was subjected to untold
agony by the male guests, most of whom appeared to believe that the
chief desire of his infantile heart was to be tossed skyward from hour
to hour and caught in upstretched hands as he descended with a sickening
sense of insecurity and a wild hysterical laugh. In these later years he
often said that he would like to know who those summer fiends were who
had made his infancy so full of narrow escapes from sudden and violent
death. Finally he thought he had revenge at hand. A benevolent-looking
old gentleman came puffing up to the desk of the Boler House, and,
after registering, proceeded to question the genial proprietor as to his
identity.

"Dear me, dear me," he puffed, "and so you are the son of old John
Boler, the best hotel-keeper the sun ever shone upon! Why, I remember
tossing you up to the rafters under the porch of your father's house
when you were only the size of a baked apple and mighty nigh as measly
looking. Well, well, to be sure you had grit for a young one. Never got
scared. Always yelled for more. I believe if you had batted your soft
little head against the roof you'd have laughed all the louder and
kicked until you did it again," and the old man chuckled with the
pleasure of age and retrospection.

"Yes, I remember well," said Mr. Boler, casting about in his own mind
for the form of revenge he should take on this man now that he was to
have the chance for which he had so longed and waited.

His first thought was to put him in the room next to the three sporting
men who played poker and told questionable stories of their own exploits
after two o'clock every night, but that hardly seemed adequate. The
room adjoining the elevator popped into his head. Every time the old
gentleman fell asleep _bang_ would go that elevator door or _bzzzz_
would start off the bell so suddenly that it would leave him unnerved
and frantic in the morning. But what was that? What John Boler yearned
for was to make the punishment fit the crime, and, after all these years
of planning and wishing for the chance, here it was, and he felt that he
could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, bad enough.

So with a fine satire which was wholly lost upon his victim, Mr. Boler
ordered him taken to the very best room in the house, and made up his
mind that after disarming all suspicion in that way he would set about
his revenge, which should take some exquisitely torturous form.

All this had run through his mind with great rapidity while the old
gentleman talked. Then Mr. Boler turned the register around, wrote "98"
opposite the name. Said he should be delighted to show his own mettle to
one of his father's old guests, called out "Front," and transferred his
attention to a sweet-faced girl who stood waiting her turn to register.

"A small room, please," she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
Mr. Boler knew just what it meant in an instant. He knew that she was
not used to hotels--that she was uncertain what to do, and that she
wanted her living to cost her as little as possible. She was evidently a
lady, and quite as evidently from some small town.

"Front," he called again. "Show this lady to 96. Step lively." Front
grinned. Ninety-six was a mere closet with no window except one facing a
dark shaft. Indeed, it had once been the dressing-room and clothes press
for the adjoining suite, and so far as Front could remember had never
been used as a sleeping apartment by any one except the valet of a
certain French gentleman who once occupied 98.

"Took my revenge on the wrong person that time," mused Mr. Boler as he
saw the lady enter the elevator. "Now I wonder why I did that?" But Mr.
John Boler had his little superstition, as most of us have, and whenever
he was moved by a perfectly blind impulse to do a thing, he always
believed that "something would come of it sure," as he expressed it.
"Never knew it to fail. Of course I don't believe in such things; but--"
and then he would laugh and go on believing in it as implicitly as ever.

All day he brooded over what he should do to old Winkle, as he called
the man in 98, and as surely as his mind grew exhausted and his various
plans fell through, his thoughts would catch a glimpse of the timid
girl in the next room, and he would smilingly wink to himself and say,
"Something will come of it, something will come of it sure. Never put a
guest in that beastly room before, and I had nothing against _her. Must_
have been him It was after." He always called his blind impulses "It"
when he was utilizing them for superstitious purposes or to quiet his
reason.

"I'll bet that girl being in that closet will be the means of getting
me even with old Winkle yet, and she is not used to city hotels. She'll
think that it is all right and she will most likely be out all day. It's
not so bad to sleep in after all. Quietest room in the house."

The next morning Mr. Winkle strolled into the office and harassed Mr.
Boler about his infancy, reminding him that he had possessed a very weak
stomach. "And who wouldn't," thought that gentleman indignantly, "if he
was pitched about like a bale of hay from morning till night by every
fool that got hold of him?" but he smiled pleasantly and said no doubt
he had been very much like other infants, judging from the way he grew
up. He looked upon a baby as the embryonic man, and as he was about an
average adult male biped now, he had most likely been very close to an
average male infant. "I might have been more," he hinted darkly, "but
for certain idiotic people," and then he laughed. For it was not in Mr.
John Boler's nature to be openly unpleasant to any one. This was the
secret of his success as an innkeeper.

"By the way, Johnnie," said old Mr. Winkle late the next afternoon, "I
thought I heard some one sobbing in the room next to mine last night.
This morning I concluded I was mistaken, but now I'm sure I heard it.
Anybody sick in there? I tried the door that leads into my room but it
was locked. It sounds like a woman's voice. It always did tear the very
heart out of me to hear a woman cry--" He went on talking but Mr. John
Boler heard no more. His heart gave a wild bound of delight. "It" had
given him his revenge. He would let the young woman stay in the hotel
free of charge as long as old Winkle was in the house if only she would
weep and sob pretty steadily. "'Johnnie,' by gad," thought he, resenting
this new indignity to his name. "By George, what luck!" And then he went
about his duties with a new spring in his always elastic step. At the
lunch hour the following day he glanced into the dining-room, and sure
enough, there sat the occupant of 96, and her eyes were swollen and red.
At almost any other time this would have disturbed John Boler, but now
it was a deep delight to him.

"Had a spat with her lover, no doubt," speculated he, "and, by Jove! it
came at a lucky time for me. I'd pay her lover to keep up the row for
three weeks if I could get at him. 'Weak stomach,' 'Johnnie,' indeed!"
And he went back to the office rubbing his hands in a satisfied way,
thinking that old Winkle would be afraid to go to his room that night,
and that his sleep would be broken by visions of a weeping woman next
door, even if she did not keep him awake half the time sobbing because
Ralph had called her a mean thing or a proud stuck-up flirt, and hinted
darkly that she was in love with his rival.

Matters had gone on in this way for nearly a week and Mr. Winkle had
fretted and fumed and asked for another room two or three times, but
Mr. Boler told him that the house was full and that there wasn't another
room fit to offer him anyhow. He said that he would change the young
lady's room as soon as he could, but he expected her to leave every day.
She went out a good deal and wrote a large number of letters, and
he felt sure she was going to remain only a day or two longer. He
apologized and explained and planned, and then he would chuckle to
himself the moment "old Winkle's" back was turned to think how "_It_"
had succeeded in getting him even with the old reprobate without the
least overt act on his part.

But the eighth morning Mr. Winkle rebelled outright. He said that he
would wring the girl's worthless neck if he could get at her, but he
could not and would not bear her sobs any longer. The night before they
had been worse than ever and he had not slept a wink all night long. At
last Mr. Boler promised that he would transfer the girl to another room
that very afternoon if she did not leave, and the old man softened at
once and said if she could not afford to pay for any other room he would
pay the difference and she need never know it.

John Boler was not mercenary, but this offer gave him keen delight.
For "old Winkle" would have to buy his relief after all. He thought how
willingly a certain infant of his memory would have paid for rest
and quiet too when it was helpless clay in the hands of certain old
imbeciles he knew of.

At 2 p.m. he told Front to go up to 96 and tell the young lady that he
now had a better room for her that would cost her no more than the one
she now occupied, and to change her and her belongings to 342 forthwith.
In five minutes Front came back as white as a cloth and said that the
young lady's door was unlocked, that there were a number of letters on
the table and that she was dead.

Mr. John Boler dashed from behind the desk across the street and was
back in an incredibly short space of time, dragging behind him the
dignified and wealthy physician whose office faced the hotel.

At this stage of the proceedings he cautioned the employees not to say
a word about the matter on pain of instant dismissal. They one and all
promised, and then proceeded to tell the first reporter who dropped in
that a young lady had committed suicide upstairs and that she had
cried out loud for a week. They gave a full description of her and her
effects, all of which appeared in the 5 o'clock edition of the paper,
duly headlined with her name and certain gratuitous speculations in
regard to her motive for self-destruction. In these it was darkly hinted
that she was no better than she should be, but now that she was dead
"we" (the immaculate young gentlemen of the press) felt disposed to draw
a veil of charity over her past and say with the law that her suicide
proved her insanity, and that her mental condition might also account
for her past frailties.

While these generous young gentlemen were penning their reports the
doctor and Mr. John Boler worked over the poor helpless body of the
unconscious girl in the dark little room upstairs. Between times they
read the letters on the table and learned the old, old story--not of
crime, but of misfortune. No work had offered, and she must work or
starve--or sell the only value she possessed in the sight of men. One or
two of the answers to her advertisement had boldly hinted at this,
and when her little stock of money had run out and the little stock of
misfortune had swelled into a mountain, and the little pile of insults
had increased until she felt that she could endure life no longer, she
had concluded to brave another world where she was taught to believe a
loving Father awaited her because she had been good and true and pure to
the last in spite of storms and disappointments and temptations. So she
made the wild leap in the dark, confident that the hereafter could
hold nothing worse, and believing sincerely that it must hold
something better for Her and her kind, even if that better were only
forgetfulness.

Up to this point her story was that of thousands of helpless girls who
face the unknown dangers of a great city with the confidence of youth,
and that ill training and ignorance of the world which is supposed to be
a part of the charm of young womanhood. She had not registered her real
name, it is true; but this was because she intended to advertise for
work and have the replies sent to the hotel, and somehow she thought
that it would be easier for her to do that over a name less sacred to
her than her mother's, which was also her own. So instead of registering
as Fannie Ellis Worth of Atlanta, she had written "Miss Kate Jarvis" and
had given no address whatever. This latter fact told strongly against
her with the reporters. They located her in a certain house on
Thirty-first Street and "interviewed" the madam, who gave them a picture
of a girl who had once been there, and a cut of this picture appeared
in two of the morning papers with the fuller account of the suicide. A
beautiful moral was appended to this history of the girl's life
"which had now come to its appropriate ending." But when one of these
enterprising young gentlemen of the press called to get the details of
the funeral for his paper, he was shocked to learn that the young lady
was not dead after all, and that she was now in a fair way to recover.
He was still further disgusted when neither Mr. Boler nor the attending
physician would submit to an interview and declined to allow him to send
his card to the girl's room.

Then and there he made up his mind that if he had to rewrite that
two-column report to fit the new developments in the case, he would, as
he expressed it, make John Boler and pompous Dr. Ralston wish that they
had never been bom. Incident to this undertaking, he would darkly hint
at a number of things in regard to the girl herself and their relations
with her. This was not at all to make her wish that she had never been
born; but if it should serve that purpose, the young gentleman did not
feel that he would be in the least to blame--if, indeed, he gave the
matter a thought at all, which he very likely did not.

The article he wrote was certainly very "wide awake" and surprised even
himself in its ingenuity of conjecture as to the motive which could
prompt two such men as John Boler, proprietor of the Boler House, and
Dr. Ralston, "whose reputation had heretofore been above suspicion, to
place themselves in so unenviable, not to say dangerous, a position."
He suggested that although the young woman had taken her case out of
the jurisdiction of the coroner by not actually dying, this fact did
not relieve the affair of certain features which demanded the prompt
attention of the police court. The matter was perfectly clear. Here was
a young woman who had attempted to relieve herself, by rapid means, of
the life which all the social and financial conditions which surrounded
her had combined to take by a slower and more painful process. If she
had succeeded, the law held that she was of unsound mind--that she was,
in short, a lunatic--and treated her case accordingly; but, on the other
hand, if she failed, or if, as in this instance, her effort to place
herself beyond want and pain was thwarted by others, then the law was
equally sure that she was _not_ a lunatic at all, but that she was a
criminal, and that it was the plain duty of the police judge to see
that she was put with those of her class--the enemies and outcasts of
society.

It was also quite clear that any one who aided, abetted, or shielded a
criminal was _particeps criminis,_ and that unless Mr. John Boler and
Dr. Ralston turned the young offender over to the police at once, there
was a virtuous young reporter on the _Daily Screamer_ who intended to
know the reason why.

It was this article in the _Screamer_ which first made Mr. Winkle aware
of the condition of affairs in the room adjoining his own. He had been
absent from the hotel for some hours, and had, therefore, known nothing
of the sad happenings so near him. He dashed down into the office with
the paper in his hand and asked for Mr. Boler; but that gentleman was
not visible. It was said that he was in consultation with Dr. Ralston
at the office of the latter, whereupon Mr. Winkle re-read the entire
article aloud to the imperturbable clerk and expressed himself as under
the impression that something was the matter with the law, or else that
a certain reporter for the _Screamer_ was the most dangerous lunatic
at present outside of the legislature. The clerk smiled. A young man
leaning against the desk made a note on a tablet, and then asked Mr.
Winkle what he knew of the case and to state his objections to the law,
first saying _which_ law he so vigorously disapproved. The clerk winked
at Mr. Winkle, but Mr. Winkle either did not see, or else did not regard
the purport of the demonstration, and proceeded to express himself with
a good deal of emphasis in regard to a condition of affairs which made
it possible to elect as lawmakers men capable of framing such idiotic
measures and employing on newspapers others who upheld the enactment.
But before he had gone far in these strictures on public affairs as now
administered he espied John Boler and followed him hastily upstairs.

That afternoon Mr. Winkle almost fell from his chair when he saw the
evening edition of the _Screamer_ with a three-column "interview" with
himself. It was headed, "_Rank Socialism at the Boler House. A Close
Friend of the Offending Landlord Lets the Cat out of the Bag. A
Dangerous Nest of Law Breakers. John Boler and Dr. Ralston still
Defiant. Backed by a Man Who Ought to Know Better. Shameless Confession
of one of the Arch Conspirators. The Mask torn from Old Silas Winkle Who
Roomed Next to the Would-be Suicide. Will the Police Act Now?_"

When Mr. Winkle read the article appended to these startling headlines,
he descended hastily to the office floor and proceeded to make some
remarks which it would be safe to assert would not be repeated by any
Sunday-school superintendent--in the presence of his class--in the
confines of the State of New York. John Boler was present at the time
and whispered aside to Mr. Winkle that a reporter for the _Screamer_ and
five others from as many different papers were within hearing,
whereupon Mr. Winkle became more and more excited, and talked with great
volubility to each and every one of the young men as they gathered about
him. "_Adds Blasphemy to His Other Crimes_," wrote one of them as his
headline, and then John Boler interfered.

"Look here, boys," said he pleasantly, but with a ring of determination
in his voice, "you just let Mr. Winkle alone. This sort of thing is all
new to him, and he had no more to do with that girl than if his room
had been in Texas." (The reporters winked at each other and one of them
wrote, _Connived at by the Proprietor_.) "I put her in the room next to
his. _I_ helped the doctor to resuscitate her. _I_ positively refuse to
give you her real name and present address, although I know both, and
Mr. Winkle does not, and if the police court has any use for me it knows
where to find me. Have a cigar?" Each reporter took a weed, and three of
them went to the office of Dr. Ralston to complete their records as soon
as possible.

"I'm sorry all this has happened to you in my house, Mr. Winkle," said
John Boler, as they stood alone for a moment. "It is partly my fault,
too," he added, in a sudden burst of contrition. "It" had carried his
revenge further than he had intended. He knew how the old man's sudden
outbreak of righteous indignation would go against him in the newspaper
reports that would follow, and John Boler was kind-hearted as well as
fearless.

"Good Lord, don't you worry about me, Johnnie!" said the old man,
craning his neck to watch the retreating forms from the window. "But
those young devils have gone over to the doctor's office and they'll
bully him into telling where the girl is, and then they'll bully the
police into dragging her into court yet. Dear me, dear me!"

"Now, don't you be scared about that, Mr. Winkle. The doctor and I have
made up our minds to fight this thing out. We've found out all about the
girl and that it was simply a case of utter despair. It was a question
of death by slow or by quick means. Society, law, prescribed the slow
method, and the girl herself chose the rapid one. Well, now, as long as
she was to be the sufferer in either case, it strikes me that she had
about as good a right to a voice in the matter as the rest of us. Dr.
Ralston and I checkmated her. (I can't afford to have that kind of thing
happen in the hotel, of course.) But, by gad, we're not going to let
them make a criminal of her. All the circumstances combined to do that
before and she chose death. Well, we stopped her efforts in that line
too, and now the court proposes to put the finishing touches on
society's other inhumanities and send her up for it. Why, good God, man,
just look at it! In substance that girl said, 'I'll die before I'll be
forced into association with criminals,' and the court says, 'You shall
do nothing of the kind. Science shall doctor you up and we will _send_
you up. Despair is a crime.' That girl tried every way she knew of to
live right. She failed. No work that she could do came her way. Well,
now, will you just tell me what she was to do? You know what any man on
God's earth would do if _he_ had been situated that way and _could_ have
sold his virtue--in the sense we use virtue for women. Well, some women
are not built that way. They prefer to die. Life don't mean enough of
happiness to them to pay for the rest of it--life as it is, I mean.
Well, since women don't have anything to say about what the laws and
social conditions shall be, it strikes me that the situation is a trifle
arbitrary, to put it mildly. We make laws for and demands upon women
that no man on earth would think of complying with, and then we tell 'em
they sha'n't even die to get away from the conditions we impose and
about which they are not allowed a word to say. To tell you the bald
truth _I'm_ ashamed of it. So when we learned that girl's story we just
made up our minds that since we had taken the liberty to keep her from
getting out of the world by a shorter cut than the one usually
prescribed in such cases--starvation--that we'd just take the additional
liberty of keeping her from being hounded to insanity and made a
criminal of by legal verdict."

Mr. Winkle gave a snort that startled John Boler, for he had been
running on half to himself during the last of his talk and had almost
forgotten that the old man was present. When he heard the explosion he
mistook its meaning and his conscience gave him another smart twinge.

"Yes, I'm sorry, _very_ sorry, Mr. Winkle, that this trouble has come to
you in my house, but who could have foreseen that--a--that is to say--"

"Trouble to _me?_" exclaimed Mr. Winkle. "Trouble to _me?_ Who's said
anything about any trouble to me? Do you suppose I care what those young
scamps say about me in the papers? Got to make a living, haven't they?
Well, society doesn't object to their making a living by taking what
does not belong to 'em, if it happens to be a man's reputation or a
woman's chance to ever make an honest living again. Little thefts like
that don't count That is not a crime; but dear me, Johnnie, do you
suppose I care a tinker's dam about that, so for as _I_ go? God bless my
soul, if the dear boys can sell their three columns of rot about me, and
it will keep them off the heels of some poor devil that it might ruin,
why, I'm satisfied. All I've got to say to you is, if they arrest
you I'll go bail, and if they fine you I'll pay it, and if they jail
you--hang it, Johnnie, I'll serve your term, that's all."

Mr. Boler laughed. "My punishment shall all be vicarious then, hey? Good
idea, only it won't work in every-day life. The law doesn't let other
people serve out your term. But I'm just as much obliged, and--and--to
tell you the truth, Mr. Winkle, I'm--that is to say, I hope you will
forgive me--the fact is, I forgive you freely for the part you took in
helping to addle such brains as I had when I was a child. There is my
hand. 'It' went a little too far this time, and--"

Mr. Winkle took off his glasses and polished them carefully. Then he
placed them astride his nose and gazed thoughtfully at his old friend's
son for fully a minute before he said a word. Finally he took the
extended hand, shook it solemnly, and walked slowly away, wondering to
himself if it could be possible that hard-headed old John Boler's son
was touched a little in the brain. Mr. Boler noticed his perplexed
expression and laughed merrily to himself as he started toward the
elevator. Before he reached it he turned and beckoned to Mr. Winkle to
follow him. On the third floor they were joined by Dr. Ralston.

"She is so much better now, Mr. Winkle," explained the genial hotel man,
"and you are an older man than either the doctor or I, so I thought-- It
just struck me that she might feel-- That you might like-- Oh, damn it,
would you like to go up to see her? We are going now. A clergyman has
called, and if she wants to see him we shall not stay but a minute; but
as there is no woman about, as she is so alone, I thought perhaps she
might like to have an older man come with us, for she seems to be a very
sensitive girl. She has been silent about herself so far; but she is
better now, and we want to find out what work she can do, and have a
place ready for her when she is able to get about. Perhaps she will talk
more freely to you."

The old gentleman looked perplexed, but made no reply until they
were out of the elevator. Then he took Mr. Boler by the arm and said
helplessly, "I--I am a bachelor, you know, Johnnie, and--"

"No!" laughed Mr. Boler. "Well, confound it, you don't look it. Anybody
would take you for the proud father of a large brood. She will think you
are and it may help her. Come on."

The old gentleman entered the darkened room last and sat down silently
in the deepest shadow. The doctor stepped to the bed and spoke in a low
tone. A white face on the pillow turned slowly, so that the only band of
light that reached in from the open door fell full upon it. Mr. Winkle
shuddered as he saw for the first time the delicate, pallid, hopeless
face.

"A priest?" she said feebly, in answer to the doctor. "Oh, no. Why
should I want to see a priest? You've had your way. You've brought me
back to battle with a world wherein I only now acknowledged my defeat."
Her voice trembled with weakness and emotion, but she was looking
steadily at the doctor with great wide eyes, in which there burnt the
intensity of mental suffering and a determination to free her mind even
at the risk of losing the good-will of those who had intended to be kind
to her. "A priest! What could he do? _This_ life is what I fear. His
mission is to deal with other worlds--of which I know already what he
does--and that is _nothing_. Of this life I know, alas! too much. Far
more than he. He cannot help me, for I could tell him much he _cannot_
know, of suffering and fortitude and hope laid low at last, without a
refuge even in cloistered walls. I know what he would say. His voice
would tremble and he would offer sympathy and good advice--and, maybe,
alms. These are not what I want or need. I am not very old--just
twenty-two--but I have thought and thought until my brain is tired, and
what good could it do for him to sit beside me here and say in gentle
tones that it is very sad? No doubt that he would tell me, too, how
wicked I have been that I should choose to die by my own hand when life
had failed me."

She smiled a little, and her wan face lit from within was beautiful
still in spite of its pallor. The doctor murmured something about
natural sympathy, and Mr. Boler remarked that men who were fortunate
would gladly help those who were in distress if only they knew in time.
She did not appear to heed them, but presently went on as though her
mind were on the clergymen below waiting to see her.

"To feel that it is sad is only human; but what is to be done? That is
the question now. What is to be done for suffering in _this_ world? It
is life that is hard to bear, not death. Sympathy with the unfortunate
is good. Kind words and gentle tones as your priest recounts their woes
are touching. Yes, and when they are drawn to fit the truth would melt
a heart of stone; but unless action wings the sympathy and dries the
tears, the object of his tenderness is in no wise bettered--indeed, is
injured. Why? Because he lulls to sleep man's conscience and thereby
gives relief from pangs that otherwise had found an outlet through an
open purse. And when I say an open purse I do not speak of charity, that
double blight which kills the self-respect in its recipient and numbs
the conscience of the 'benevolent' man who grasps the utmost penny
_here_ that he may give with ostentation _there_, wounding the many that
he may heal the few. All this was safe enough, no doubt, while Poverty
was ignorant, for ignorance is helpless always; but now--" There was
a pause. She raised her head a little from the pillow and a frightened
look crept into her eyes--"but now the poor are not so ignorant that
it will long be safe to play at cross purposes with suffering made too
intelligent to drink in patient faith the bitter draughts of life and
wait the crown of gold he promises hereafter--and wears, meanwhile,
himself. A _little_ joy on earth, they think, will not bedim the lustre
of a life that is to come--if such there be. You see I've thought a
little in these wretched days and months just past." She was silent
again for a moment. A bitter smile crossed her face and vanished. The
doctor offered her a powder which she swallowed without a word. John
Boler stepped to the table and poured out a glass of wine, but when he
held it toward her she shook her head and closed her eyes a moment. Then
she spoke again as if no break had checked her thought. "Oh, no; I
do not care to see your priest. The poor no longer fail to note his
willingness to risk the needle's eye with camel's back piled high with
worldly gain. If he may enter thus, why may not they with simpler train
and fewer trappings? The poor are asking this to-day of prince and
priest alike. No answer comes from either. Evasion does not satisfy.
I ask, but no one answers. The day once was when silence passed for
wisdom. That day is gone. To-day we are asking why? and why? and why? no
longer, when? And so the old reply, 'hereafter,' does not fit the query.
Why, not when, is what we urge to-day, and your replies must change to
fit the newer, nearer question. When I say _your_ replies, I do not mean
you, doctor, nor your friend. You two meant kindly by me. Yes, I know.
I am not claiming that you are at fault, nor they--the fortunate--the
prince and priest. I understand. Blind nature took her course and trod
beneath her cruel feet the millions who were born too weak to struggle
with the foes they found within themselves and in their stronger
brothers. I know, I know."

She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes wearily. Mr. Winkle drew
near and stood behind the doctor's chair, still keeping in the shadow,
but watching her pale face with an intensity born of a simple nature
easy to stir and quick to resolve. The doctor touched her pulse with a
light finger and gravely nodded his head as he glanced at his watch. Her
heavy eyelids did not lift but her voice broke the silence again. There
was a cadence in it that gave a solemn thrill to the three men as they
listened, the doctor watching with professional interest the effect of
the powder he had given; the other two waited, expecting they knew not
what.

"The ignorance and cruelty of all the past, the superstitious fears,
the cunning prophecies, the greeds and needs of men, joined hands and
marched triumphant. They did not halt to ask the fallen what had borne
them down. They did not silence bugle blasts of joy where new-made
graves were thick. No silken flag was lowered to warm to life the
shivering forms of comrades overcome and fallen by the way. The strong
marched on and called themselves the brave. Sometimes they were. But
other times the bravest had gone down, plucked at, perchance, by wife or
child or friend whose sorrow or distress reached out and twined itself
about the strong but tender heart and held it back until the foot lost
step, and in the end the eye lost sight of those who only now had kept
him company."

She lifted her small white hand and pointed as if to a distant
battlefield, but her eyes remained closed. The doctor glanced uneasily
at his watch and took her other wrist in his fingers again.

"The next battalion trampled him. The priest bent low and whispered
'over there, hereafter,' and slipped the treasure of the fallen hero
beneath his ample robe to swell the coffers of the church, since dead
men need no treasures."

Her voice was infinitely sad but she laughed a little and opened
her eyes. They fixed themselves upon the silvered head of Mr. Winkle
standing behind the doctor's chair.

"Perhaps I shock you. I do not mean to, but I have thought and thought
these last few wretched months, and looking at the battlefields of life
backward through all the ages, I thought I saw at night, in camp, the
priest and conqueror meet beside the campfire and council for the next
day's march. I thought I heard the monarch say, 'I go before and cleave
my way. You follow me and gather up two things--the spoils I miss and
all the arrows of awakened scorn and wrath embedded in the breasts of
those of our own ranks who fall or are borne down, lest they arise and
overtake us while we sleep and venge themselves on us. Tell them to
wait. Their time will come. Tell them _I_ clear the way for them, and
_you_ forgive a hatred which you see is growing up within their wicked
breasts. Quiet, soothe, and shame them into peace. Assure them that
_hereafter_ they, not we, shall have the better part. Gain time.
Lay blame to me if need be; but always counsel patience, waiting,
acquiescence, peace, submission to the will of God--_your will and
mine_. Your task is easy. No danger lies therein. I take the risk and
share with you the glory and the gain.' I heard the priest disclaim all
greed of gain and go to do his part as loyal subject and as holy man.
I saw all this and more before I took the last resolve you balked. You
meant it kindly, doctor, yes, I know, but I am very tired and what is
there ahead for me, or such as I, on battlefields like these?"

No one ventured a reply. She closed her eyes and waited. The doctor took
another powder from his case and held it above her lips. She smiled and
swallowed it.

"We take our powders very docilely," she said, with a bitter little
laugh as the wine-glass left her hand and Mr. Boler's finger touched her
own. He noticed that hers was very cold.

"They used to make us sleep in the good old days of priest and monarch,
but our nerves are wrong just now. Our powders only make us think the
more and have strange visions."

Dr. Ralston glanced at Mr. Boler and nodded his head mysteriously. The
powder was beginning to work, he thought, for she had reverted to the
old vision, and talked as if she were in a dream. "That way it was,
another way it is, and still another will be," she was saying. "To-day
the honest poor, the hampered weak, are defeated, dazed, and some of us
are hopeless. Others there are who cling to hope and life and brood on
vengeance. That is your danger, gentlemen, for days that are to come.
You will have to change your powders. The old prescriptions do not make
us sleep. We think, and think, and think. We strain our nerves and break
our hearts, for what? A life as cold and colorless and sad as death
itself--to some of us far sadder--and yet you will not even let us die.
Again we ask you, why? There is no place on earth for such as we, unless
we will be criminals. That is the hinge whereon the future turns. How
many will prefer the crime to want? What dangers lie behind the door
that now is swinging open? Intelligence has taught us scorn for such
a grovelling lot, has multiplied our needs, and turned the knife of
suffering in quivering wounds no longer deadened by the anaesthetics of
ignorant content with life or superstitious fear of death. The door is
swinging on the hinge. The future has to face creatures the past has
made like demons. Some, like myself, behind the door, who do not love
mere life, will turn the sharpened dagger on themselves. But there are
others--"

Her voice sank. The three men thought that she had fallen asleep at
last. The doctor drew a long satisfied breath and consulted his watch
for the fourth time, making a mental note for future use in giving the
drug whose action he was watching. He started and frowned, therefore,
when her voice broke the silence again.

"Others there are, in spite of pain and anguish, in spite of woe and
fear, who cling to life--who read in eyes they worship the pangs of
hunger, cold, and mental agony. Where will their vengeance go? Who
knows?"

She opened her great eyes and looked first at one and then at another,
and repeated, "Who knows?"

Again there was no reply. After a long pause Mr. Winkle said gently:

"There is a place in life for girls like you. I shall charge myself
with it. You shall find work and joy yet, my child. Now go to sleep. Be
quiet. We have let you talk too long. Stop thinking sadly now. You think
too much. You _think_ too much."

She closed her eyes quickly and there was a tightening of the lips that
left them paler than before. Then a tear rolled slowly down her temple.
Before it reached the pillow the doctor bent forward and dried it softly
with his silk handkerchief. She opened her eyes wide at the touch. "'Be
quiet?'" she repeated, "'stop thinking?' Oh, yes; _I_ will be quiet, but
the rest, the others? Those with whom you do not charge yourself, who
find no work, no joy? Will _they_ be quiet, will they stop thinking? Oh,
yes; I can be quiet, very quiet, but the rest, the rest? The others who
think too much--_all, all?_"

There was a wild look in her dry eyes. The doctor touched her wrist
again and said softly to the men beside him, "It is working now. She
will sleep. But the shock of all her trouble has left her mind unhinged,
poor child. 'The rest? the others?' _We_ cannot care for all the
countless poor. Her brain is surely touched, poor child, poor child. How
can we tell whether the others will stop thinking, or how, or when? Her
mind was wandering, and now she sleeps, poor child. Come out. She is
best alone."

They closed the door gently behind them and stood a moment in awkward
silence outside, each one afraid to speak and yet ashamed of his own
tender helplessness. At last Mr. Winkle looking steadily in the crown of
his hat, said huskily, "By gad, boys, there is something rotten in the
state of Denmark." They all three laughed with an effort, but kept their
eyes averted.

"It is a rat in the wainscoting of the storeroom," said John Boler, with
a desperate attempt to regain his old manner and tone, "and I've got
to go and look after it or there'll be the devil to pay with the Boler
House." And he ran down the stairs three steps at a time heartily
ashamed of his own remark, but determined not to allow the tears to show
themselves either in his eyes or voice, and feeling that his only safety
was in flight.

But Mr. Winkle had not stood silently behind the doctor's chair all that
time for nothing, and if his nature was somewhat light, and if he had
taken life so far as something of a jest, he was by no means without
a heart. He did not now trouble himself very greatly about the tangled
problems of existence, but he felt quite equal to dealing with any given
case effectively and on short notice. With systems he was helpless,
with individuals he could deal promptly. Therefore he, in common with
the doctor and Mr. Boler, and, indeed, with most of us, occupied himself
with the girl he saw suffering and in need.

When she had cried out, "But the rest, the others, what of them?" he had
said nothing, because he had nothing to say. He was vaguely aware that
when the smallpox broke out on one of Dr. Ralston's patients that astute
practitioner did not essay to treat each individual pustule separately
as the whole of the disease and so devote his entire skill and mind to
each in turn until it was cured. But then he could not undertake to cure
the whole human race of its various social ailments any more than Dr.
Ralston could hope to look after all of its physical pains. So Mr.
Winkle took this one little social pustule upstairs as his particular
charge, and in his own peculiar way went about securing better
conditions for her, leaving the "others who think too much" to somebody
else, or to fate, as the case might be. Therefore, when Mr. Winkle
reached the street door and met an officer of the law who had come
prepared to learn the whereabouts of the would-be suicide or else take
Mr. John Boler and Dr. Ralston into custody, the old gentleman made up
his mind to begin his part in the future proceedings without further
delay.

Unknown to Mr. Winkle himself, literature had lost a great novelist when
he had gone into the mercantile business, and the surprises which he now
sprang upon the policeman were no less astonishing and interesting to
himself than they were to that astute guardian of the public morals.

"Want to know where she is, do you? Well, don't worry Johnnie Boler any
more. They've already got him so his mind is a little affected. I'll
tell you all about that girl. Her name is Estelle Morris. She worked for
me for nine years as a nursery governess. Last month my youngest child
died, and it upset Estelle so that she has been out of her head ever
since. I thought if I'd bring her to the city maybe she might get over
it, but she didn't, and the doctor gave her some stuff and she took
a double dose by mistake, and all the row came from that and the
long tongues of the servants, pieced out by the long pencils of the
reporters. See!"

"Is that so?" exclaimed the officer. "Where is she now?"

Mr. Winkle had not thought of that, and he did not know exactly what to
say; but he agreed to produce her in court on the following day if so
ordered, and there the matter dropped for the moment.

That evening there appeared in a paper this "want:" "A good-looking
young woman who is willing to lie like a pirate for the space of
one hour for the sum of $50. May have to go to court." The number of
handsome girls who were anxious to lend the activity of their tongues
for the purpose named and the amount stipulated was quite wonderful. One
particularly bright young miss remarked that she had been in training
for just that position for years. She was confidential correspondent for
a broker. Mr. Winkle accepted her on the spot.

"Now," said he, "look solemn and sad. That is right. You do it first
rate. Whatever I tell about you you are to stick to. Understand that?"

"Perfectly. Years of practice," she responded, with entire simplicity
and without a suspicion of humor.

"Your name is Estelle Morris, and you have been the governess of my
children for nine years. How old are you?"

"Nineteen," said Estelle Morris demurely.

"Good gracious, girl, what could you teach at ten years of age? You've
got to be older. Take the curl out of your hair in front and put on a
bonnet with strings. I heard my niece say that made her look ten years
older. Mind you, you are not a day under twenty-six. Not a day."

"All right," said Estelle Morris thoughtfully.

"You are to look sick, too, and--"

"Oh, I can fix _that_ easy enough. I'll--"

"Well, then fix it and come back here at exactly two o'clock this
afternoon."

At the appointed hour, Mr. Winkle met Miss Estelle Morris and took her
with great dignity and care to the Boler House, where he was joined
by another gentleman--an officer of the law--and the three started out
together.

"The examination was strictly private in deference to the wishes of the
parties first implicated, John Boler and Dr. Ralston, and because it is
now believed that the girl is more sinned against than sinning," wrote
the reporter for the morning rival of the _Screamer_. "It is the object
of justice to help the erring to start anew in life wherever that line
of action is consonant with the stern necessities of the blind goddess.
Neither of the male accomplices appeared in the case, but Mr.
Silas Winkle--whose name has figured somewhat conspicuously in the
matter--produced the principal, who, it must be confessed, is pretty
enough to account for all the chivalry which has been displayed in
her behalf. She confessed to twenty-six years of single wretchedness,
although she could easily pass for a year or two younger. It would
appear that she had lived in Mr. Winkle's family for nine years as
governess to his children and came to the city with him about two weeks
ago. The justice accepted this explanation of the relations existing
between them, and that there was no attempt at suicide at all, but only
an accidental overdose of a remedy prescribed by Dr. Ralston, which
explained satisfactorily the doctor's connection with the unsavory
case, and places him once more in the honorable position from which this
unfortunate affair so nearly hurled him. In short, the justice said in
substance, 'not guilty, and don't do it any more.' The young woman bowed
modestly, and Silas Winkle led her from the court-room a sadder, and,
let us hope, a wiser woman. Such as she must have much to live for. Many
a man has braved death for a face less lovely than hers. This ends the
'Boler House Mystery,' which, after all, turns out to be only a tempest
in a teapot, with a respectable father of a family and his children's
governess for _dramatis persono_ and a fresh young reporter on a certain
sensational morning contemporary as general misinformer of the public
as usual." This was headlined, "_Exploded--Another Fake by Our Esteemed
Contemporary_."

That night John Boler rubbed his eyes when he read the report. "I
thought you were a bachelor, Mr. Winkle," said he, "and here you produce
in court a governess--"

"I am," said Mr. Winkle, laughing, and then he showed his "want"
advertisement. "That is the whole case, Johnnie, my boy, but it is all
over now. Don't you worry; it might go to your head again. You saved the
girl and I saved you, and it only cost me $50. I'd pay that any time
to get ahead of the _Screamer_, and I rather think I salted that
enterprising sheet down this time, don't you? But what is to become of
that girl?" added he, without waiting for a reply to his first question.
"You've taken the liberty to save her life, which she had decided she
did not want under existing circumstances. Has she simply got to go over
the same thing again? I told her that I'd look after her, but I don't
see how in thunder I'm going to do it. She won't take money from me and
_I've_ got nothing for her to do. Is there nothing ahead of her but a
coffin or a police court?"

"For this individual girl, yes. Dr. Ralston has already secured work
for her; but for all the thou-sands of her kind--" John Boler's voice
trembled a little and he stopped speaking to hide it. He in common with
most men was heartily ashamed of his better nature.

"For all the thousands of her kind," broke in Mr. Winkle, "there are
just exactly three roads open--starvation, suicide, or shame, with the
courts, the legislature, and the newspapers on the side of the latter.
I just tell you, Johnnie, it makes my blood boil. I--I don't see any way
out of it--none at all. That is the worst of it."

"I do," said Mr. Boler.

"_You do!_" exclaimed Mr. Winkle excitedly, and then looked hard at his
old friend's son to see if he had gone crazy again.

"Yes, I do. Those same newspapers you are so down on will do it. They're
bound to. The boys go wrong sometimes, as they did in this case; but
that only makes sensible people indignant, and, after all, it called
attention to the law that makes such things possible. _More light on
the laws_. That's the first thing we want, and no matter which side of
a question the papers take, we are bound to get that in the long run.
Silence is the worst danger. We get pretty mad at the boys if they write
what we don't like, but that isn't half so dangerous as if they didn't
write at all. See?"

Mr. Winkle turned slowly away and shook his head as he murmured to
himself: "Who would have believed that old John Boler would have been
the father of a lunatic? Dear me, dear me. I'm going back to Meadville
before I get touched in the head myself." And he started to his room to
pack his valise. John Boler followed him to the elevator.

"I don't blame you for feeling pretty mad about all the stuff they put
in the _Screamer_ about you; but--oh, the boys _mean_ all right--"

"So does the devil," broke in the old man. But Mr. Boler gave no
evidence of noticing the interruption nor of observing the irascibility
of his guest.

"The trouble is with the system," he went on, entering the elevator
after Mr. Winkle. "Why, just look at it, man. What I say or do, if it is
of a public nature, I'm responsible for _to_ the public. What you write
you put your name to; but it's a pretty big temptation to a young fellow
who knows he has got the swing in a newspaper and doesn't have to sign
his name to what he says, to make an effort to 'scoop' his rivals at
whatever cost. The boys don't mean any harm, but irresponsible power is
a mighty dangerous weapon to handle. Not many older men can be trusted
to use it wisely. Then why should we expect it of those young fellows
who don't know yet any of the deeper meanings of life? Great Scott, man!
_I_ think they do pretty well under the circumstances. I'm afraid I'd do
worse."

Mr. Winkle stroked his chin reflectively.

"No doubt, no doubt," he said abstractedly, as they stepped out of the
elevator.

John Boler looked at him for a brief space of time to see if he had
intended the thrust and then went on:

"That girl's life or death just meant an item to the boys, and it didn't
mean much more to you or me until--until we stood and heard her talk and
saw her suffer, and were made personally uncomfortable by it. Yet we are
old enough to know all about it for her and others. We _do_ know it, and
go right along as if we didn't. We are a pretty bad lot, don't you think
so?"

Silas Winkle unlocked his door before he spoke. Then he turned to his
old friend's son and shook his hand warmly.

"Good-bye," he said, looking at him steadily. "Good-bye, Johnnie. I see
it only comes on you at odd spells. Come up to Meadville for a while
and I think you will get over it altogether. Your father was the
clearest-headed man I ever saw and you seem to have lucid intervals.
Those last remarks of yours were worthy of your father, my boy," and the
old man patted him softly on the back.

John Boler whistled all the way downstairs. Then he laughed.

"I wonder if old Winkle really does think I am off my base," said he,
as he took down his hat. "I suppose we are all more or less crazy. He
thinks I am and I know he is. It is a crazy world. Only lunatics could
plan or conduct it on its present lines." And he laughed again and then
sighed and passed out into the human stream on Broadway.




THE TIME LOCK OF OUR ANCESTORS.

_"Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation._"--Bible.


"Don't be so hard on yourself, Nellie. I am sure it can be no great
wrong you have done. Girls like you are too apt to be morbid. No doubt
we all do it, whatever it is. I'm sure I shall not blame you when you
tell me. Perhaps I shall say you are quite right--that is, if there is
any right and wrong to it, and provided I know which is which, after I
hear the whole story--as most likely I shall not. Right--"

And here the elder woman smiled a little satirically, and looked out
of the window with a far-away gaze, as if she were retravelling through
vast spaces of time and experience far beyond anything her friend could
comprehend.

The evening shadows had gathered, and cast, as they will, a spell of
gravity and exchange of confidences over the two.

Presently the older woman began speaking again:

"Do you know, Nell, I was always a little surprised that Lord Byron, of
all people, should have put it that way:

     "I know the right, and I approve it too;
     Condemn the wrong--and yet the wrong pursue.

"_The_ right '--why, it is like a woman to say that. As if there were
but one 'right,' and it were dressed in purple and fine linen, and
seated on a throne in sight of the assembled multitude! '_The right._'
indeed! Yes, it sounds like a woman--and a very young woman at that,
Nellie."

The girl looked with large, troubled, passionate eyes at her friend, and
then broke out into hot, indignant words--words that would have offended
many a woman; but Florence Campbell only laughed, a light, queer little
peal; tipped her chair a trifle farther back, put her daintily slippered
feet on the satin cushion of the low window-seat, and looked at her
friend, through the gathering darkness, from under half-closed eyelids.

Presently--this woman was always deliberate in her conversation; long
silences were a part of her power in interesting and keeping the full
attention of her listeners--presently she said:

"Of course you think so. Why shouldn't you? So did I--once. And do you
know, Nellie, that sort of sentiment dies hard--_very_ hard--in a woman.
At your age--" Florence Campbell always spoke as if she were very old,
although to look at her one would say that she was not twenty-eight.

These delicately formed Dresden-china women often carry their age
with such an easy grace--it sits

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/18892