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Basil Everman

by Elsie Singmaster · English · Gutenberg #46405 · 433,323 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Basil Everman

Author: Elsie Singmaster


        
Release date: July 25, 2014 [eBook #46405]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BASIL EVERMAN ***

BASIL EVERMAN




By Elsie Singmaster


BASIL EVERMAN.

MARTIN LUTHER. THE STORY OF HIS LIFE. With frontispiece.

THE LONG JOURNEY. Frontispiece in color.

EMMELINE. Illustrated.

KATY GAUMER. Illustrated.

GETTYSBURG. Illustrated.

WHEN SARAH WENT TO SCHOOL. Illustrated.

WHEN SARAH SAVED THE DAY. Illustrated.


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK




BASIL EVERMAN

BY
ELSIE SINGMASTER

[Illustration: Logo]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_


COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ELSIE SINGMASTER LEWARS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


    I. THE SHADOW ON A BRIGHT DAY                                 1

   II. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER                                       13

  III. A WALTONVILLE COMMENCEMENT AND AN INQUISITIVE STRANGER    28

   IV. MR. UTTERLY MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MRS. SCOTT          45

    V. MR. UTTERLY CONTINUES HIS SEARCH                          54

   VI. A NEW PIANO                                               67

  VII. UTTERLY SPENDS A PLEASANT EVENING                         83

 VIII. UTTERLY IS PUT UPON HIS METTLE                            93

   IX. MRS. SCOTT'S PARTY                                       101

    X. "MY BROTHER BASIL WAS DIFFERENT!"                        119

   XI. A DUET AND WHAT CAME OF IT                               128

  XII. GROWING PAINS                                            143

 XIII. RICHARD WRITES A NOTE                                    155

  XIV. AN ANXIOUS NIGHT                                         164

   XV. EXPLANATIONS                                             176

  XVI. FURTHER EXPLANATIONS                                     189

 XVII. MRS. LISTER TAKES TO HER BED                             208

XVIII. MRS. LISTER HAS TWO CALLERS                              223

  XIX. MRS. LISTER OPENS AN OLD BUREAU                          234

   XX. BASIL'S ROOM HAS A NEW VISITOR                           239

  XXI. A QUESTION PUT TO RICHARD                                251

 XXII. A CONFIDENCE BETRAYED                                    258

XXIII. A WALTONVILLE DELILAH                                    267

 XXIV. A DEEPENING SHADOW                                       279

  XXV. DR. SCOTT PAYS A CALL                                    286

 XXVI. "LET US BE ENTIRELY FRANK WITH ONE ANOTHER"              293

XXVII. EPILOGUE                                                 302




BASIL EVERMAN




CHAPTER I

THE SHADOW ON A BRIGHT DAY


Richard Lister's mother stood at the head of the stairs and called a
little impatiently. She was a large, middle-aged woman who looked older
than she was in the black silk dress and bonnet with strings which was
the church- and party-going costume of women of her years and time.
Middle age had not yet begun to dress in light colors and flowery hats
like youth.

When, above the sound of a tinkling piano, a young voice answered, "I'm
coming!" she returned to her room, without expecting, however, that
Richard would keep his promise at once.

Walton College, on whose campus Mrs. Lister lived, of which her husband
was president, and from which her only son was being graduated to-day,
had not yet dreamed of being a "greater Walton." Satisfied with its own
modest aims, it had not opened its eyes to that "wider vision" of
religion and education and "service" which was to be loudly proclaimed
by the next generation. Even games with other colleges were as yet
unheard of; the students were still kept at their books and it was
expected of them that they learn their lessons. Each was required to
deliver an oration on Commencement Day, the first speaker saluting in
old-fashioned English pronunciation _Auditores_, _Curatores_,
_Professores_, and _Comites_, and making humorous allusions to _puellæ_.
Only in admitting the daughters of the professors, and once an ambitious
girl from the village, was the college a little ahead of its own times.

Waltonville, like its college, belonged to an order which was elsewhere
passing. Lying a little north of Mason and Dixon's line, it resembled in
many pleasant ways a Southern town. The broad streets were quiet and
thickly shaded and the houses were plainly built of red brick with noble
white pillars. The young people gathered in the twilight and talked and
sang; occasionally a group of students lifted their voices in _Integer
Vitæ_ or "There's Music in the Air"; and those citizens who lived near
the campus could hear a chanted "bonus-a-um" or "amo-amas-amat" from the
room of the Latin professor, who was a stern drillmaster. Otherwise the
village was as quiet as the country.

The Civil War was still the chief topic of discussion among the older
men. Dr. Lister, Dr. Scott, who was the teacher of English--Waltonville
was careful about titles--and Dr. Green, the village physician, met many
times in the long vacation and talked about Grant and Sherman and Lee.
Dr. Lister had served a brief term at the end of the war; Dr. Scott had
been too young to enlist, but had lost father and brothers; Dr. Green,
who was still younger, had had no personal experience of war, nor, so
far as any one knew, of its losses.

Of Dr. Green, Waltonville knew comparatively little. Mrs. Lister
remembered his single year at the college, whither he had come,
self-prepared, to enter the senior class. An unexpected legacy had given
him the opportunity, passionately desired and as passionately despaired
of, of studying medicine. He was older than the other students, a tall,
dark, quiet man who allowed himself no diversions, who belonged to no
fraternities, and who cared nothing apparently for girls. His companions
knew, however, that he was not always silent. He burst occasionally into
fierce and eloquent harangues, condemning and scorning those who wasted
their time in idleness or love-making. His successful efforts to educate
himself gave him an air of authority. The students knew also that he
went now and then, as many of them did, to see Margie Ginter, the
daughter of the hotel-keeper, but they believed that he went merely to
be amused by her bad grammar, and that for him her round figure, her
childish mouth, and the touches of her pretty hand on arm or knee had no
temptation. When the Ginters left, Margie sent back to him letters with
misspelled addresses which the students did not believe he answered.

After being entirely lost to the view of Waltonville, Green returned. He
had become a physician, but the four years of preparation had lengthened
to six, during which he had changed into a weary and disappointed man.
He had come, he explained, to see old Dr. Percy, now retiring from his
practice, and offering the good-will of his business for sale. He had
hoped that Dr. Everman would recommend him and that others would
remember him. When he heard that Dr. Everman had died, he expressed to
Mrs. Lister so hearty an admiration for her imposing and learned father
and so unfeigned a regret that he was gone, that he won at once her
valuable support. It was not long before he ceased to look like a beaten
man, his thin frame filled out, he walked briskly, and began to exhibit
some of the scolding eloquence of his college days.

In Waltonville class distinctions continued. The college people, the
clergymen, Dr. Green, and the lawyers who attended a sleepy court in
April and August, made up one class; all other white persons another.
The servants were negroes who lived in low, neat cabins along a grassy
lane which bounded the town on its eastern side. Waltonville had never
been a slave-holding community, but some of the older negroes had been
attached to the same family for several generations. 'Manda Gates, Mrs.
Lister's cook, had served her mother, and Miss Thomasina Davis's 'Melia
had held her in her arms the day she was born.

There was neither strife nor envy between Waltonville's classes. Mrs.
Lister respected Mr. Underwood, the storekeeper, but did not invite him
to dinner, and Mrs. Underwood would have been greatly disturbed at the
prospect of entertaining Mrs. Lister.

The old house, in whose exact center Mrs. Lister stood when she called
Richard, had been built sixty years earlier for her father, President
Richard Everman, and had descended to his son-in-law and successor. It
was a broad, pleasant house with high ceilings and with woodwork of
solid oak. One side of the first floor was divided into library and
sitting-room and the other into dim, long double parlors. Dining-room
and kitchen were in a wing at the back.

On a level with Mrs. Lister the bedrooms opened each with an elaborately
dressed and inviting bed, dim in the pleasant light which filtered in
through bowed shutters. Above in the third story were other bedrooms and
a large, otherwise empty attic in which stood the reservoir which held
the supply of water for the house. As a little girl, she had come with
her two companions, her brother Basil and Thomasina Davis, to steal
short peeps at the tank in which they could easily have been drowned.
She was the only one of the three who was really afraid. Thomasina
insisted upon running boldly into the room and little Basil was found
afterwards there alone. Basil's desire to investigate was always keener
than his fear of danger.

Having waited for ten minutes, Mrs. Lister now returned to her post in
the hall, and raised her voice in three successive calls. At the last
impatient summons, the piano in the parlor ceased its clangor with a
series of great chords, rolling under a fine, clear touch from the
lowest of the yellowed keys to the uppermost treble. In the bass the
tones were indescribably mournful, as though the aged instrument cried
out in pain under the strong fingers of youth; in the treble they
sounded a light cackle, half childish, half senile, like the laughter
of an old man. The piano, bought years ago for Basil, resembled an old
man in many ways; its teeth were yellow, it creaked as though rheumatism
had taken a permanent abode in its joints, and it was swathed in a
covering of warm red felt. Though it was the only object in Mrs.
Lister's house which was not exactly adapted to the use to which it was
put, and though it reminded her of misery, she would not have dreamed of
selling it or of giving it away of of exchanging it for another
instrument, any more than she would have sold or given away or exchanged
an aged relative. A piano once was a piano forever, and no dismal sound
from its depths, no fierce sarcasm from Richard could depreciate it in
her eyes.

"Richard!" Before the player had righted the piano stool or had closed
the square lid over the yellowed keys, Mrs. Lister called again.

"Yes, mother!"

He took the stairway in four great leaps, the last of which his mother
stepped aside to avoid. But she did not escape the bear's hug with which
he grasped her. He was a tall, spare young fellow, scarcely more than a
lad, with crisp, light hair and dark eyes.

"Yes, mother! Yes, mother! Yes, mother!"

"Your cap and gown are there on my bed, and you must change your tie and
do it quickly."

"The procession will form in one half-hour, mother, and they can't
possibly begin till I tune up. I have half a mind to be late so I can
see 'em squirm." Richard took the tie from his mother's hand and
stationed himself before the glass in her bedroom, where the walnut
furniture was heaviest and most elaborately carved. "Think of it, my
last morning in chapel! No more eight o'clocks! No more Pol Econ, no
more Chemistry, no more worthless stuff of any sort!"

"I hope you know your speech _thoroughly_, Richard."

"I do, oh, I do!"

"I could never memorize well, and I was always frightened when I had to
say a piece in school. Aren't you at _all_ nervous?"

"Not at all. I'm cool-headed and cold-hearted. _Morituri te salutamus_,
that is, 'We, about to die, salute you!'"

"You are not going to say that, Richard!"

"No, mother, darling!" Richard folded his black gown about him. "I bow
like this, till my long wings touch the ground, and I say, '_Alius annus
cum perpetua sua agitatione abiit, et alia classis in vitæ limine est_,'
etc. Wouldn't old Jehu skin me alive if I failed? It is bad enough that
Eleanor Bent is ahead of me, of _me_, if you please--faculty family and
all that. Now, good-bye, mother. Have a little more faith in me than you
look, or I may rush to your shoulder weeping." With a "Farewell, great
Queen, live forever," and a light touch of lips on his mother's broad,
smooth cheek, he was gone, down the polished banister.

When the screen door had slammed, Mrs. Lister sat for a while quietly by
her bed. There was, now that Richard was started, plenty of time. She
had been up since six o'clock, but she was not tired, being a person of
almost inexhaustible vigor. The house was in perfect order, 'Manda was
singing in the kitchen, and she had a short breathing space. She loved
those moments in which, her tasks finished, she could sit perfectly
still, almost without thinking, yet vividly conscious of her blessings,
of her good husband, of her fine son, and of her pleasant home.

Above all, she was thankful that she was content, that she was driven by
no wild impulses as was Thomasina Davis, who often sat with her in the
morning and in the evening heard a concert in Baltimore. She visited
Baltimore--which she called "Baltimer"--in the fall and again in the
spring, after having made detailed, dignified, and long-announced plans,
and there, with the aid of a commissionnaire, made her purchases for six
months. She enjoyed these journeys, but she was always glad to get home
with her silks and linens, her little stories of the courteous
attentions of the Baltimoreans, of the baked blue-fish, and of the
stately house of her old cousin on Fayette Street.

But now, even with all her morning's work done and Richard started on
his way, she was not at peace. His playing disturbed her, not because
the piano was old and gave forth so many painful sounds, but because
music had sad associations. She believed that it roused strange passions
in the human heart, that it made men and women queer, abnormal,
sometimes even wicked. It was connected in her mind with a quality
called "genius" which animated the minds of poets and musicians and
artists and made them a little more than human and at the same time a
good deal less. It was a general conviction among quiet people of the
time that those who could write or paint or sing beyond a mere amateur
excellence were "wild," like poor Mr. Poe, about whom a tradition
lingered among her Baltimore cousins. Genius was not a necessary part of
greatness; her father and her husband were great men, but they were also
sober, dignified, comprehensible, reasonable, which geniuses were not.

Thomasina Davis had wrong ideas and she put them into Richard's head.
She had spent all but three years of her life in Waltonville, but those
three in New York, under the instruction of a famous pianist, had made
her wish to be a concert player. Fortunately family duties had called
her home, and now, those duties long since done, she lived alone in the
homestead set back in the garden on the street which led to the college.
While she condemned Thomasina, Mrs. Lister remembered with a stirring of
the heart all the hundreds of times she had pressed her latch. Thomasina
had three pupils; Cora Scott, who attained technical correctness;
Eleanor Bent, who played with all the imperfect brilliancy of one who
learns easily; and Richard, who attained both correctness and
brilliancy. Mrs. Lister explained to strangers that Thomasina did not
need to give lessons; she blushed when her quarterly bill arrived, and
shivered when she heard her talk to Richard about playing.

"You must read poetry, Richard, and _feel_ it; that is the way and the
only way for youth to gain emotional experience.


     'Magic mirror thou hast none
     Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
     Anguish or ardor, else no amulet.'


When you have learned to feel, then you can play."

Richard was not a genius--thank God! It seemed impossible that he should
be graduating; that he should be no longer her lovely, placid baby, who
had done so much to heal an old hurt. Though he would have to go away
for a few years for further study, he would come back to teach in the
college and would perhaps some day be its president, like his father and
grandfather. Then she could stay on in the house which was like the
outer shell of her soul, not to leave it until she left this life.
Richard might marry--ought to marry--a pretty, biddable girl like Cora
Scott. Cora would do her duty by her mother-in-law.

Mrs. Lister's life, now so uneventful, had had its great sorrow, its
unsatisfied passion. There was another love, stronger almost than that
for husband and son, because its object needed no longer the loving
affection which sought to serve him, had never, indeed, needed it while
he lived.

It was at such times as this, upon holidays, anniversaries, and other
great days, that she thought most of the past, most of her father in his
white stock and his bands, he having been a clergyman as well as a
scholar; of her mother who seemed to her dim recollection very
different from, but who was, nevertheless, very much like herself; and
most of all of her brother Basil, for whom she had the rare and
passionate affection of sister for brother of a Dorothy Wordsworth or a
Eugénie de Guerin; that affection which equals in intensity a lover's,
which brooks no rival, and which is almost certain to result in misery.

She thought of them all now, sitting in her room. She could hear the
laughter of the faculty and the boys and girls gathering for the
procession; she knew that it was time for her to go, but she could not
move. How long, long ago it all was! Yet how close they were, especially
Basil, who had been of all most vivid, most bright.

Presently, moved by an irresistible impulse, she left her chair by the
window and climbed the stairs into the low-pitched third story. There
she laid her hand upon a door. She desired intensely to go in; the touch
of the knob restored to her an old mood of grief, the phase in which one
feels that seeking, importuning, one must find. Basil was here; his
wide, bright gaze sought her eyes, as she often fancied, with reproach.
All dead persons seemed to Mrs. Lister to look like that; her father
did, as she remembered some little service unrendered, some command
forgotten. Basil's gaze was like his father's, yet different. He seemed
to reproach, not his sister, but his Creator for having laid him low,
banishing him from the sunshine when his contemporaries still had years
of life before them.

This was his room; here he had slept and idled and whistled and sung;
here had been unpacked and put away his belongings sent home after he
was dead; here lingered still an odor of disinfectants and still more
subtly an odor of tobacco, not approved of in the Lister house; here
were his pens and pencils and his books, shabby little editions of Greek
plays, lined and annotated, which he carried about with him. Here he had
sat by the window, indifferent to heat and cold, alone, doing, alas!
nothing. Surely if she entered she would find him, would hear him speak,
would see him smile! Surely--

Mrs. Lister took her hand from the knob and went down the steps. This
was Richard's Commencement Day; it was wrong to give her mind free
course in the region which invited. Basil was at peace; must be at
peace, nothing could disturb him. He was gone almost entirely from human
recollection. The old fear that the world might come to know about him,
that things might be "found out," was laid. She, too, must forget him;
that was the only way to live. Dr. Lister had said, many years ago, that
Basil's belongings should be destroyed; that this was the first step
toward her recovery. But Dr. Lister spoke of him no more and to Richard
he was a vague ghost. Changes in the faculty of the college, the death
of old friends in the town had contributed to forgetfulness. Most of
all, Mrs. Lister's own grief was of the variety which endures no mention
of the dead and which creates the oblivion which it is likely most
bitterly to resent. Basil was dead and forgotten.




CHAPTER II

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER


In a little house overlooking the fields on the far side of Waltonville,
where Mrs. Margie Bent, of Waltonville's middle class, lived with her
daughter Eleanor, preparations for Commencement were in progress. The
house was pale gray in color, and had about its little porch a mass of
pink climbing roses with dark foliage and thick clusters of bloom.
Before it lay a smooth lawn, and back of it a tiny garden, symmetrically
divided by grass paths. There were no outbuildings, there was no stick
or weed; the little establishment looked like a playhouse or the model
for an architect's picture. One did not ascribe to its inhabitants any
academic aspirations.

Waltonville was accustomed to think of the little house as "back of" the
town. Yet the town was in a truer sense back of the little gray house,
which looked out upon a wide sweep of open country. Before it the fields
dipped in a long and beautiful slope, then rose a few miles away to a
low range of blue hills. A part of the land was cultivated, but there
remained many stretches of woodland, especially along a wandering stream
whose silver course could be followed for a long distance, and from
which rose mist, now in thick, obscuring masses, now in transparent
vapor. Beyond the low hills was another higher range. Here and there in
the pleasant valley were farmhouses and large barns whose dimensions and
design were copied from the barns of Lancaster County not many miles
away.

Within the little house was the same clean prettiness. The furniture was
simple and plain and there was a great deal of exquisite hand-sewing;
hem-stitching on the white curtains, heavy initials on the linen, and
beautiful embroidery on Eleanor's clothes in the closets. In the little
parlor stood a bookcase filled with handsome and well-chosen books, and
in the dining-room there were both bookcase and desk, the latter now
neatly closed.

Little Mrs. Bent was helping her tall daughter into the Commencement
dress which she had made with her own unresting hands. Her fair hair
curled about her forehead, her short upper lip made her look like a
little girl, and her whole appearance was at once attractive and
pathetic. Mrs. Scott, whose inquisitive spirit made her wish to know
every one in Waltonville by sight and as much about each person as she
could discover, said of Mrs. Bent that she looked and acted like a lady,
though she was none. Thomasina Davis, whose kindly spirit made her judge
her acquaintances with sympathy, said that she believed that Mrs. Bent
was a good woman who had suffered cruelly. Thomasina remembered her
perfectly as Margie Ginter, the daughter of the most unpleasant, sodden,
law-breaking tavern-keeper Waltonville had ever had, but did not think
evil of her on that account. She knew that Margie had been light as
thistledown, too easily pleased, too careless of the company she kept,
entirely too free with her smiles, and a source of anxiety to the
mothers of the young men of the town and to those who had the well-being
of the college boys at heart; but she did not believe any of the serious
accusations made against her by the older women; had not believed them
when they were made and did not believe them now that they were
occasionally recalled.

Margie had left Waltonville long ago with her father for another tavern
in another State, and after a few years had returned with a married name
and with a little girl whom she called "Nellie," and with means for very
simple living. Whether her income had its source in the ill-gotten gains
of her father or in the property of a deceased husband, or in some other
less creditable source, Waltonville did not know. A few persons
speculated about her when she returned, but she and her little daughter
were soon accepted and ignored.

If there had been any one to compare Margie Ginter with Mrs. Bent, he
would scarcely have believed her to be the same person. Margie Ginter
had lived indifferently in a miserable tavern; Mrs. Bent conducted her
little house with the most exquisite tidiness, and maintained therein
the most perfect order. Her linens were less elegant than Mrs. Lister's,
but they were no less beautifully laundered, no less elaborately marked.
Margie had longed for constant company, and a succession of the most
idle of pleasures; Mrs. Bent shrank even from the back-door calls of her
neighbors. Margie had been confident, assured in all her motions, and
almost impertinent in her glances at those whose disapproval she
surmised; Mrs. Bent was humble, even frightened. Margie had never gone
to church, but Mrs. Bent took a little side pew in the college church
and sat there at each service. To Margie had come some mighty
metamorphosis, changing her instincts, changing her very soul, as
completely as a human body could have changed its position at a
"Right-about face." The process had not been easy; it had written
pathetic lines in the countenance which had once expressed only
light-heartedness.

The tall daughter whom she was helping into her embroidered Commencement
dress was as dark as her mother was fair and as direct of gaze as her
mother was timid. Her gray eyes were singularly clear and bright; they
held the glance so that her other features, beautiful as they were,
became unimportant. Her other features, except her nose and her upper
lip, were like her mother's; she had evidently a maternal inheritance,
permeated and strengthened by a different strain.

She had not inherited, it was clear, from little Mrs. Bent the good mind
which put her at the head of her class in college. Mrs. Bent was not a
dull person, and she had certainly strength of will, but she had no
aptitude for books even though she sat from time to time with one of
Eleanor's volumes in her hand and listened for hours together while
Eleanor read to her. Sometimes when her daughter was not about she
looked in a puzzled, frightened way over what Eleanor had been reading,
and she kept an old grammar hidden under a pile of neatly folded clothes
in her bureau drawer.

Poor little Mrs. Bent made a brave effort to follow her swan in her
flight. She had not, however, risen far, even in her effort to speak as
others spoke. Her mistakes were those of a low stratum. Falling from her
pretty lips in her youth and heard by uncritical ears, they had not
seemed so dreadful. Now they were shocking. In her anxiety to do well,
she sometimes formed new words upon the analogy of those which she knew.

"I thicken it with cream and I thinnen it with vinegar," she would say
sweetly.

Sometimes a sudden "them there," long pruned from Eleanor's speech,
slipped from her mother's tongue. "Them there" Mrs. Bent knew was
execrable and was tortured by that knowledge.

Eleanor was now almost twenty years old, and seldom do twenty years flow
with such smooth current. She could not remember when she had come to
Waltonville to live, and she could recall distinctly only one incident
in her life before she started to the village school. Children, in
families where the past is frequently referred to, recall, or imagine
that they recall, many incidents, but to Eleanor nothing was recalled.

The single incident which she remembered was impressed upon her by
terror. Her mother and she were walking together upon a shady street
when a man stopped them and spoke to them. "So you've come back,
Margie!" was all that Eleanor could remember but the words remained in
her mind. The man had laid his hand on her mother's arm, and Mrs. Bent
had jerked away and had hurried down the street. Eleanor had seen the
man a hundred times since, a heavy, dissipated creature named Bates who
sat all day on the porch of the hotel.

When she went to school the teacher, a newcomer in Waltonville, asked
her her father's name and she had stood bewildered.

"Her father is dead, I guess," said the little girl next to her.

Eleanor nodded solemnly. A day or two later, when the teacher's question
came to her mind again, she repeated it to her mother. Mrs. Bent, whose
experience had not prepared her for the questions of a first day in
school, stared at her daughter.

"The teacher asked me, and a little girl said she guessed he was dead,
and so I said he was dead. Was that right, mother?"

Mrs. Bent's face grew deathly pale, so that long afterwards the incident
came back to Eleanor.

"Yes, that was right," said she.

Another problem suggested itself.

"Were we ever away from here?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because that man said, 'So you've come back.'"

Mrs. Bent shivered. "Yes, we were away from here once. Don't think of
that man, and don't ever speak to him. If he comes toward you, you run,
Nellie." Then Mrs. Bent took the little girl roughly by the arm.
"Children should be seen and not heard--remember that!"

From Eleanor's first year in school a few vivid experiences remained.
Racing home, she had fallen and had cut her head and several stitches
had to be put in under her thick hair. A neighbor, running for the old
doctor, had returned with the newcomer, Dr. Green, who had dismissed the
spectators and had hurt her terribly. Then he had carried her to bed,
where she slept for a long time and waked with a burning pain in her
head, the first pain she had ever had.

When he came the next day, she was better and he had sat by her bed for
a long time, asking her question after question about her lessons. He
spoke in a stern, fierce tone, as though nothing about her education or
about the world pleased him. He corrected savagely her inherited errors
in speech as though he could re-make her language in a morning. Her eyes
closed in the middle of a sentence, and when she woke he was no longer
in the room. But it seemed to her that a voice was still about, going on
and on and on. Another excited voice made answer after a long time, "I
ain't a-goin' to do it!" If it was Dr. Green's voice and if it was to
Mrs. Bent that he was speaking, their knowledge of one another had
advanced far beyond the stage of casual acquaintance. Their dialogue was
not a conversation, but a quarrel.

The next day, when Eleanor sat up against the pillows, Dr. Green brought
her a book. He had written "Eleanor" on the fly-leaf.

"Nellie is a nonsensical name," he declared. "It must be changed."

Eleanor looked at her mother.

"I don't care," said Mrs. Bent. If Eleanor had been dragged from the
grave instead of suffering a small scalp wound, she could have been no
more terrified. Her face was tear-stained, her color was gone, and one
hand closed and opened constantly upon the other. In her eyes shone not
only anguish, but a fierce anger. She seemed to take little pleasure in
this friend of her youth.

The picture book was the first of a long series of books which appeared
in the little house. First came story-books, wonder-tales, fairy-tales,
"Robinson Crusoe," "Swiss Family Robinson," then a set of Scott, then
poetry. Presently a bookcase had to be bought, then another.

She was allowed to go henceforth to Dr. Green's untidy office, or, at
least, her mother did not reprove her when she came late from school
because Dr. Green had called to her to stop, or to climb into his buggy
and go with him into the country. She had ceased to be afraid of him;
once or twice she ventured a shy touch of hand. There was a need in
little Eleanor's soul which he supplied, a precocious intellectual
curiosity which was now wakening. Presently she began to ask questions
and Dr. Green answered them. Curt and positive as he was with others, he
never was curt with her. He sometimes examined her to see what she had
retained, and smiled to himself over the success of his teachings.
Eleanor had gained all unconsciously a knowledge far superior to that
of Cora Scott or even to that of Richard Lister. Neither Dr. Scott nor
Dr. Lister talked to their offspring about world politics, about the
literature of their own country and all others, about the trees by the
wayside and the stars in the heavens as Dr. Green talked to little
Eleanor Bent. It was when she repeated at home, as nearly as she could
in his language, all his wisdom, that Mrs. Bent took to studying her
grammar in the evenings, after Eleanor had gone to bed, and hiding it
under her pillow.

Eleanor was deeply impressed by what she read and was also acutely
conscious of the world about her. She had vivid impressions of each
detail of the landscape before the door; of the smooth, concave fields
rising to the blue hills, which rose in turn to mountains of paler blue;
of the winding stream with its accompanying mists; of the journeying sun
with its single moment of rest through all the year in a deep cradle in
the southwestern ridge; of the distant, dim sound of the train which
made its way along the next valley with rhythmic thunder; of the peace
of quiet afternoons and evenings; of the changing light.

She had not yet, though she was graduating from college, begun to
observe or to understand the sorrows or sufferings of human beings or
the strange complexities and thwartings of human life. She lived within
herself without speculating about other people, even about the life so
close to her, to which she was so thoroughly accustomed that its
shrinking, its various and inconsistent characteristics, did not seem
strange to her. In her eighth year she followed to the cemetery the
funeral of the father of one of her schoolmates, and saw from a distance
his widow throw herself upon his coffin. She pictured thenceforth her
mother in the same situation and regarded her with tender awe.

In only one respect did she fear her mother. The dreadful "them there"
was pruned out of her own speech by Dr. Green's continued admonitions
and, having learned her lesson, she proceeded to pass it on.

"Mother, you must not say 'them there.' Dr. Green says that it is
outlandish talk."

Mrs. Bent rose from her place at one side of the little table. Her eyes
looked no more wild when Eleanor was brought home to her bleeding.

"Don't you dare to tell your mother how to talk! That is a dreadful sin,
a dreadful, dreadful sin!"

Eleanor burst into tears; her mother did not stay to comfort her, but
went upstairs to her room and there remained until Eleanor started to
school. Eleanor heard her talking to herself, heard her pacing back and
forth, and did not dare to go to her. It was only after many days that
their old pleasant relations were restored.

Eleanor and her mother went nowhere to pay social visits and few persons
came into their little house. They were so situated with reference to
their nearest neighbors that either the making of a long journey or the
scaling of a sharp picket fence was a necessary preliminary to the
borrowing of a lemon or a recipe. The nearest neighbor, who often
needed lemons, had suggested a gate through the common fence, but it had
never been cut.

The successive pastors of the college church came at proper intervals to
call. There were no aid societies or "Busy Bees" in the church
government, and the young people were not drawn into association by
oyster suppers or similar entertainments. Nor was Mrs. Bent drawn into
the company of the older women. Mrs. Scott, whose pew was near by,
walked with her once or twice a year to the corner and had always some
impertinent inquiry to make. Only a week ago she had asked about
Eleanor's future.

"Nursing, perhaps, Mrs. Bent? Young women are taking up nursing."

A person with a sharper tongue than Mrs. Bent's might have asked whether
Cora meant to take up nursing. But Mrs. Bent said, with her gentle,
frightened air, "Oh, I think not!"

"Then, teaching, perhaps?"

"She hasn't said anything yet about teaching."

"Fit her for something, Mrs. Bent. I suppose she will have to earn her
living?"

Mrs. Bent smiled and passed on, not seeming to realize that Mrs. Scott's
last sentence was a question. Mrs. Scott was still talking. She said, in
conclusion, that she had great difficulty in finding maids; that colored
girls were almost worse than nobody and that white girls had wrong and
proud notions. If she meant to imply that Eleanor had wrong or proud
notions, Mrs. Bent did not understand. If she had a "place" in
Waltonville society, she knew, alas! where that place was.

If Mrs. Scott had suspected the ambitions which filled the mind of
pretty Eleanor, she would have run after Mrs. Bent. Eleanor had become
inspired with a desire to write, an ambition put into her head by Dr.
Green, and zealously cultivated by him, and she had got into shape,
without telling any one but her mother, several stories which were not
without merit. One she had ventured to send away and to-day the
excitement of graduation was dulled by the approach of a more important
event. The editor of "Willard's Magazine" to which she had sent
"Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" had written to say that a
representative of that magazine would call upon her in the course of the
week. It was improbable that they would send a messenger from New York
to distant and inaccessible Waltonville unless her story was really to
be accepted! Yet acceptance was outside the bounds of possibility.

"I shouldn't eat or sleep for a week," she declared as the embroidered
Commencement dress went over her head and her white shoulders.

Mrs. Bent looked up at her with her most frightened expression. Her
duckling had proved to be a swan--there was no doubt of that.

"Don't set yourself on it," she said, remembering sundry very different
disappointments of her own. "Things often don't turn out like we want
they should."

Mrs. Bent's hands trembled; she would have given her life to have
things turn out the way Eleanor wanted they should. Even now there was
another happiness approaching, of which Eleanor knew nothing. Going one
day to Thomasina's house, Mrs. Bent had asked Thomasina to do a service
for her and Eleanor.

"I don't like to put you to trouble," she explained nervously. "I want
to sell my piano."

"Yes?" said Thomasina. Was poor little Mrs. Bent in financial
difficulties? It would be a great pity if Eleanor had to discontinue her
lessons. "That is, not exactly to sell it, but to change it."

"Yes," said Thomasina, who never interrupted or tried to complete the
sentences of other persons.

"For a better one."

"Yes." Thomasina saw that her guess was wrong.

"But I don't know much about--about such things." Mrs. Bent had meant to
say about pianos, but she suddenly could not remember whether the i was
long or short. She knew that one or the other was very wrong, but she
could not remember which she had used a moment ago.

"I'll be very glad to help you."

Mrs. Bent's relief showed on her face and she breathed a long sigh.

"What kind of piano do you want, Mrs. Bent?"

"A large one," answered Mrs. Bent, knowing now certainly that she had
the wrong word.

"A grand piano?"

"That is it, exactly."

Thomasina hazarded the name of the best by way of elimination.

"That is it," said Mrs. Bent. "If you will pick it out when you go to
the city, the money part will be fixed. It is a Commencement present to
her."

Mrs. Bent rose to go. She was invited to stay longer, and she would have
liked to sit forever in the pleasant room, but she was afraid. When she
had gone, Thomasina stood for a moment frowning, then bit her lip. She
wondered a good deal about Mrs. Bent, and she was to wonder still more
when she saw the large check in the hand of the salesman in Baltimore
from whose stock she selected the finest piano. Not only the amount, but
the signature of the check astonished her.

The piano, now at the railroad station upon its side, its shining
rosewood swathed in many folds of flannel and canvas and rubber, was to
be delivered while Eleanor was at Commencement. If she had dreamed of
its presence, her cheeks would have been still redder, her shining eyes
still happier. She laid her black gown over her arm and took her black
cap by its tassel.

"Get your bonnet, mother."

A glance at the clock frightened Mrs. Bent. Eleanor should be off at
once or she would meet the men with the piano. Mrs. Bent had given
explicit charges as to the time of its delivery. She was to let the
carriers, whose chief she knew to be trustworthy, into the house before
she started.

"I'm not ready yet. You go quick, and I'll come right away."

"You'll surely wait for me afterwards?"

"Oh, yes."

She followed Eleanor to the door, and watched her pass the corner. The
emotion which shone from her eyes was sufficiently intense to explain
even a greater metamorphosis than that which had changed Margie Ginter
into Mrs. Bent.

Almost at once the piano, towering high above the horses which drew it,
lumbered in from the other direction. All had turned out well.




CHAPTER III

A WALTONVILLE COMMENCEMENT AND AN INQUISITIVE STRANGER


The railroad, a fifty-mile spur of the Baltimore & Northern, ran to
Waltonville, but not beyond it. Miles away across the beautiful valley
which lay spread before Mrs. Bent's little house, the main line was
dimly discernible by the long trail of white smoke visible now and then
against the blue hills, and, when the wind blew from the west, by the
faint, distant roar of flying trains. The officials of the B. & N. had
originally intended that it should pass through Waltonville, and the
reason for their change of mind was an unusual one. The railroad
engineer brought his family to Waltonville for the summer, and
Waltonville received them as it did all unintroduced strangers. The
engineer and his wife and children did not exist for Waltonville.
Therefore, the railroad swerved far away to another village which was
reported as larger, more important, and approached with less expense,
and in the course of a few years Waltonville was made the terminus of a
branch road leaving the main line at a junction fifty miles away.

Its loss was, however, not unmixed with gain; it remained as it was,
unaspiring, peaceful, still, and beautiful. The students, the
Commencement visitors, the agents for commercial firms, the few persons
haled to court, traveled from the east and south on the B. & N. Those
who came from other directions either made a wide détour by rail or
approached, as they had approached from time immemorial, by horseback or
carriage.

The last train on the eve of Commencement Day had been late. There was
good reason for delay, traffic being heavy. Beside the usual travelers
from village to village, there were at least fifty fathers and mothers
and sisters of college boys, and there were four traveling men--in this
fashion, at least, the conductor classified his passengers. Starting was
long deferred; first the main-line train was behind time; then the
engine of the Waltonville train moved slowly, as though it felt in every
wheel and valve its heavy burden. The traveling men scolded; the staid
fathers and mothers and pretty sisters sat quietly, as though this slow
journey were a not unsuitable preparation for the solemnities of the
morrow. The lateness of the train would be one more interesting detail
of a delightful experience. In a few days the doubtful fame of the "nine
o'clock" would have spread far beyond Waltonville.

There was one passenger whom the conductor was not able to classify, a
tall man who wore a beard sharply pointed in a new fashion, young, but
how young it was hard to say. He was handsomely dressed, and his bags
were of a different pattern from the square leather cases of the agents
and the unwieldy and bulging satchels carried by other travelers.

He rode in the smoking-car and smoked steadily. Once or twice he rose
and walked up and down the aisle, complaining of the roughness of his
progress. When a passenger took the seat in front of him, he leaned
forward and made comment as though communion with a fellow being were
suddenly imperative.

"This is a beastly road!"

The newcomer turned toward him, blinking, as though his mind had to
exert itself to understand. He regarded the pointed beard and the
handsome tie near him with some astonishment.

"What did you say?"

"I said this was a beastly road. I can apply still other adjectives."

"I guess it's good enough for those that have to travel on it," answered
the mild voice. "I myself don't travel much. The testimony of our church
is rather against traveling."

The handsome young man sat back with a muttered "Humph!" He was not in
the least interested in churches or testimonies or those who thought of
them seriously; his mind was occupied with certain literary problems
which he considered important. At present he was engaged in a quest
which he expected confidently would make him famous.

For fifteen minutes he stared out the window, until the darkening pane
gave back only his own countenance. Then he turned in his seat and spoke
to the man behind him. This man was very friendly; he explained at once
that he was going to Waltonville to see his only son graduate and that
mother and the girls were in the other car. The sending of his son to
college had been a heavy expense, but the boy had justified all his
hopes and would be able to pay back into the family treasury the amount
which he had received.

"My name is Illington," said he in conclusion.

Instead of giving his name in return, the young man asked a question.

"Are you acquainted in Waltonville?"

"A little." Mr. Illington shifted his position so that he might talk
more comfortably. He thought of offering to sit with the young man.

"Did you ever hear of any one named Basil Everman?"

The answer came with a kindly, frowning effort to remember.

"No and yes. The name sounds familiar."

"Do you know whether such a person lives in Waltonville now?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"Did you _really_ ever know of such a person?"

The kindly man shook his head. "I can't say that I _really_ did. But the
name sounds--"

The young man turned away as if to say, "That will do." He lifted to the
seat beside him the smaller of his bags and opened it. Upon the top of a
pile of fine, smoothly folded clothes lay three old magazines, bound in
pale covers which were now dull with age. In each one he opened to an
anonymous article. "The Roses of Pæstum," an essay, was one; "Bitter
Bread," a story, was another. The third was a long poem, "Storm." He
opened them, evidently without any intention of exhibiting them to his
neighbor, but with the purpose of furnishing some reassurance to
himself. Having looked at them earnestly one after the other, he
returned them to the bag, closed it, and set it on the floor. Once more
he appealed to the man behind him.

"You're sure you don't know anything about any Evermans?"

"I'm afraid I don't, sir. But--"

The young man took a little notebook from his pocket and wrote in it a
few words which his neighbor, curiously peering over his shoulder, could
see plainly. "Approach to shrine. A prophet in his own country." The
inscription made the observer feel a vague mortification.

"You might ask the conductor," he suggested.

"Thank you," was the solemn answer. Then, in slightly uneven script, the
stranger added to his notes, "Ask the conductor," and placed an
exclamation point after the words.

The conductor, approaching from the rear, was halted and the question
put.

"Did you ever hear the name Basil Everman?"

"Never." The conductor also felt a kindly unwillingness to give a
negative answer. "But I've only been on this run fifteen years, and my
home's at the other end. But you can ask the brakeman; he lives in
Waltonville."

The young man's notebook was still in his hand. He wrote in it, "Ask the
brakeman about B. E., the incomparable," and followed it with three
exclamation points.

The brakeman answered that he, too, was ignorant of Basil Everman. He
perched on the arm of the inquirer's seat. He said that he lived in
Waltonville because it was cheaper and his wife liked to keep chickens.
He gave various other reasons why his wife liked the country. He
preferred the city.

When the brakeman had gone, Mr. Illington began to prophesy the probable
outcome of the next presidential election, and the young man, making
some incoherent excuse, rose to go into the other car. But the other car
was crowded, and he had to come back, heavy bags in hand. When Mr.
Illington, not in the least offended, asked him whether he was a
traveling man, he answered so gruffly that he was left in peace.

In spite of the fact that this was the eve of Commencement and that
numerous fathers and mothers were to be its guests, the Waltonville
Hotel sent no porters to the station to meet the train. It was taken for
granted that those persons who were able to travel were able also to
carry their hand luggage. Those who had trunks or sample cases sent
Black Jerry down from the hotel after they had registered.

The young man knew nothing of old Jerry, so he carried his many changes
of clothing, his silver-mounted toilet articles, and his books in his
own hand. He stepped from the train almost before it stopped, anxious to
secure for himself as good accommodations as were to be had, and asked
of the amused station agent the location of the best hotel. The agent
looked after his rapidly disappearing figure and winked at the
baggage-man as if to say, "I wonder what he will think of it when he
sees it!"

When the young man reached the hotel, having stumbled and almost fallen
on protruding bricks in the uneven pavement, the expression of weariness
on his face changed to one of disgust. The hotel was small; its
furnishings were poor and rickety; it was not clean; and it was
saturated throughout with the odors of stale beer and stale cooking. To
engage a room one must enter the bar-room and endure the scrutiny of
half a dozen pairs of curious eyes peering out of dull, bloated faces.
The young man set his bags down heavily and asked for the best room in
the house.

The landlord looked at him with a sour smile.

"They're all pretty much alike."

"Any with baths?"

"No, sir."

"Isn't this a college town?"

"I believe they call it that."

"Humph!" said the stranger. Then he wrote his name, "Evan Utterly, New
York," in a square hand in the untidy, blotted register and the landlord
gave him a key to Number Five.

"First room at the head of the stairs. You can find it. Name's on the
door."

"Thank you," said Mr. Utterly. He intended to convey stern reproof by
his tone so that the landlord should burn with mortification. But his
tone was not reproving, it was exclamatory. His eyes had lifted to a
picture hung above the dingy mirror behind the bar. It was a poor old
English print, representing the arrival of the stage at an inn door.
From the stage window leaned the head of a young girl, who looked with a
frightened expression at the coarse face of the landlord, while a little
dog barked furiously at the horses. The poor picture seemed to have some
powerful fascination for the stranger. His tone became eager.

"Did you ever hear of any one named Basil Everman?" he asked.

"Never."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten years."

"Did you ever hear of any one by the name of Everman?"

The landlord turned to wait upon the first of the advancing fathers.

"Never," said he.

Into the face of one of the loafers came a startled look. This was the
lawyer, Bates, who had dulled a fine mind by dissipation and of whom
little Eleanor Bent lived in terror. The mention of Basil Everman seemed
to amaze him. His brow was for an instant furrowed as though he tried to
concentrate all his powers of mind upon some long-past circumstance, but
he was not able, at this hour of the day, to concentrate upon anything,
and presently the fumes of liquor and tobacco and the warm summer air
sent him back into the state of somnolence from which he had been
roused.

Utterly found a hard, uneven bed in an unaired room and spent a
wretchedly uncomfortable night filled with foolish dreams of impossible
quests. So depressed was he with the last search, which seemed to
extend over years and years and lead nowhere, that his first act upon
waking was to reach out and take in his hand the thin old magazines
which lay in his bag on a chair near by and open to "Bitter Bread."

"It was late afternoon when she reached her destination," he read.
"There, instead of the eager face of Arnold, she saw looking from the
inn door the cruel face of Corbin; there, instead of Arnold's welcoming
voice, she heard the sharp bark of Corbin's unfriendly dog."

Having read the two sentences, which seemed to restore his confidence,
Utterly rose, dressed himself in white flannel, and went down to the
dining-room.

Breakfast was, as was to be expected, poor. But among the mildly excited
persons with whom the room was filled, Utterly was at first the only one
who complained. Mothers and fathers were nervous with fear that John and
Harry might not do well; sisters watched, bright-eyed, for brothers and
the friends of brothers. Mr. Illington stopped at Utterly's end of one
of the long, untidy tables to bid him good-morning. He called him now by
his name, having consulted the hotel register, and offered in friendly
fashion to introduce him to "the girls."

There was, Utterly said to himself, but one person with a mind in the
room. The person whom he thus distinguished was Dr. Green, who came late
and brought with him the strong odor of drugs which betrayed his
profession. He moved his chair as though he would have liked to relieve
a black mood by tossing it above his head, and perhaps by slamming it
down upon the floor. His quick motions and his bright eyes indicated an
abundance of physical and mental energy, neither of which had, perhaps,
full exercise. Having waited long for a late-appearing housekeeper, he
had at last sped down the street to the hotel. Now he ordered breakfast
sharply and impatiently.

Old Jerry, waiter as well as man-of-all-work, obeyed him spryly with
many a chuckled "Yes, doctor; yes, mars'r," which indicated that the
doctor was a less formidable person than he seemed.

"That good-for-nothin' Jinnie ought to go to Geo'gia trade, mars'r,
that's where she ought to be sent a-flyin'. Didn't get you no breakfus!
Yes, mars'r, these is meant for cakes." Old Jerry looked toward the
kitchen. "That one out there's like Jinnie, mars'r. The wimmen, they is
all alike, seems to me."

The doctor looked as though he agreed with Jerry's humorous disgust with
the sex. Utterly, watching him, grew more certain that here at last was
promise of intelligence. He might have been less sure of the doctor's
intelligence could he have seen the complete turn of head and body which
followed his own exit.

"These," said Dr. Green, "go clad as the angels."

Jerry bent to pick up the doctor's napkin, and once bent to the floor,
found it difficult to rise, so convulsed was he.

"Yes, mars'r, that am so."

Stopping at the bar on his way from the dining-room, Utterly asked the
hotel-keeper the name of the teacher of English at the college. The
hotel-keeper regarded his white apparel with unconcealed astonishment,
and shook his head.

"Can't tell you. Don't believe you can do any business out there this
morning. They're having their graduating exercises. Is your line books?"

"Yes," answered Utterly. "That's my line."

His disgust with the ignorance of those whom he had encountered and his
recollection of his uncomfortable night faded as he walked, an hour
later, out toward the campus. Here was Waltonville, after all, as he
imagined it, and in order that such a Waltonville might be preserved, it
was endurable that some discomforts should be preserved also.

Here was a broad street, sloping up to the college gates; here were tall
trees and broad lawns, and everywhere masses of roses and honeysuckle
which one had a right to expect in this latitude and longitude in June.
He looked with admiration at the graceful curve of the black railing
which protected those who went up the steps to Dr. Green's office, and
stopped stock-still when he came to Thomasina's gateway and saw her
straight flagged walk and her flowers, and said, "By Jove!" when he
heard the music of the bees in the blossoming honey locust. The campus
was surrounded by a brick wall with high, thick, brick posts, all
covered with ivy which was now sending out clean, bright little shoots.
The old buildings were covered so that they seemed to be constructed of
green vines.

In the distance the academic procession was approaching, the gowned and
hooded shepherds of the flock leading, the boys and girls, similarly
gowned, following sedately after. From the chapel toward which they
advanced came the sound of music, a festival march well played on a
sweet-toned old organ. A bit of poetry came to Utterly's mind:


     "Who are these coming to the sacrifice?...
     What little town by river or sea shore,
     Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
     Is emptied of its folk this pious morn?"


"How delightfully Attic!" he said to himself, not without satisfaction
in the knowledge which made this comment possible.

The various members of the procession were not so set upon the
significance of their orderly march that they did not notice the
stranger as he stood watching them. All the professors saw him and
envied him a little his youth and his elegance, and were at the same
time a little amused. Eleanor Bent saw him and flushed, then grew very
white. Here, perhaps, was the stranger who was to call upon her! Her
heart was wax, as yet unwritten upon, but this day plastic and ready for
a lover's signature. She was, at the thought that Utterly might be the
coming messenger of "Willard's Magazine," at once excited and alarmed.
She was so ignorant--what should she say to so imposing and elegant a
person?

Seeing that the body of the chapel was filled, Utterly climbed one of
the two broad staircases which led to the rear gallery, and from there
looked down upon the bonnets of the ladies and upon the flower-decked
platform on which faculty and graduates were now taking their places.
There were two other occupants of the gallery--at the organ a handsome
boy, who was evidently a senior, since his black gown lay on the bench
beside him, and the same tall gentleman redolent of drugs who had
breakfasted at the hotel.

The boy was playing vigorously. His touch was clear and true, and
Utterly, who possessed, along with many other serviceable and
unserviceable bits of knowledge, an acquaintance with organ music,
listened with surprise to his spirited and accurate work. His eyes then
passed from one member of the faculty to another, resting longest upon
President Lister, short, dark-skinned, and Jewish in appearance, and
upon a tall, slender, smooth-shaven man whom he guessed to be the
Professor of English. In these two, he decided, after contemplating them
and their colleagues, was concentrated the intellectual strength of
Walton College.

When the processional was finished, the player slid off the organ bench,
slipped into his gown, straightened his shoulders, whispered a "Hello!"
at the doctor, and left the gallery. A much smaller boy emerged,
red-faced, from the interior of the organ, and to him Utterly signaled a
demand for a programme.

During the long prayer, he read the list of graduates. The first name
upon which his eye fell, that of Eleanor Bent, startled him so that he
almost exclaimed aloud, and for a few moments he continued to stare at
it as though he were not quite certain that he read aright. But the name
was unmistakable, as well as the young woman's part on the
programme--"Eleanor Bent, Valedictory." Utterly slid along the bench
toward the doctor, who was much surprised to find him close by when he
lifted his head after the prayer. There was a strange, excited look in
the doctor's eyes. At the programme which Utterly held out to him he
glared almost savagely. He did not like Utterly's looks; he was an
effeminate dandy.

Utterly had drawn a heavy line under Eleanor Bent's name, and he pointed
to it now with his pencil.

"Is that a _young_ lady?" he whispered rather stupidly.

The doctor looked at him with unfriendly astonishment.

"Naturally!"

"I mean--is there another person of that name in the town?--an aunt,
perhaps, or--"

"No," said Dr. Green, "there isn't."

"And here!" Mr. Utterly's pencil moved to another point. "'Richard
Everman Lister.' Do you know anything of him?"

The doctor jerked his head toward the organ. "That was he."

"Did you ever hear of a Basil Everman?"

It was impossible to tell whether this jerk of head signified impatience
or negation. Utterly pointed again to Richard's name. He did not
observe or choose to observe that the doctor objected to this whispered
questioning.

"Do you know anything about his relatives?"

"I know them all."

"And there is no Basil Everman?"

The doctor turned his shoulder now with an unmistakable intention to say
no more. As Utterly slid back to his place, he saw an old catalogue in
another pew and leaned forward to secure it. Among the former presidents
of the college was Richard Everman, who was also Professor of Greek.
Basil--who but a Professor of Greek would give his son such a name? Mr.
Utterly glared at Dr. Green. Was this foolish doctor trying to conceal
something from him, something which he had every right to know? He had a
moment's silly suspicion that the conductor and the hotel-keeper and the
brakeman and the doctor might have conspired against him.

Putting the old catalogue into his pocket, he gave his attention to the
speaker, that same bright-eyed, blond Richard who was beginning his
"_Auditores_, _Comites_, _Professores_," in a clear voice and with a
smiling face. Utterly smiled back, partly in response and partly at the
old-fashioned English pronunciation, antiquated even to him, though he
was years older than these children.

Between Richard Lister and Eleanor Bent came ten speakers, each
addressing a tense and motionless audience, sympathetic with aspiring
youth, sympathetic in turn with each attentive parent and sister, and
breathing audible sighs with each concluding bow. Of all the boys only
Richard was composed. The only girl in the class beside Eleanor, Cora
Scott, made no impression upon Utterly except that she was a frail
little thing, what color and prettiness she might have overshadowed,
blotted out by the black gown in which she was swathed. Of them all, no
one failed, but there were slight hesitations and cheeks red with
embarrassment. The topics which they discussed might well have excited
older heads than theirs. Especially were the theories of Mr. Darwin,
penetrating after many years to Walton College, now torn, shredded, cast
to the winds.

But Eleanor Bent--here was no blotting-out, but rather a heightening of
vivid beauty. Utterly, who did not have an enthusiastic temperament,
said to himself that he had never seen a more charming girl. She walked
well in her approach to the center of the platform, she bowed
gracefully, she had, he decided, the most wonderful gray eyes he had
ever seen, and the most musical, low voice. She was in a sense his
discovery also, and this evening he would talk to her and learn just how
remarkable she was.

Her address was merely an elaborate farewell, flowery, perhaps, but
appropriately and becomingly flowery, matching well the roses and the
honeysuckle and the Southern inflections of her sweet young voice.

While the degrees were being conferred, Utterly consulted again the
catalogue in his pocket. The name of the teacher of English was Scott,
Henry Harrington Scott; was certainly the smooth-faced gentleman. He
lived probably in one of the pleasant houses on the campus with their
domestic resemblance to the classic architecture of the large buildings.

He looked with interest at Richard Everman Lister when he returned to
his place on the organ bench for the recessional. Richard's countenance
was frank and open; there had descended to him, if he were at all
related to this mysterious Basil, no outward trace, at least, of the
interesting qualities of mind and soul which distinguished the author of
"Bitter Bread" and "Roses of Pæstum."




CHAPTER IV

MR. UTTERLY MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MRS. SCOTT


When Utterly started from the hotel to call upon the Professor of
English, the three members of the Scott family were still at the dinner
table. Mrs. Scott occupied the chief seat, a small, birdlike creature
with quick motions and a sharp tongue which helped to shape staccato
notes as varied as those of a catbird. She condemned now in rapid
succession the decorations of the chapel, President Lister's address,
and Eleanor Bent's color, which she believed was not altogether natural.

Little Cora, who sat to her mother's left, was, to most persons
acquainted with the family, a negligible quantity. She had gone through
college because college was at hand, and she would now assume, it was to
be expected, like the other girls in Waltonville, an attitude of
waiting, which was to her mother not without its precise object.

"Richard Lister never looked at any one else," she often insisted to her
husband.

"Richard is very young," Dr. Scott would remind her in his nervous way.
He stammered when he addressed his wife, who seldom allowed him to
finish his long, beautiful sentences. Sometimes she helped him with a
word, sometimes she finished the sentence herself, radically altering
his meaning, and proceeding precipitately to some lighter theme.

He sat opposite his wife and awaited impatiently the moment of release.
About twenty-five years after he was married, he had made for himself a
refuge in a room adjoining his classroom. Here a single wide window
opened upon a part of the prospect which Mrs. Bent and her daughter
enjoyed daily; here was a fireplace and here ample space for shelves. He
transported himself thither with desk, pamphlets, old books, and all
other movable possessions except his clothes, to spend that part of his
time which was not devoted to eating or sleeping or teaching. There Mrs.
Scott did not seek him out, having everything in her own hands, and
needing no advice upon any subject domestic or foreign.

He had an intense desire for a little fame, both because he did not wish
to be wholly forgotten, and because he longed for association with those
who were working in the same field. He wrote short articles for the
"Era" and longer articles for the "Continent," and occasionally he
received letters in comment from scholars. He read widely, and his mind,
quickened by some modern instance, offered at once a parallel from
literature or history. An eruption of Ætna reminded him of magnificent
and almost forgotten lines of Cowper; a summer evening recalled stanza
upon stanza; in spring he thought in verse.

Occasionally he received for his compositions a small honorarium. The
first he had passed with fatal gallantry to Mrs. Scott. When she spent
it for an atrocious "Head of an Arab" in Arabian colors, he determined
to use the next for books. But she expected a continuation of these
perquisites and was quick to suspect their arrival. Instead of adding
new volumes of Pater or old editions of the poetry of Robert Herrick to
his library, he added new pieces of statuary and other objects of
doubtful value to his wife's collection. When the precious slips of
paper passed from his hand, he was tempted to wonder why he had married.
But loyalty was a religion with him and he would be loyal even in
thought.

The vacant place opposite Cora belonged to her brother Walter, or, as he
preferred to sign himself, W. Simpson Scott, a product peculiarly his
mother's, moulded by her hand, holding her convictions. Earnestly
advised in his boyhood that without a large income one could do and be
nothing in the world, he had accepted a position with an uncle, a
manufacturer in New York, and had risen until he was now his uncle's
chief assistant at a salary well known in Waltonville. He proved himself
to be equal to all those commercial emergencies in which a little sharp
dealing goes farther than a good deal of hard work. He came home about
twice a year, bringing with him the most recent of slang, the most
fashionable of wardrobes, the latest musical-comedy songs, and the most
contemptuous opinion of Waltonville.

To the Scott household the closing of the college for the summer brought
little change. The time that Dr. Scott had spent in the classroom he
would spend now in his study; the time that Cora had spent with her
books she would spend embroidering. Mrs. Scott's life would know at
first no change, but in August she would take Cora to Atlantic City to
meet Walter, and Dr. Scott would spend a month in heavenly quiet and
with an entirely negligible indigestion.

When Evan Utterly reached the porch steps, Mrs. Scott stood still at the
foot of the stairway which she was about to ascend and looked and
listened, regretting the chance which had taken her husband to the porch
before her. Somehow Utterly in his beautiful white clothes had escaped
her attention at the morning exercises, or she would have had up to this
time an uncomfortable period of speculation.

Vaguely provoked because she was not summoned at once, she stood still,
her eyes roving from the parlor, with its gilt chairs and its pale
upholstery, to the sitting-room, with its table spread with Cora's
presents. There could be no better time to entertain a stranger!

She heard Utterly comment upon the Attic beauty of the campus; then his
voice sank. He was still talking about Waltonville's charm, but she
suspected a confidential communication. She determined to wait until she
heard more. There was only one situation in life in which she was truly
patient and in such a situation she now waited and listened. When a
single clear statement reached her alert ears, she moved nearer to the
door. The stranger had said that he was a member of the staff of
"Willard's Magazine"! She had a passion for literature, she believed,
and here was doubtless a very celebrated literary man at her door! She
laid her hand lightly upon the latch, thereby producing a little sound
which the stranger could not hear, but which Dr. Scott could not
mistake. Surely he would rise at once and invite her to join them!

But her husband gave no sign of summoning her. Patience became
impatience. She could hear in his voice the tone which he assumed when
he was bored or when he was talking with persons whom he did not like.
She could still hear only unintelligible fragments of the conversation.
She clicked the latch again.

Dr. Scott did not like the stranger, either for himself or his clothes
or his speech. It was a period when Anglomania affected the rising
generation and this youth used English pronunciations as he might have
used a monocle, with evident and painful effort. In what he had to say
Dr. Scott was not the least interested. He had begun to open the mail
which lay on the chair beside him and he wished desperately that the
young man would state his errand and go.

When Utterly asked finally for Basil Everman, Dr. Scott was not able to
help him in his search. He said that he had lived in Waltonville for
only about fifteen years and that he did not remember that he had ever
heard of Basil. Richard Everman had been president of the college and he
had had one child, a daughter who was now Mrs. Lister. From her the
family history could doubtless be learned. It might be that Basil was
her uncle. Dr. Scott stirred uneasily, as he was wont to do when he was
anxious to be left in peace.

Mrs. Scott had moved to the side of the doorway from which she could see
the stranger. He seemed to her each moment more distinguished in
appearance. She was certain that he hailed from that distant Boston
which she adored without having seen. When she saw him reach for his hat
and stick, which he had laid on the porch floor beside him, she lifted
the latch and walked out. She was just in the nick of time. Neither the
conductor nor the brakeman nor even the hotel-keeper was as offensive to
Utterly as this man who professed to teach English literature. He did
not exhibit his magazines or explain why he sought Basil Everman.

For once, Dr. Scott did as he was expected and desired to do. Rising, he
presented the stranger to Mrs. Scott with a cordiality which only hope
of his own escape could have inspired. Now, at least, he need not talk.
Perhaps he could even leave the stranger entirely in her hands. This
was, he explained with a Chesterfieldian bow, Mr. Utterly, who was
making inquiry about some one named Basil Everman.

Mrs. Scott seated herself with a finality of manner which made it
necessary for Utterly to be seated also.

"Oh, yes?" said she eagerly and inquiringly.

"Do you know anything of him?" asked Utterly.

"Why, yes. He was a brother of Mrs. Lister. He died--"

"Died!" repeated Utterly.

"Oh, yes, before we came to Waltonville. I believe he lived away from
home. He died of some contagious disease and he wasn't buried here, I
know that. I think he was a bit _wild_." Mrs. Scott looked at the
stranger with some deep meaning.

Dr. Scott flushed during this rush of words. It was strange that she
should know so much about Basil Everman and he so little, but whether he
had never heard his name, or whether he had known and had forgotten were
questions of too little importance to solve or to explain.

"What do you mean by 'wild'?" asked Utterly with blunt curiosity.

"Oh, he--he didn't do things as other people did them," answered Mrs.
Scott vaguely.

"You never saw him?"

"No."

"Nor heard anything of him but that?"

"No." Mrs. Scott made the acknowledgment with reluctance.

When Utterly said that her not knowing more was very singular, her
curiosity became almost a physical distress.

"Was there anything remarkable about him?" she asked.

"Rather!" Utterly now took hat and stick firmly in his hand. "Where do
the Listers live?"

Mrs. Scott ignored the question. It annoyed her to think of this
brilliant stranger in the hands of Mrs. Lister even though his business
was with her.

"If you are interested in hearing about Basil Everman"--the name slipped
from her lips as though it had long waited just behind them--"you might
like to meet some Waltonville people here to-morrow evening. They could
tell you a great deal."

Utterly accepted the invitation with alacrity. If he were still in
Waltonville, he should like nothing better.

"There is another citizen of Waltonville whom I should like to meet,"
said he.

Mrs. Scott's mind traveled rapidly down the list of professors. She
almost purred in her satisfaction.

"I shall be glad to ask any one. That person is--"

When Utterly answered "Miss Eleanor Bent," Mrs. Scott looked astonished
and disapproving. Utterly read her countenance with amusement. It was
evident that Miss Bent did not move in Mrs. Scott's circle. The worse
for Mrs. Scott! He explained that he was to call on Miss Bent that
evening by appointment. She was, thank fortune! here and alive and easy
to find. Then, with a polite good-afternoon, he descended the steps and
started toward the Listers' white house.

Dr. Scott and his wife spoke simultaneously.

"What on earth does he want?" demanded Mrs. Scott of Dr. Scott and of
the universe.

"The man is a stranger! Why did you invite him here like that?"

"We are told to entertain strangers," replied Mrs. Scott flippantly.
"What _does_ he want here? What does he want with Eleanor Bent? What is
this about Mrs. Lister's brother?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. It's none of my affair."

"Perhaps she has applied somewhere for a position. What--"

Dr. Scott gathered up his papers and books. He dropped the "Fortnightly
Review" and almost groaned to see that magazine and cover had parted
company. Then he bestowed upon his wife one of the glances of
incredulous astonishment which he had cast upon her during all but a
very brief period of their married life, and fled. That a party involved
the making of ice-cream and that he would be required to furnish the
motive power for its manufacture in the middle of to-morrow's hot
afternoon was not the least disturbing of the reflections which this
unfortunate incident introduced into his mind.




CHAPTER V

MR. UTTERLY CONTINUES HIS SEARCH


Hat and cane in hand and carrying under his arm the three old magazines
which he contemplated from time to time so earnestly, Utterly ascended
the steps of the Lister porch. There, in mid-afternoon, Dr. Lister sat
alone, the dinner guests having departed to join the general exodus on
the five-o'clock train. Mrs. Lister had gone upstairs to change her
black dress for one of lighter weight, and now sat quietly and happily
beside her window. Such periods of unhappiness as she had lived through
that morning were followed by spaces of calm when a crust seemed to form
over the grief which could still burn so fiercely. The house was very
still; the only movement indoors was that of the thin curtains swaying
gently in the summer air.

Hearing a strange voice on the porch, she made haste to complete her
change of apparel. She was as punctilious in the small relations of life
as she was in its more important principles. Perhaps the visitor did not
wish to see her; if he lingered she would go quietly down into the hall
and find out.

Dr. Lister had seen Utterly and had wondered who he was. Now, saying to
himself that Waltonville was seldom glorified by so well-clad a figure,
he rose to meet his guest. Dr. Lister loved Greek and taught his boys
and girls faithfully, but without much enthusiasm for their
capabilities or possibilities. His mind was more intently occupied with
the affairs of the great world which seemed to lie so far away, with
prospective changes in the English cabinet, with ominous stirrings in
the East. It seemed to him at the first glance that his guest belonged
to that interesting outer world.

"This is Dr. Lister?" Utterly saw the eager eyes. Here was a man! "I am
Mr. Utterly of 'Willard's Magazine.' Can you spare me a few moments of
your time?"

Dr. Lister motioned the stranger to one of the comfortable chairs. He
had been thinking of a few minutes' sleep before supper, but he gave it
up willingly and even eagerly in the prospect of a talk with this keen
stranger.

"My vacation began at noon, sir. I shall be glad to give you all the
time you wish."

Utterly sat with the magazines in his hand. This Waltonville, he said,
was charming.

"A New Yorker would find it rather dull," answered Dr. Lister.

"There would be compensation here for anything New York could offer,"
said Utterly, without meaning it in the least. "This peaceful Attic
flavor"--with a gesture toward the green trees and the smooth lawn and
Dr. Lister's canna beds--"makes one feel that after all some persons and
some places do arrive at serenity. We never do in New York. We don't
know what serenity is." Then Utterly descended from the pedestal upon
which Dr. Lister had for the moment established him. He added a "don't
you know" to his sentence. "We don't know what serenity is, don't you
know." The phrase was still not common property in America, but it
offended Dr. Lister's ear.

"I listened with great pleasure to your boys and girls, especially to
the playing of your own boy--I believe it was your son who played the
organ?"

"Yes," said Dr. Lister.

"I stood at the campus gate and watched your peaceful procession with
envy and I might say with awe. I felt that it wasn't real. I seemed to
have stepped back just about two thousand years. You ought to keep it
forever as a spectacle. Pilgrimages ought to be made here, not by train,
but on foot. Everything in the world is changing--you have something
that is old. I couldn't help thinking of 'Thou still unravish'd bride of
quietness,' and so forth, don't you know?"

Dr. Lister shifted his knees so that the one which had been uppermost
was now beneath the other. Who was this strange, bearded, sentimental
youth, robed like the lilies, who quoted poetry at first acquaintance?
Dr. Lister read poetry, but he did not quote it to men whom he did not
know. He wished that the young man, still running eloquently on about
the Attic scene, would state his errand and go. He thought longingly of
his couch in the cool study.

Then, in the still afternoon, thus far so like any other Commencement
afternoon, he was startled out of all sleepiness.

"It is difficult to understand how Basil Everman with such an
environment could have looked so keenly and seeingly at the grimmer side
of life."

Dr. Lister turned his head.

"I didn't understand you."

"I said that it is difficult to understand how Basil Everman, with such
an environment as this in his youth, could have presented so completely
a side of life so grim and terrible."

"_Basil Everman!_" repeated Dr. Lister. Still he could not believe that
he had heard aright. He had been sleepy and he had misunderstood.

"Why, yes! It surely is not possible that Dr. Lister does not know Basil
Everman!"

"Basil Everman was my wife's brother. He has been dead for twenty
years!"

"You did not know him as a writer?" Utterly's eyes arraigned Dr. Lister
for stupidity or some worse fault.

"No. What do you mean?" Dr. Lister lowered his voice. His impressions of
Basil Everman, whom he had not known, were not extensive, but they were
very positive. He had been a strange youth who had brought sorrow, and
sorrow only, to those who loved him, talented without question, but
lacking in balance of mind. He had often felt for him a stern
disapproval, coupled with a half-defined jealousy because of the
devotion of his sister to a memory which was best put away.

"I am a member of the staff of 'Willard's Magazine,'" explained Utterly.
"Some weeks ago I looked carefully over the old files with a view to
making a comparison of the shorter fiction of to-day with that which
was being written twenty-five years or more ago. Ours to-day is vastly
superior." Suddenly Utterly's words came in a flood. He grew ardent and
excited. "We are beginning to learn from the French and Russians. We are
learning the beauty of the lowly, even of the degraded. We are learning
to look at life with our eyes and not with our puritanic moral sense. I
have no words with which to express my contempt for that dull, blind,
wickedly perverted thing called Puritanism."

Dr. Lister now sat motionless, his knees a limp parallel. His perfect
quiet, the intentness of his gaze, the complete stillness of all about
them, suggested to Utterly a breathless moment in a play. He felt that
he was talking well, that he had never talked better in his life.

"But here, twenty years ago, was an exception, a glorious, shining
exception. I found a story called 'Bitter Bread,' an essay called 'Roses
of Pæstum,' and a poem called 'Storm.' Every one who has read them
considers them extraordinary. They exhibit not only marvelous
imaginative power, but an extensive experience of life, the experience
of a man who has seen many things and felt all things. I am not one of
those who hold that genius finds both its source and its material in
itself, furnishing at once its own fuel and its own fire."

Utterly paused for breath. Here was a well-expressed sentiment of which
he must make mental and afterwards written note.

"But--" began Dr. Lister.

Utterly lifted his hand.

"We found after a good deal of searching that one of the original
manuscripts had been preserved. It was mailed from Waltonville,
Pennsylvania, though the answer was to be sent to Baltimore. I had
another errand here, and I was anxious to discover what I could about
this contributor of twenty-five years ago, who promised such
extraordinary things and who then, as far as we know, ceased to write. I
belong to that class of biographers who believe that all is sacred and
valuable in the development of genius. The facts of a writer's life are
of transcendent importance. The power of imagination fails after a
certain point, rather it does not begin until a certain degree of
experience has been reached. A writer must have _lived_. I am hungry to
know all you can tell me of Basil Everman. I mean to write about him at
length." Utterly settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair.
"You say that he is dead? How unfortunate!"

"Yes," said Dr. Lister slowly. "He has been dead for twenty years."

"Did he die here?"

"No. He died away from home in an epidemic. It was not possible to bring
his body home. His death seriously affected my wife, who is his sister,
and who lost her father about the same time. I never saw Basil Everman
either in life or death."

"And you never knew or suspected that he wrote?"

"I never heard that he was supposed to have talent of any sort. He was
very young."

"So was Keats when he wrote 'St. Agnes Eve.' Surely Basil Everman's
sister knew about his talent!"

"I do not believe she ever knew that he had published any writings."

"May I see her?"

"I--I will see."

Dr. Lister rose, bewildered, and went slowly toward the door. Surely
Mary Alcestis could have known nothing of this! The idea that she might
have mental reservations was new. He was certain that she would be
shocked by this inquiry and he wished that there were time to prepare
her for it. He could, if she wished, ask the stranger to come at another
time, or he could excuse her entirely.

He found her in the hall. He had a fleeting impression that she had been
for some time where she stood now, by the stairway with her hand on the
newel post. But she came forward at once, her smooth and slightly pale
face showing only its usual expression of placid content.

"Did you have a rest, mother?" asked Dr. Lister.

"Yes," she answered in her steady voice. "All that I needed."

"There is a literary man here who comes from a New York magazine who
wishes to speak to you."

"To me?" repeated Mrs. Lister. It was not a question, real or
rhetorical, it was simply a mechanical repetition of her husband's
words.

"Yes. He wishes, strangely enough, mother, to ask you about some
literary work of your brother Basil's."

"Of Basil's." Mrs. Lister did not seem so much surprised as benumbed.
Dr. Lister was now certain that she had heard the stranger, and had
tried, and was still trying, to gather herself together.

"He says that your brother sent to his magazine many years ago some
remarkable compositions which they published anonymously. Did you know
of them?"

"He used to write some," said Mrs. Lister in a childish way. "He played
some, too, on the piano. No, I didn't know that anything was published."

"Will you come out and speak to this gentleman? Do you feel able to
speak to him?"

Mrs. Lister walked toward the door without answering. She rested her
hand for an instant on the door frame and felt for the step with
perceptible confusion. If the sunshine looked suddenly dark, and the
honeysuckle seemed to exhale a sickly odor, it was not the first time in
her life that under like circumstances she had held her head bravely.
She had heard every word the stranger had said. If she had put on
spectacles of some strange, distorting medium, he could not have looked
more monstrous, more frightful to her. She gave him a cold hand because
his own hand reached for it, and then sat down.

Utterly repeated his account of the finding of Basil Everman's stories
and his estimate of his genius. He expressed in even more realistic
phrase his admiration for the insight of the younger generation of
writers. He said that modern literature was finding material in thieves,
drunkards, in what had hitherto been considered bottomless pits. Even
Keats had said that truth was beauty.

He recounted with witty embroidery how he had asked the brakeman and the
conductor and the person whom he called "mine host" about Basil Everman
and how none of them could tell him anything.

"But the little tavern gave the whole thing away. The heroine of 'Bitter
Bread' takes refuge in just such a place; there is the identical worn
doorstep and the fly-blown bottles and the print over the bar which
pictures exactly her own arrival. There, at least, Basil Everman must
have been long enough to have a photographic impression printed on his
sensitive brain."

Dr. Lister's hands, lying upon the arms of his chair, straightened
themselves as though, using them as a fulcrum, he meant to rise with a
mighty spring. The tavern was not a place for Mary Alcestis's brother to
be connected with! But he looked at Mrs. Lister and sat still. Her face
was a little whiter, but it was unruffled. Now that he had been so
unwise as to let her see this creature, the interview had better be
conducted as she chose.

"Then I went to the house of the Professor of English and he knew
nothing. If it hadn't been for the tavern, I should have despaired
entirely. Will you"--Utterly, looking at Mrs. Lister decided that so
Victorian a person could not possibly understand or appreciate her
brother. "Will you tell me about Basil Everman? Will you not tell me
everything?"

Mrs. Lister began in a smooth voice as though she were reciting a
well-conned lesson. Not a quiver betrayed her spinning world.

"Basil was born here in this house. My father was president of the
college before Dr. Lister. Basil was his only son and I his only
daughter. He had no other children. Basil was only twenty-five years old
when he died. He died of diphtheria." Mrs. Lister had evidently
concluded. "In Baltimore," she added as though that put a period to her
sentence.

"Yes?" said Utterly.

Mary Alcestis smiled a meaningless little smile and said nothing.

"That isn't all, Mrs. Lister!" cried Utterly.

"Yes."

"Oh, but Mrs. Lister!" Utterly was delighted to see that suddenly her
eyes burned and her hands twitched. "What was he like? Do you remember
him distinctly? What did he look like?"

"_Remember him!_" said Mrs. Lister's heart. "_Remember Basil!_" Aloud
she said steadily and clearly, "He was quite tall and slender. He had
black hair, curly hair. His eyes were large and bright."

"You have photographs of him, of course?"

Dr. Lister rose at Mrs. Lister's command to fetch the album from the
parlor table. He recalled more and more distinctly those long hours when
she had lain sleepless at his side suffering her abnormal and
unwholesome grief for her brother. He moved his chair closer to hers as
he handed the stranger Basil's picture.

"What extraordinary eyes!" said Utterly. "They look like another pair
of eyes I've seen recently." He frowned, but could not remember what
eyes. "That is, their shape is the same. What color were they?"

"Basil had gray eyes."

"You surely must have known that he was wonderful!"

"He was bright," conceded Mrs. Lister.

"Was he a graduate of this college?"

"No."

"He must have traveled a great deal. He could not have written 'Roses of
Pæstum' without having been at Pæstum, and one does not get to Pæstum
without going through some other places. I think your father was
extraordinarily wise to let him get his education in that way. Did he
live abroad?"

"He was never abroad."

"He never saw Pæstum!"

"No."

Utterly looked at Mrs. Lister as though he did not believe her. Again
Dr. Lister's hands flattened on the arms of his chair.

"Extraordinary! And he lived here in this house!" Utterly looked up at
the walls as though he expected them to bear a memorial plate or some
other record. "Was he"--He turned impatiently to Dr. Lister--"Are there
no interesting facts about him, no _memorabilia_, no traditions of any
kind? If he has been dead only twenty years, he should still be alive in
the minds of men and women, especially of women. A man like that
couldn't simply grow up and die, like a vegetable! We used to think the
Brontës had only lived and grown up and died, but we are learning
differently. It was silly ever to have thought otherwise. Moreover, the
reading public is determined to have the facts about those whom it
admires. You cannot keep people from knowing," concluded Utterly in a
harsh tone, some basic rudeness in his nature showing suddenly through
the outer veneer. He was certain that they were withholding something
from him, certain that Mrs. Lister knew a great deal more than she would
tell. To him Basil Everman grew each moment more unusual, more
mysterious, the position of the scholar who should discover him more to
be desired. If he could see Dr. Lister alone, he might be able to learn
more. He rose and asked whether he might leave the magazines until the
next day.

"I suppose you will wish to read them?"

"Certainly," answered Dr. Lister, rising also.

"Basil Everman stands only second to Edgar Allan Poe among the
_littérateurs_ of the United States; of that even this small amount of
work gives ample proof. It is the most deplorable tragedy in the history
of American literature that the amount should be so small. Are you
_sure_ there is nothing else?"

"Other magazines of the period might have something, might they not?"
suggested Dr. Lister. "Have you thought of looking there? If the style
is so individual, you should be able to recognize the work of the author
elsewhere."

"Even if I did, I couldn't ask questions. Don't you see that I don't
want any one else to find out now? Any calling of the attention of
another magazine to Basil Everman would bring a representative here at
once. There is no reason why I shouldn't have the facts as well as any
one else."

Mrs. Lister rose heavily. The interview had been prolonged a moment too
long and her composure was gone. What she said startled her husband more
than anything that had preceded.

"Do you know all the facts about Homer, or about Shakespeare, or other
writers? I know that you don't know anything about Shakespeare because
there are some people who think that Bacon wrote his works. Why _should_
you know?"

"We should never cease to give thanks if we could find out, dear lady,"
answered Utterly. "I'll give you a hundred dollars a word for any
authentic information about Shakespeare, and a thousand for any about
Homer. Homer and Shakespeare have been dead for centuries and men are
still trying to find out about them. _And will keep on trying_," he
added.

When Utterly was well out of sight, Dr. Lister took his wife's hand.

"Why, my dear! What is it?"

Mrs. Lister turned upon him a gray face. She looked old, terrified,
distraught.

"That is a wolfish man," said she. "Make them leave poor Basil in his
grave! I will tell nothing about Basil. I have nothing to tell about
him."




CHAPTER VI

A NEW PIANO


Richard Lister had been a placid, comfortable baby, though his birth had
followed a period of deep anguish in his mother's life. To her he was a
miracle, an incredible phenomenon, his dependence upon her for every
need of his little being the most heavenly experience she had ever had.
He slept a proper and wholesome number of hours and remained awake long
enough for ample petting, and for the first twelve years of his life he
was scarcely out of her sight. She tended him awake and watched him
while he slept, enduring with considerable pain the sight of him in the
arms of any one except his father or Thomasina Davis or 'Manda.

When he was five years old, she entered upon a period of anxiety whose
beginning she had set for this time. She compelled herself to realize
that she could not have him always; that the small imitations of mannish
clothes which he wore would be presently exchanged for full-grown
originals which he would put on and off without her aid. He would have,
moreover, some day a wife who would supersede his mother in the
delectable kingdom of his heart.

She began also to anticipate the moment when she must begin to
discipline him, and to dread the various forms of infant crime for which
she searched her mind. Presently he would cease to obey promptly; he
would refuse to put his toys away neatly on the low shelf of the
cupboard assigned to him; he would stamp and scream like other naughty
little boys. He might, alas, take pennies from her pocketbook. Then
there would be the fondness for tobacco and playing-cards on whose
account he would have to be struggled with and possibly whipped. She had
never been whipped, and she had good reason to doubt the efficacy of
whipping, but she would not allow her own observation to contradict
Biblical injunction. No one but herself, however, should lay hand or
switch upon Richard, hideous as such necessity would be to her.

But Richard needed no whipping and his mother could decide upon no
moment when the discipline, to which she had given so many hours of
anxious thought, should begin. He continued, up to and long past the age
of five, to be the most biddable little child that ever lived, satisfied
with what he had, requiring no other companionship than that of his
father and mother and 'Manda, playing a great deal by himself, and never
screaming or stamping or taking pennies from pocketbooks. He liked, as
he grew older, to have little Cora Scott come to play with him, but to
the Scotts he would not go without his mother, having a wholly
justifiable fear of Walter.

He was allowed each pleasant morning in summer to cross the broad,
grassy field back of the campus to a little stream, tin bait-can,
fishing-rod, and package of lunch in hand, and a great old straw hat of
his father's on his head. As he sat and fished, 'Manda could watch him
from the kitchen window and his mother could gloat over him from a
window above. Even Dr. Lister left his work once an hour to see how he
fared. If it were a baking morning 'Manda would go down with a fresh
patty-cake or a handful of cookies.

Luck was always poor with Richard, probably because he sang constantly
while he fished. His repertoire was composed of hymns and songs of a
rather solemn cast. He was particularly fond of the lengthy liturgical
service of the church, and prayed the Lord a hundred times in a morning
to have mercy upon him. The fervor with which he expressed this plea
frightened his mother, who feared that such intense emotion indicated a
spirit not long for this world.

Sometimes in the evenings he and 'Manda held a concert at the kitchen
door, 'Manda in her rocking-chair on the porch, Richard on the lowest
step, hands on knees, eyes gazing upon the meadow with its shadowy trees
and its myriad fireflies or looking up at the stars. 'Manda was loath to
leave upon such occasions and sat long after the hour when she was
usually in the colored settlement.

Richard was the soloist and always selected and began the hymns.
Frequently the two took liberties with the original form. Richard made a
long pause after each line of "I was a wandering sheep," and 'Manda's
rich contralto inserted an eerie, tender, indescribably deep and rich
"po' lamb!" The refrain varied constantly and the variety indicated a
keen instinct for harmony.

When he changed to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," or "Hallelu," or "These
Bones Shall Rise Again," 'Manda ceased to rock, and bending forward,
hands on knees, joined in at the beginning, her rich voice furnishing a
background for the child's soprano with its piercing sweetness. In her
performance was all the savagery of deepest Africa and besides all
spiritual meanings and desires. Thomasina Davis, sitting often with Dr.
and Mrs. Lister on the porch on the other side of the house, commanded
every one to stop and listen.

"It makes clear the universal kinship of believers," said she with
shining eyes. "There are a hundred thrilling suggestions in that duet of
blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon and black-haired African."

Dr. Lister smiled back at Thomasina. Mrs. Lister did not understand
exactly what she meant, but she smiled also and obeyed willingly the
command for silence. No sound in the world was so sweet to her as
Richard's voice.

Little Richard liked also to preach. The audience which he usually
selected was, like that of St. Anthony, one of fishes. In imagination he
saw before him, from his pulpit on the bank, a decorous congregation and
a tuneful choir. His performance, while it shocked his mother, yet gave
her hope that he might incline toward the ministry. Her father, for whom
he was named, had had theological training and used to preach in the
college church. It seemed to her often that she could see in Richard's
solemn gestures a resemblance to those of the grave old man.

Richard's discourses suggested no such probability to his father,
eavesdropping from behind a convenient tree. They were pleasant to Dr.
Lister, who sometimes feared that a boy who was never uproarious, who
always remembered to wipe his shoes on the mat, and who never carried
toads or mice in his pockets, might be too amiable and good. He wished
for a little temper, a little disobedience, a little steel under the
satin. When Richard cried out, "Oh, you darned fishes!" in imitation of
the ice man whom Mrs. Lister could neither silence nor reform, his
father was convulsed.

When Richard grew older and ceased to sing, his mother, while she missed
his hymns, was content. Thus had Basil sung when he was a little boy. At
Thomasina's suggestion, Richard had begun early to take music lessons
from her. Except that he had often to be summoned from the old piano to
other duties, and that he often called to his mother to listen to little
melodies which he invented or to certain resolutions of chords which
pleased him, and which were to her ear like any other musical sounds, he
gave no disturbing sign of special interest in music. Sometimes he
repeated stories of musicians which Thomasina told him, about Beethoven
who was an accomplished player at the age of nine, and who had become
deaf when he had scarcely left his youth, and about Handel who had
become blind. Richard's face would glow and his eyes shine with tears.

"Could you imagine, mother, how he felt when he knew that he could never
hear again? He never heard his greatest works. Think of it, mother,
what a fearful thing that would be!"

Mrs. Lister could not imagine it and would not think of it, having but
slight conception of the pleasures which harmonious sound can give to
the ear of the musician. Thus had Basil called upon her for sympathy in
his strange, incomprehensible satisfactions. She wished that Thomasina
would not tell Richard such stories.

Richard was always busy. He kept a series of little notebooks, neatly
indexed; he cut clippings from newspapers and filed them away; he
divided his day into periods for each sort of study, for exercise, and
for play.

Soon after he entered college, his voice returned, a clear, serviceable
tenor. He led the Glee Club which then took no long journeys round the
country, but sang for its own amusement and that of the college, and he
played the chapel organ and the assembly room piano. He continued to
practice at home, but his practice was chiefly that of dull exercises
and unending scales which roused no alarm in his mother's breast, and
which his father regarded fearfully as the indication of a rather feeble
intellect seeking exercise which involved no mental or physical effort.
Richard called out no more with tears, "Oh, mother, did you know that
Handel was blind?" cried out no more, "Oh, mother, listen!" in ecstasy
over some sound which he had produced, no more, "That is to be played
_delicatessimente_, mother. Isn't that a beautiful word?" Richard's
musical passion, at least so it seemed to his mother, had died a
natural death. She could not quite understand why he sought the society
of Cora Scott so seldom and that of Thomasina for several hours
daily--but that was a choice to be thankful for at his age.

In the fall he would have to begin in earnest to prepare for whatever
profession he was to follow. So far there had been no family discussion
of this matter. Mrs. Lister had not quite given up her hopes that he
might become a preacher. Of the other professions open to him, medicine,
law, and teaching, she hoped that he would choose teaching. Then they
could all stay here, forever.

As a matter of fact--alas, for poor Mrs. Lister!--Richard's plans were
made, and of them in their entirety one person knew beside himself.
Under Richard's satin there was steel. His life-work had been selected
and he meant to begin to-morrow. His Commencement money would buy him a
clavier and to it he intended to devote the summer. He could have it in
his own room where it would disturb no one and where he could look upon
it when he woke and practice upon it when he was supposed to be in bed.
He knew that his mother was not fond of music, but his mother would let
him have his way, had always let him have his way. He did not realize
that thus far his way had been hers. In the fall he would go to study
with Faversham in New York, and therefore it was probable that he would
be at home no more. Thus lightly does youth arrange for itself. If poor
Mary Alcestis could have looked into Richard's mind as he sat beside her
at the dinner table when Commencement was over, and could there have
read its hopes and plans so alien to her own, her heart would have been
nearly broken.

Thomasina Davis was not sanguine about Mrs. Lister's easy yielding to
Richard's wishes. She was prepared to talk to his parents by the hour if
need be; she would have been willing to live on bread and water and go
without shoes so that he should be able to study. She was determined to
behold in him the fruit of her labors. Faversham had been a fellow pupil
in the three happy years away from Waltonville; to send Richard Lister
to him with supple, well-trained fingers and with fine taste, to have
Richard say to him that he was a pupil of Thomasina Davis, was a reward
she had promised herself since Richard had sat beside her piano on a
high chair, enchanted by her music. Thomasina, unlike Mrs. Lister, had a
profound respect, an adoration, indeed, for genius. This adoration was
innate, but it owed its strength to certain events in her past, a past
which seemed to Mrs. Lister to have been pathetically empty of most of
women's joys.

When Commencement and the Commencement dinner were over, Richard felt
suddenly restless. He realized that there was nothing that he must do,
that no lessons waited. He sat for a while talking with his mother's
guests, then he went out to the kitchen, meaning to escape across the
campus to the chapel and play. That was what he wanted and needed, the
touch of the smooth keys under his fingers, the sound of the full, rich
organ tones, to give him, instead of this sense of idleness and
emptiness, a consciousness of all the work that was beginning.

But there were obstacles in the way of his playing. The chapel organ and
the assembly room piano were public; he would have an audience in a few
minutes, and he did not wish an audience. If he could find some one to
play duets with him, he would have the volume of sound for which his ear
longed. Thomasina was away; only Cora Scott remained. Cora did not read
well, but they could play compositions which she knew.

'Manda paused in her dishwashing to regard him with a warm and beaming
glance which expressed entire sympathy with him in his flight.

"Goin' to git out, honey?"

"Yes, 'Mandy, I'se goin' to git out."

Making a wide détour in the shrubbery and round the back of the chapel,
he approached the Scotts' porch. Then he stopped short. There in white
splendor sat the stranger whom he had seen that morning in the chapel
gallery. He turned promptly away.

"No sitting for an hour listening to that!" said he.

Then it was, swayed by the slight incident of Evan Utterly's presence,
that Richard, who had hitherto sailed in such a calm domestic stream,
turned his boat into another and an alien channel. He said to himself
that he would play, that he would perish if he did not play. He
considered going to Thomasina's, even though she was not at home and
rousing 'Melia from her afternoon nap to let him in. But when he had
reached Thomasina's gate, he thought of Eleanor Bent.

Eleanor played well; he had heard her at Thomasina's. She was pretty and
bright, but not very friendly. There was, he believed, something queer
about her and her mouselike little mother. He had a vague feeling that
his own mother would not quite approve of his going to their house.

But he had set his mind upon playing the Eighth Symphony, and, if
possible, several other symphonies. He had, he remembered suddenly and
happily, a volume of music belonging to Eleanor Bent, which he had
carried away by accident from Thomasina's. He would take this round to
Eleanor, and if she were not cordial or the piano not tolerable, he
would come away.

With the same care he stole back through the shrubbery to the kitchen
door and succeeded, after ludicrous blunders, in getting through 'Manda
the volume which he sought. As he crossed the campus again, he saw
Utterly rising from his chair. But the die was cast; it was with Eleanor
Bent that he wished to play and not with Cora Scott. He kept on his way
through the college gate and down the broad street which led to the
other side of the town, whistling softly as he went, and feeling a sense
of freedom and adventure.

Mrs. Bent let him in from the little front porch to the neat little
hall. He explained that he was Richard Lister and that he had come to
return a book of Eleanor's, and she invited him into the parlor, saying
that Eleanor would appear in a few minutes. Eleanor had had a surprise,
she explained, which had delayed their dinner. Her cheeks were flushed;
she seemed to be excited.

There was nothing queer to Richard's eye, either in Mrs. Bent, or, at
his first glance, in the interior of her little house. All was fresh and
neat and simple and in good taste. There was a picture opposite the
door, a view of the Castel Angelo, exactly like one which hung in his
father's study; there were pretty curtains, there was--Richard stopped
short in the doorway, the bright color in his fair cheeks fading rapidly
away and then as suddenly returning. Here before him in the parlor of
this little gray house, unknown of him, was a new piano! Moreover, it
was a magnificent grand piano, finer than Thomasina's, finer, indeed,
than any piano he had ever seen. He did not need to read the name on the
front; its very shape was familiar to him from catalogues at which he
had gazed in inexpressible longing.

"Why, Mrs. Bent!" cried Richard.

Mrs. Bent smiled in her frightened way at his confusion and delight.

"That is the surprise," said she. "It is hers. It came while she was at
the exercises."

"It looks as though it hadn't been touched!"

"It hasn't. She had sort of a queer spell when she saw it"--was that
right, or was it "seen"?--"I said she would better eat something."

"It was a surprise to her?"

"Yes."

"How glorious! I wish some one would surprise me that way!"

Left alone, Richard walked round and round staring at the shining
rosewood and the gleaming keys. He had expected--he almost laughed aloud
as he remembered--an upright piano of a poor make, covered with a velvet
cover laden with vases and photographs. Thus was the Scott piano
decorated. And here was really a grand piano, and the best grand piano
that could be bought! If he might only play it!

Eleanor found him walking about. She held out her hand, like her mother
all excitement and friendliness. She still wore her beautiful
embroidered dress, full in the skirt and low in the neck. Her hair was
ruffled and her eyes more than ever brilliant.

There were no introductory explanations. Richard forgot to say why he
had come, never explained, indeed, until long afterward when together,
as is the custom of those in like case, they made each impulse, each
trivial incident of their association the subject of conversation.

"It hasn't been touched," said Eleanor. "When I saw it I forgot how to
play!"

"Does Miss Thomasina know about it?"

"She selected it in Baltimore. She had known about it for weeks and I
knew nothing. It doesn't seem as though it could be real. Will you, oh,
will you play it first?"

Richard turned pale once more.

"I'm not sure that I can play either. I'm not sure that I ever touched
a piano!"

"Oh, you can! Something with great, heavy, rolling, smashing chords. I
know that if I touch it it will disappear, and I can't possibly wait
till Miss Thomasina comes home. I never could have got through
Commencement if I had known it was here."

"Nor I. If I had met it, I would have followed it like the children
follow the elephant, and some one else might have saluted the audience.
It makes Commencement seem like three cents."

"Now, play!" commanded Eleanor. "Mother!"

Mrs. Bent came to the door. Richard saw her look at her daughter, and
the glance was worth coming farther than this to see. It adored her,
swept over her from head to foot, devoured her. Something of its
intensity entered into Richard. Eleanor was older than he; she had stood
ahead of him in school; she had scarcely spoken to him a dozen times;
but she became in that moment a creature to be admired, to be cherished.
Life changed for him, boyhood was left behind. He met Eleanor's eyes and
saw in them youth, curiosity about himself, restlessness, a reflection,
it seemed to him, of the confused emotions of his own heart. It was
Eleanor's gaze which first turned away.

"The concert is going to begin, mother."

Mrs. Bent sat down in the bay window and Eleanor took a chair from which
she could watch Richard's beautiful hands. Once after he had taken his
place on the stool, he looked into her eager face, then he let his
hands fall upon the keys. He shut his eyes to keep back starting tears.
He remembered that some one had said that life held few moments to which
a man would say, "Stay, thou art so fair!" The saying was not true. Here
was such a moment; there would be for him, he knew, a thousand more.

A Schumann Nachtstück, a Bach Prelude, a Mozart Sonata rolled from under
his fingers, which then danced into a jig, performances allowed by
Thomasina. There were others, forbidden except under her own direction
and in careful, studious sections. These Richard now hazarded boldly and
played them not ill. A dozen compositions finished, he whirled round
upon the piano stool.

"Won't you play, now?"

"I can't."

"Will you play with me?"

"There is nothing here."

"I brought the second volume of Beethoven with me."

"I will try," promised Eleanor.

Richard spread the music open on the rack. Both had been trained by
Thomasina, both played easily and well, both knew their parts. Shoulders
and hands touched; sometimes Richard laughed aloud from sheer pleasure,
sometimes he sang an air, sometimes he stopped to give directions. At
that Eleanor laughed a little nervously. Richard seemed to all his mates
to hold himself above them, to be dictatorial. He had seemed all of this
to Eleanor, but now she obeyed instantly.

In the bay window Mrs. Bent sat and watched. She could not have looked
at them with anything but pleasure. Eleanor was so young, so pretty.
There was no mother in Waltonville who would not have been pleased to
see her daughter playing duets with Richard Lister.

But a shadow had settled on Mrs. Bent's face. The look which had
transfigured her changed to a look of anxiety and trouble. She had years
ago made wise plans for her life and Eleanor's--they had begun to seem
now not wise, but insane. They were wicked, because they were made in
one of the rages into which she had fallen, like her father, in her
youth; they were stupid, because they had taken no account of the
future; and they were selfish, because they had taken no account of
anything but her own fury.

When Dr. Green drove by in his buggy, Mrs. Bent laid her hand with a
gesture which was almost melodramatic across her heart, and stared after
him, as though the sight of him had for an instant illuminated her
despair. In another instant, however, the shadow returned to her face
and she bent over her sewing.

Dr. Green drove by, returned and passed again, drove a mile or two into
the country and passed the fourth time. He thought that Eleanor was
playing, and he said, "Good for her!" He took a great deal of credit to
himself for Eleanor.

The afternoon light softened, shadows began to spread over the little
garden. When Richard rose to go, Mrs. Bent had vanished, and the two
young people looked at each other, startled and a little bewildered,
trying to hide their confusion. Eleanor did not say "Come back," nor did
Richard ask whether he might come again, but the volume was left open on
the piano.




CHAPTER VII

UTTERLY SPENDS A PLEASANT EVENING


Utterly sat for three hours with Eleanor Bent on her mother's porch,
talking. He did not arrive until eight o'clock, which was late in
Waltonville, and she had been nervously watching for him for an hour.
She was consumed with impatience to hear what he had to say. If her
story had not been accepted, she wished to know it at once; if,
perchance, he had come to advise her to write no more--that also she
wished to know at once. She did not wish the young man--if that
gorgeously clad young man were really the messenger of the gods--to stay
long; she needed, after the excitement of the day, to be alone, to be
quiet, to touch her piano in the darkness, the piano dedicated in such a
surprising and poetic way.

She was too restless to play it now. She sat for a while beside her
mother, who was sewing beneath the pleasant lamp; then she struck a few
chords; then she went out to the porch, calling to her mother not to
expect anything.

"They might merely be sending an agent to town to ask people to
subscribe to their old magazine, or even to ask me to be agent. John
Simms has been and he is going away. That is it, I am sure, mother."

When she saw approaching through the twilight the tall figure of the
stranger, she summoned Mrs. Bent and let that frightened little woman
greet him.

Utterly anticipated in the evening's call a pleasant experience. The
wide landscape lay soft and beautiful in the moonlight, a panorama
spread for his delectation. He called it, in the city-dweller's
metaphor, a beautiful stage-set. After she had greeted him, Mrs. Bent
went back to her work. Except for a few moments an hour later when she
came out to put on the porch table a tray with a plate of cake and
tinkling glasses, Utterly saw her no more.

He regarded the young woman before him with a critical eye. She was
beautiful, of that there was no question. She was talented also, and
though she was still immature and provincial, she was not awkward or
self-conscious. She accepted the announcement which he had come to make
as quietly as any of the older, more sophisticated women with whom he
associated would have accepted it.

"I hope you are pleased."

"Very much," answered Eleanor in a quiet voice which belied the tumult
within. It seemed to her that she could hardly breathe.

"And you will keep on writing?"

"Oh, _yes_!" said Eleanor.

"You keep notebooks, I suppose, and record all your impressions?"

"Yes."

"And you read a great deal?"

"Yes."

"How do you mean to get new impressions? Are you going to stay here?"
Utterly's voice now disparaged Waltonville.

"I had not thought of going away," said Eleanor. "I have just graduated
to-day and I haven't any particular plans."

"You and your mother are alone?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't you have a winter in New York?"

"I had thought that sometime I might go to Boston," said Eleanor.

Utterly sniffed the air. He had, he said, little opinion of Boston as an
experience. Boston was of the past. No one got experience of anything
but the past there, and the past one ought to try to get away from.

"A writer must have stimulation," he went on. "A woman's talent is, in
far greater degree than a man's, dependent upon outside influences; it
is far less self-nourished and self-originated; she must have life,
though not too much life, and she must hold herself in a measure
separate from it."

Utterly added to this sage prescription a "don't you know," and Eleanor
answered with a hesitating "yes." She was, in spite of her confusion, a
little amused. Utterly had come half a day too late; had he presented
himself last evening instead of this, he might have made a deeper
impression.

Presently he ceased to ask questions and began to orate. In this
audience he found none of the stupid dullness which he had observed in
Dr. Scott, none of the silent unresponsiveness of Dr. Lister. All that
he would have said yesterday to his fellow travelers if they had had
minds to understand, all that he would have said to-day to Dr. Lister
and Dr. Scott, if they had had ears to hear, all that he would have said
at any time to any one who would listen, he said now. He discussed
schools of writing, ancient and modern; he discussed the influence of
Shelley upon the young Browning, the place of Edgar Allan Poe in
American literature and in English literature as a whole, and finally,
the ethics of biographical writing. The heat with which he spoke upon
the last topic was the sudden bursting into flame of the embers which
had smoldered since the afternoon. Had the world a right to all it could
learn of the lives of geniuses, or had it not? It most assuredly had,
declared Utterly. An author's acts in the world, an artist's, a
musician's, were as much the property of the world as they were the
property of the recording angel--if modern theology had not banished
that person from modern life. He spoke of the invaluable revelations of
old letters, which proved so clearly that no matter how long the world
believed that writers evolved from their inner consciousness the
material of their work, in the end it was proved to have a foundation in
actual experience. Time and scholarly investigation were showing what
was long suspected and long denied, that Charlotte Brontë's own life had
furnished her with her "stuff."

Experience in life, however, must, so said Utterly, go only so far, must
stop short before a man or woman was bound to obligations which would
rob him of his freedom. Only a few great men had been men of family,
or, being men of family, had got on with their families. There was
Byron, for instance, and there was Shelley, and there were dozens of
others on the tip of his tongue.

To the most of this fluent outpouring his dazzled audience made only
polite general responses. She knew, thank fortune! a good deal about
each of the authors whom he mentioned. Shelley she had read from cover
to cover and Byron also, and Charlotte Brontë, of course. But she did
not know much about them as human beings, Dr. Scott having an
old-fashioned way of requiring a reading of the works of great authors,
rather than a knowledge of their lives.

Finally Utterly spoke of the works of Basil Everman. One could almost
make up Basil Everman's life from his works, so clearly did they
indicate the storm and stress of spirit in which he must constantly have
lived.

"I believe I don't know who Basil Everman was," confessed Eleanor,
mortified by her own ignorance. "Was he related to Dr. Lister?"

"Of course you don't know!" Utterly leaned back in his chair, his voice
sharp with sarcasm. "It is apparently the deliberate intention of this
community not only to quench all sparks of divine fire, but to hide
their ashes. Basil Everman was the brother of the wife of your college
president; he grew up in this town, a person of extraordinary mind; he
died. But nobody remembers him or seems to want to remember him. It is
an attitude not peculiar to Waltonville; it is characteristic of
Keokuk, Ishpeming, and many other communities, bourgeois, intolerable,
insane."

When Utterly went at eleven o'clock, Eleanor flew to her mother. She was
excited and elated, her wonderful day had sloped to no anticlimax.

"They have taken my story, mother, and I am to have seventy-five
dollars!"

"Seventy-five dollars! Land of love!" repeated Mrs. Bent. "Why,
Eleanor!" Mrs. Bent's cheeks grew red, then pale.

"Mr. Utterly thinks that I really can amount to something. He thinks we
should go to New York, mother, and sometime to Europe. He says one must
have many different things to write about, and of course that is true.
Are you pleased, mother?"

"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Bent gasped, as though events were happening too fast
for her to follow.

"And, mother, did you ever know any one by the name of Basil Everman
when you lived here long ago?"

Mrs. Bent rose and gathered her work together. Her face reddened again
with the flush which came and went so easily. She looked not only
startled, but frightened. For some reason Eleanor remembered the
long-past encounter with drunken Bates on the shady street. As Mrs. Bent
answered, she walked out into the darkened kitchen, her voice coming
back with a muffled sound.

"He didn't talk about Basil Everman!"

"Yes, he did. He said that Basil Everman wrote wonderfully, and that
nobody in Waltonville appreciated him or was willing to tell anything
about him. Did you know him, mother?"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Bent. "I knew him." She came back into the
lamplight. "Ain't you sleepy, Eleanor?" But Eleanor was not to be thus
easily turned away. Basil Everman was Richard Lister's uncle and that
was enough to make him interesting.

"Did you know him well, mother?"

Mrs. Bent put out her hand toward the lamp.

"Start upstairs, then I'll outen the light."

"Did you say you knew him well, mother?"

"Not so very well."

"Did you know about his writing?"

"No."

"Is Richard anything like him?"

"No."

"Was he anything like Mrs. Lister?"

"No." Mrs. Bent turned out the lamp and followed Eleanor up the stairs.
At the head she bade her good-night. At the window of her room, which
looked toward the garden and the houses of the town, she sat a long
time. There was on her face the same expression of alarm that had rested
there when she sat in the parlor listening to Richard and Eleanor play.
It was the expression of one who felt herself to be entangled in a net
from which there was no escape.

Eleanor was certain that she should not close her eyes. She had been
waiting hours for this moment, when she might sit down by her window and
think of Richard Lister, of the crisp waves of his hair, of his strong
young hands which moved so swiftly. It seemed to her that he had played
not only upon the piano, but upon her, making her fingers fly faster and
more lightly than they had ever moved. Her heart expanded, her soul
seemed to burgeon and to bloom.

She wanted to think not only of this day's experience, but of the past.
She had seen Richard daily at college for four years, she had sat with
him in the same classes, but she had never known that he was like this!
She had met him, also, coming and going from Thomasina's. He must have
made, though she was unconscious of it at the time, a deep impression
upon her, because she could recall every motion of his light-stepping
figure as he moved from the flag walk to let her pass. She remembered
the straight line in which his coat fell from his shoulders as he sat at
Thomasina's piano, she could see his flashing smile. She tried to
remember the details of the appearance of others, and decided with
satisfaction that she had forgotten them. She heard the clock strike
twelve, then one, and still she sat by the window, every faculty alert,
the heavenly consciousness of expansion and growth growing keener. She
remembered hours of discouragement when time moved so slowly and nothing
seemed to get done. Now everything moved toward a happy conclusion. The
moonlight had never shone so soft, the night air had never been so
sweet.

After she had gone to bed, a tiny misgiving crept into her pleasant
meditations, the forerunner of a score of anxious questions which had
long been shaping themselves without her knowledge. For a moment she
could not quite grasp the cause, and lay still, her heart beating faster
and faster. She had done--she realized it now in a flash--a dreadful
thing. In "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" she had made humorous
use of some of the small mannerisms of the college professors. Little
habits of Dr. Lister's were described; his constant swinging of his
foot, the tendency of his shoelaces to dangle, and his drawing-in of his
breath with a click against his cheek. Dr. Scott's den was there, though
in reality Eleanor's material was drawn from Dr. Green's office. But she
had come since morning to look at Dr. Lister and Dr. Scott from a
different angle, and it seemed to her that in using them even to so
small an extent she had done a monstrous thing.

The isolation of her mother and herself, their complete separation from
Waltonville and its citizens, became for the first time a source of
anxiety. Hitherto she had been indifferent to the fact that she was
almost unacquainted with Mrs. Lister. Now it became a serious matter.

She remembered that her volume of Mozart Sonatas had appeared
mysteriously--that was why Richard had come to the house and not to see
her! The duets had been an afterthought, suggested by the new piano. He
had merely happened to have the book with him, being on his way
doubtless to Thomasina's. He would come to-morrow to fetch it--it was
evidently his dear, careless way to leave things about--and then he
would come no more.

If he did not come again--Eleanor looked out over the moonlit fields
and faced another problem, more serious than the recollection of Dr.
Lister's dangling shoelaces--or if he came to-morrow and took his book
away and made her feel that they were strangers, then she would suspect
that for Richard and the Listers, and therefore for Waltonville, she and
her mother were unknown because they were unknowable. If Waltonville
were merely careless or thoughtless or indifferent--that was nothing.
But if Waltonville were deliberate, that was another matter.

She could not sleep, though she longed now intensely to sleep. Another
disturbing thought roused her to greater wakefulness. Her mother seemed
always to have ample supplies of money for their needs. But the price of
the beautiful piano must have been enormous--had her mother been
unwisely extravagant? She should be told about their affairs.

When, at last, she fell asleep, it was to disturbing dreams. Bates
appeared to threaten her and she fled from him. She called upon Richard
Lister to rescue her, and Richard proved to be not himself, but Dr.
Green, who would have none of her. This imaginary behavior of Dr. Green
was not unjust, since all day Eleanor had not thought of him who was
next to her mother her best friend.




CHAPTER VIII

UTTERLY IS PUT UPON HIS METTLE


In the morning Utterly continued the search which was the chief object
of his visit to Waltonville. Passing the house of Dr. Green soon after
breakfast, he beheld that gentleman sitting inside his window. Dr. Green
looked up absent-mindedly and bowed. Utterly stopped short.

"I have had an amusing time hunting for my Basil Everman," said he in
his high, clear voice.

Dr. Green laid his paper on his knee and looked over his spectacles.

"Did you find him?"

"I found he was Mrs. Lister's brother, but not much more. They seem
singularly averse to answering questions about him, to say nothing of
offering any information."

"Possibly there isn't anything to offer," said Dr. Green, returning to
his paper.

Thus dismissed, Utterly departed, having taken a long and astonished
stare into Dr. Green's chaotic office, and having decided that he never
saw a spot better suited to the harboring of germs.

Now he sought the cemetery beside the college church, and there gave
expression to a "By Jove!" The building copied exactly the old Colonial
church first built on that spot, and was as beautiful in proportions and
design as any Colonial building he had ever seen. Still looking up, he
walked round it, gazing at the tall steeple with its fine lantern and at
the high, narrow windows with their delicate, diamond-patterned old
glass. Then with another "By Jove!" he began to search for the family
plot of the Evermans.

Without difficulty he found the place where Richard Everman and his wife
lay side by side under heavy slabs of marble. Of their son Basil there
was no memorial. For a while he wandered about reading names and
inscriptions, then, shaking his head in strong disapproval of death and
all its emblems, he passed through the gate once more and out to the
street. He decided that he would wander about and steep himself in
Waltonville's primitive atmosphere. He grew more and more baffled and
angry, and more certain that information was being kept from him.
Descriptive sentences formed themselves tantalizingly in his mind. "Here
in this quiet spot, surrounded by quiet influences, belonging to the
family of a clergyman, growing up under the shadow of the old church,
was developing one of the most somber geniuses to which our nation has
given birth." Until noon, still constructing sentences, he wandered
unhappily.

In the afternoon he returned to the Listers' for his magazines. Again
Dr. Lister sat on the porch; Utterly said to himself angrily that his
manner was as stolid as his mind was stupid.

Dr. Lister agreed with him that Basil Everman's contributions to
"Willard's Magazine" were remarkable, that they gave extraordinary
promise.

"Then it is certain that Basil Everman had extraordinary experience of
life, and that that experience is the property of those interested in
him."

"Not necessarily." Dr. Lister reversed the position of his knees as was
his habit. He now made what was for him a long speech. "I have talked at
length with Mrs. Lister about him. Even after these many years it is
difficult for her to speak of him. There is apparently no foundation
whatsoever for your supposition that he led a life in any way different
from the ordinary life of a young man in this community. He was an
omnivorous reader, and, I gather, a reader of most careful taste. It is
my judgment that any one who carried about with him volumes of Euripides
and Æschylus did not--"

"Did he do that?" Utterly took out his notebook.

"--Did not need any personal experience with the strange contrarieties
of the human mind or the strange twists of fate in order to write either
'Roses of Pæstum' or 'Bitter Bread.' I am sorry for your disappointment,
Mr. Utterly, but there really is nothing beside the simple facts which
we have told you. If there were any possibility of establishing a
posthumous fame for Basil, surely an affectionate sister would be the
last to withhold information leading to such a result! I think--if you
will allow a much older man to express an opinion--I think you are
building upon entirely false premises. The constructive power of the
human imagination is greater than you are willing to believe. What deep
or wide experience could this young man have had? He could not have been
much over twenty when he wrote these articles. They were published--at
least two were published--before he died, and then he was less than
twenty-five. He must have been living here at home when they were
written. He had never been away from home except for occasional visits
to Baltimore. His ability to imagine the heat, the blue sky, the
loneliness of Pæstum without ever having been to Italy is proved beyond
a doubt; why could he not picture the heat and the passion of the human
heart of which each one of us has such conclusive proof within him?"

Utterly did not care for general speculations.

"How did he happen to die in Baltimore?" he asked.

"He happened to be there on business when he was smitten with malignant
diphtheria," explained Dr. Lister again patiently. "His death occurred
about the same time as that of his father. Mrs. Lister lost in a short
period her father and her brother. She lost also in a sense her home,
since her father's death made it necessary to call a new president to
the college. She returned to this house upon her marriage. You will
understand, I am sure, how gladly she would furnish you with information
if it would in the slightest degree give her brother that fame for which
he probably longed. You will understand also, I am sure, that your
inquiry, since it is so unlikely to bear any profitable fruit, is trying
to her."

"But it will be profitable."

"My dear sir, the world has moved too far and too fast for this small
contribution, excellent as it is, to be of great account!" Dr. Lister
spoke with politeness, but there had crept into his voice at last a note
of impatience. He thought again of a nap. Mrs. Lister had accepted an
invitation to Mrs. Scott's for the evening, and an evening at Mrs.
Scott's was not to be endured without all possible physical and mental
fortifying of one's self. He wished most earnestly that the young man
would go.

"And he left nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"No notes?"

"Nothing."

Utterly bade his host farewell and went across the campus and out the
gate. For a second he was convinced that his errand was a fool's errand.
But "Bitter Bread" and "Roses of Pæstum" did exist--an account of their
author was valuable, even if he had never written another line. Debating
with himself whether he should now shake the dust of Waltonville from
his feet or whether he should make another effort to shake from its
stupid mind some of the recollections which in spite of all testimony to
the contrary must exist, he walked back to the hotel. There, he
discovered, the question had been decided for him. The four-o'clock
train, which had gone, was the last train that day. He was almost as
angry as he would have been if the B. & N. had arranged its schedule to
try his patience and if Basil Everman had lived his brief life, had
written his great works, and had died to spite him.

Then, as he turned away from questioning the landlord, he took heart
once more. Above the damp, unpleasant bar with its dripping glasses,
its show of tawdry bottles, hung, faded and fly-blown, the picture
described in "Bitter Bread." Utterly set his lips and swung out his
hands with a crack of the joints.

The Listers notwithstanding, the stolid landlord behind the bar
notwithstanding, he would learn what was to be learned about Basil
Everman. Even if Basil Everman had never written anything, he would
still pursue his search.

At that moment he found before him and close to him a vessel of
testimony more important than the old picture. This was one of the
miserable sodden creatures whom he had seen in the bar-room and on the
hotel porch, perhaps the most forlorn and disreputable of them all. It
was afternoon; he had recovered from the morning's stupor and evening
drowsiness was not yet upon him.

"You were asking yesterday about young Basil Everman," said he with a
thick tongue. "I knew young Basil Everman."

Utterly's loathing of the bloated face, the soiled clutching hand, was
not as keen as his pleasure.

"I was a good friend to him," said the drunkard.

Utterly drew the miserable creature across the hall to a dark little
parlor where dampness and the odor of beer were only a shade less
unpleasant, that same parlor where Margie Ginter had entertained her
admiring friends. There he sat him down in the most comfortable chair.

"What is your name?"

"My name is Bates."

"What do you do for a living?"

Bates explained that he was a lawyer, but that business was poor and he
could not really earn a living. It had not always been this way; when
Basil Everman was young, things had been different, very different. He
had associated with the best people then, he had had plenty of money.
Now he had nothing. Contemplating his misery, Bates wept.

With leaping heart Utterly took his measure.

"I will give you five dollars if you will tell me everything you know
about Basil Everman."

At this munificent offer Bates wept again and made an unsuccessful
effort to stroke the hand of his benefactor, who realized that he might
have purchased the commodity he was bargaining for with a quarter of a
dollar.

Bates began making apologies for himself, to which Utterly listened
impatiently and which he presently cut short.

"About Basil Everman," said he. "Did you know him when he was a boy?"

Bates said that he had known Basil always. Weeping he described Basil in
his childhood.

"He would hold my hand, this one." He put out his hand palsied by
dissipation. "I would tell him stories and stories."

"And then you knew him when he was a young man?" said Utterly briskly.

Bates blinked at him uncomprehendingly. The brief period of sobriety was
passing. He was already, in anticipation, drunk upon Utterly's bounty.
Then he mumbled something about a pretty girl. Utterly leaned forward,
his soul crying Eureka! But the well was almost dry. Bates could only
complain that Basil had got a girl away from him, that Mary Alcestis
would never speak to him nowadays, and that he had had bad luck for
thirty years. Utterly closed the door; he coaxed, he cajoled, he
suggested. But Bates only wept or smiled in a maudlin way. Presently he
began to whine for his five dollars in a loud tone, and angry, yet
encouraged, Utterly gave him his easily earned fee and let him go.

Now, Utterly determined, he would shake Waltonville. He would go to Mrs.
Scott's party and sit by the gilt table which he had seen through the
window, and shake Waltonville well.




CHAPTER IX

MRS. SCOTT'S PARTY


Mrs. Scott did not announce, when she sent Cora round the campus with
her invitations, that Mr. Utterly was to be her guest. She was not
certain, in the first place, that he would remain in Waltonville--what
kept him here she could not imagine. In the second place, she preferred
to behave as though distinguished persons were her daily visitors. She
invited, besides the three Listers, and Thomasina Davis, who had that
afternoon returned from Philadelphia, Dr. Green and Professor and Mrs.
Myers of the German Department. The college society was limited in
summer when all but a few of the faculty sought a cooler spot.

She liked to give parties, having an unalterable conviction that upon
her depended the literary and social life of the feminine portion of
Waltonville. Her parties were not like Mrs. Lister's, to which the
ladies took their sewing and where there were many good things to eat.
She set her astonished and frightened guests down to little tables,
furnished them with paper and pencil and required them to write, beside
the words "Popular Bishop" or "Little Misses' Adoration" or "Curiosity
Depicter," the names of the famous individuals whose initials were thus
indicated and whose qualities or achievements were thus described. In
planning her entertainments she always had consideration for the slight
attainments of her guests and never included from her long list of
eminent persons "Eulogizes Antipodes" or "Eminently Zealous" or "Won
England's Greatness."

For this party she provided no entertainment. Mr. Utterly would be
there, and during her impatient waiting inside her screen door she had
heard that he did not lack words or a will to use them. Thomasina Davis
could talk well when she wished, and there were Richard and Cora to sing
and play. Moreover, there was herself!

Cora put on one of her prettiest dresses, and, parasol and little bag in
hand, devoted a large part of the morning to her errand. At the Myerses
she did not linger; at the Listers she sat long enough to be certain
that Richard was nowhere about; at Thomasina's she stayed for an hour,
enjoying the cool, pleasant parlor and the quiet, and wishing that
Richard would come. She admired the chintz curtains which Thomasina
substituted for her winter hangings, she liked the bare floors and the
cool gray walls which her mother thought were so very homely and she
loved to listen to Thomasina's voice. Thomasina seemed to be so
complete, and though she gave so much to other people, she seemed to be
so wholly sufficient for herself. It must be dreadful, Cora thought, to
grow old and not to have been married, even though one had everything
else, good looks and a lovely house and beautiful clothes and perfect
independence. Even those could not compensate for being an old maid. But
Thomasina really seemed not to mind. She could, Cora believed, always
be happy with her books and her music and her flowers. One always felt,
when one was leaving her on a rainy morning after one's lesson, when the
day looked interminable, that it did not look interminable to her, and
that even if she were alone she would still be content. Cora wished that
she herself did not care so desperately for other people, especially for
Richard Lister. She had hoped in vain to see him this morning either at
his mother's or here. But his mother said that he would come to the
party--there was that to look forward to.

Having dispatched her messenger and having set herself and her maid to
the baking of cake and her husband to the turning of the ice-cream
freezer, Mrs. Scott was relieved to see that the stranger was still in
Waltonville after the four-o'clock train had gone. She grew more and
more elated as the hours passed. She had read of the curious and
interesting behavior of celebrated persons at parties--perhaps she would
henceforth have her own anecdotes to relate. She had asked a number of
persons about Basil Everman, including her black 'Celie, who rolled her
eyes and promised to inquire of the older members of the settlement. She
reported that 'Manda had said there was no harm in Marse Basil and that
Virginia's mother had said there was no good in him. He didn't do much
of anything and he was "pow'ful good-lookin'."

When she thought of Eleanor Bent, Mrs. Scott's curiosity grew torturing
in its keenness. Was Eleanor trying to get some sort of literary
position? Dr. Scott, when questioned, said that she was the best pupil
he had, the best he had ever had, he believed, but that she was hardly
prepared for any literary position.

"Besides, the Bents wouldn't know of any," said Mrs. Scott.

Dr. Scott was on the last lap of his task. Back and arms ached and
perspiration streamed from his body. When Mrs. Scott asked in sudden
uneasiness whether she had better provide a game of authors or some
similar entertainment, he looked up at her with the expression of a
kindly, inoffensive animal prepared for sacrifice and entirely aware of
the intentions of his master. He longed for his quiet study, longed for
his comfortable chair, longed for his English magazine with a new
article by Pater. The prospect of an evening spent in company with the
stranger and with the Myerses was almost intolerable. Even the Listers
and Dr. Green and Thomasina Davis, for whom he had usually the
friendliest regard, seemed to acquire unpleasant qualities. When Mrs.
Scott suggested his hanging Chinese lanterns from the roof of the porch,
he rebelled and fled.

Utterly arrived early, and Mrs. Scott, to her intense annoyance, was not
quite ready to receive him, nor was Dr. Scott. While she struggled with
the most elaborate of her dresses and her husband labored with his
necktie, Utterly sat on the front porch with Cora, who answered him in
monosyllables. Cora was always ready for everything, and in her quiet
way was equal to any task which might fall to her lot. She did not like
the stranger, and when he began to sing the praises of Eleanor Bent's
appearance and pretty manners and bright mind, she felt a sharp
antagonism. She was thankful when her mother billowed noisily down the
stairway, her silk skirts rustling, for then she could sit chin on hand
on the step and look off toward the dim bulk of the Lister house.

As Mrs. Scott reached the porch, Professor and Mrs. Myers came into
sight. Except with a view to providing a sufficient number for her
party, Mrs. Scott had no special reason for inviting them. Professor
Myers spoke English with difficulty, and his wife scarcely spoke at all
in any language, and never upon subjects which did not have to do with
the nursery or the kitchen. Mrs. Scott felt that neither was worthy for
an instant of the brilliant give-and-take of her own conversation.

Beside the tall stranger Professor Myers looked like a fat and very dull
cherub. When Utterly addressed Mrs. Myers, with what was to Mrs. Scott
delightful courtesy, she looked upon his overtures with an emotion which
was plainly alarm. She answered him only with a shake of the head and a
faint smile which to Mrs. Scott savored of imbecility.

Before Mrs. Scott could "save him," as she phrased it, from the Myerses,
the Listers had come. At sight of Utterly in the midst of her friends,
Mrs. Lister gave a little gasp and tightened her grasp on her husband's
arm.

"Would you like to go home, mother?" asked Dr. Lister, himself annoyed.
"I'll make excuses for you, and Richard and I will go on."

"What's the matter?" asked Richard, from the other side of his mother.
Thus Mrs. Lister liked to walk and sit and live, beside and close to the
two whom she loved.

"Nothing is the matter," said she in an even tone, and, more erect than
ever, she mounted the steps and replied to Mrs. Scott's greetings. She
selected a chair as far from Mr. Utterly as possible. He, she was sure,
looked sorry to see her. Had he meant to conduct a sort of symposium
about Basil? But she had come in the nick of time and she would stay and
if necessary outstay him.

When Thomasina Davis arrived in her soft, flowing gray dress with her
great red fan in her hand, Utterly almost gave audible expression to his
favorite "By Jove!" Here was, at last, he said to himself, a real
person, here was some one with spirit and sense, and, unless he read all
signs wrongly, with a mind. There was a little stir among Mrs. Scott's
guests. Mrs. Lister's face lost its stiff look as she cried, "Why,
Thomasina, when did you come back?" Dr. Scott's face glowed, and Richard
and Cora sprang up from the step and escorted her in, one on each side.

Thomasina had a singularly bright glance and a singularly winning smile.
She bestowed them both upon the tall stranger who greeted her with the
lowest of bows. She wondered where Mrs. Scott had found this citizen of
the world. She did not accept the offer of his chair, but swept back to
sit by Mrs. Lister and to bestow upon Mrs. Myers just as beaming a
smile. Once established she talked to Mrs. Myers about her babies. She
spoke English and Mrs. Myers German, but there was perfect understanding
between them.

Dr. Green was the only guest who had not arrived. He had no patients at
this hour; indeed, he sat deliberately waiting until it drew near the
time when Waltonville customarily served its ice-cream. Upon arriving he
would take a sardonic delight in complimenting Dr. Scott upon the
excellence of his product. He believed that every married man had his
symbol of subjection, every Hercules his distaff. Dr. Scott's was an
ice-cream freezer. His failure to arrive on time did not disturb any
one, least of all his hostess. She established herself beside Utterly
and looked up at him with an expression which had been used long ago
with telling effect upon Dr. Scott, but which was now reserved for
persons of greater brilliancy and promise.

She asked leading questions, putting into practice for once the precept
that it is more polite to let others talk than to talk one's self. What
was being done in Boston in a literary way? She looked amazed, yet
became immediately sympathetic when Utterly laughed at Boston. Such
iconoclasm was daring and delightful. What, then, was doing in New York?
Utterly answered at length. As he had discoursed to Eleanor Bent, so he
now discoursed to Mrs. Scott and her guests, especially to Thomasina
Davis. American literature, if such a thing as American literature
could be said to exist, was in a parlous state. America had never done
much of importance. There were, of course, Poe and Whitman, but--

"But Longfellow!" cried Mrs. Scott.

Utterly laughed.

"A few sonnets! You don't take Longfellow seriously, my dear Mrs.
Scott."

Up to this moment Mrs. Scott had taken Longfellow very seriously indeed.

"And Bryant! And Whittier!" she cried in more explosive tones.
"'Thanatopsis,' Mr. Utterly! And 'Snow-Bound'!"

"The feeble expression of a little talent at peace with itself and the
world."

"Oh, naughty, naughty!" cried Mrs. Scott, playfully. "You astonish me!"
She looked about at her neighbors as if to say, "Oh, see what I've got!"

No one else made any response. If silence is a tribute to eloquence and
a plea for further utterance, Utterly was thoroughly justified in going
on. He could see the shimmer of Thomasina's beautiful dress, the slow
waving to and fro of her great fan, and once or twice the gleam of her
bright eyes. He fancied that Thomasina hung upon his words. He sought to
surpass himself, and little by little he shed his veneer of fine
manners. To the mouth agape beside him he brought large mouthfuls. There
were anecdotes of celebrated writers, true and untrue, pleasant and
unpleasant, new and ancient, widely circulated or unknown, published and
sometimes not fit for publication. This man, the author of peculiarly
spiritual essays and exhortations, was in private life peculiarly
unspiritual and evil. For a day each week his long-suffering wife
imprisoned him in a room and the next day herself carried the products
of his sober meditation to the publishers so that she and her children
might live. The last chapters of Lawrence Miller's brilliant novel had
been written in prison. Edward Dillingham did not dare to leave a little
Western town where, unknown, he had found for many years a haven.

But the moral state of American writers was, as Utterly pictured it,
nothing to compare with that of literary men abroad. He wandered now
into the past and demolished famous reputations, as sacred in
Waltonville as those of Biblical heroes and heroines.

Mrs. Scott was enchanted. Trying with all her might to impress upon her
tenacious memory each incident, each smart expression, she paid small
heed to her other guests, and did not observe that upon Dr. Lister's
countenance astonishment struggled with weariness, that Professor Myers
was half and Mrs. Myers wholly asleep, and that Thomasina was perfectly
silent and that therefore she neither admired nor agreed.

On the step Cora and Richard exchanged an occasional whisper, and once
or twice Richard turned an impertinently inquiring face toward the
speaker. Cora was amused and made no effort to restrain him.

It became at last evident to Mrs. Scott that her guest was not
receiving that attention which his parts deserved. Professor Myers,
awaking as if from a dream, sat up in his chair with a loud exclamation.

"It is true, there is nothing worth in American literature, nothing!"

Utterly had left that subject so far behind that Professor Myers's
inattention was clear even to Mrs. Scott. Thus recalled to the fact that
all were not able to enjoy the mental food which she found palatable,
she summoned Cora and Richard to the piano, and they obeyed promptly,
Miss Thomasina following after. Utterly at once left his place on the
porch and went in to sit beside Thomasina on the parlor sofa.

Cora sang in a pretty voice to Richard's accompaniment. Once or twice he
corrected her in his commanding young way and she obeyed smilingly and
gratefully. To Thomasina the state of Cora's mind was as plain as the
blush on her cheek.

Then the two played furiously together. The piano was a generation
younger than the Lister piano, but it had long since passed its first
youth. As a demonstration of digital agility and of power to make a loud
noise, the performance was a success; otherwise it was worse than a
failure. Cora glanced out of the corner of her eye at Richard. Upon his
face was an expression of excitement. It frightened her in a vague way,
and she was thankful when Thomasina called a gentle "Quietly, children!"

Utterly bent toward Thomasina.

"Have you lived long in Waltonville, Miss Davis?"

"All my life." Thomasina answered without that pleasant enthusiasm
inciting to further talk which was one of her chief charms. She liked
this stranger less and less. "That is about forty-five years."

Utterly was about to express a polite doubt of Thomasina's having lived
anywhere that long, but thought better of it.

"It is a very interesting town, isn't it?"

"Very," answered Thomasina shortly.

"One feels that the lives spent here must be happy."

"Not necessarily. The average of happiness is probably no higher here
than elsewhere. People carry the material of happiness in their hearts."

Utterly listened a little impatiently. It was a period when abstract
opinions fell oftener from the lips of men than of women.

"Did you ever know Basil Everman?" he asked.

Thomasina laid her crimson fan across her knees. The children came
suddenly to a climax and somewhat boisterously, went to bring in the
refreshments provided by Mrs. Scott, the sound of voices from the porch
had sunk to a gentle murmur. Into Thomasina's face came a bewildered
expression; she looked at the same time incredulous, and intensely
desirous of hearing more.

"Did I know Basil Everman?" She repeated the question as though she were
trying to make herself believe that it had really been uttered.

"Yes," said Utterly, "Basil Everman."

"I knew him all his life."

"Will you tell me about him?"

"Tell you what about him?"

"Tell me what he looked like, how he spoke and walked--all your
impressions of him."

Thomasina lifted her fan and held it spread out against her breast as
though it were a shield. She could not quite trust the stranger, though
he had uttered a magic name.

"What do _you_ know about him?"

"He published some anonymous work in 'Willard's Magazine' and we are
anxious to learn everything we can about his history."

"Basil Everman!" said Thomasina again, slowly. Then the words came
rapidly, as rapidly as she could speak. "How he looked? He was tall and
very slender. I should say his most remarkable feature was his eyes.
They were gray with flecks of black in them. They seemed almost to give
out light. Webster's eyes are said to have had that effect. If you had
ever seen Basil, you would know what that meant. He was extraordinarily
quick of mind and speech and motion. Sometimes, as a boy, he seemed to
give an impression of actual flight. He had mentally also the gift of
wings. He seemed to live in a different world, to have deeper emotions
and more vivid mental experiences than the rest of mankind. He was the
most radiant person I ever knew--I think that is the best word for him.
He was a creature of great promise. He--"

Utterly turned his head to follow the direction of Thomasina's gaze,
which seemed to expand as her speech ceased. He could not see the
white, startled face of Mrs. Lister, cameo-like, against the black
foliage of the honeysuckle vines. It was plain to Thomasina that what
she was saying gave Mrs. Lister distress. Moreover, she remembered, now
that her first bewilderment had passed, the stranger's astonishing and
ill-natured gossip.

"And then?" Utterly was sure of his quarry at last.

"There isn't much more." From Thomasina's voice the life had gone. "He
died when he was a very young man."

Utterly looked about him furiously. He did not know what had stopped
Thomasina, but, moved either from within or without, she had paused. He
raised his voice so that Dr. Green, approaching, heard him many yards
away.

"Basil Everman was a great writer," he declared for Mrs. Lister's
benefit. "Worth a dozen Longfellows and Bryants and Whittiers. The world
has a right to know all about him, and those who keep back the facts of
his life are cheating him of the fame which he deserves, they are
willfully and intentionally doing him an injury. It is a strange thing
that here in this college community, where one would expect an interest
in literature, nobody is interested or can tell anything or will tell
anything about this man. I would give," cried Utterly in conclusion, "a
thousand dollars for one of his stories!"

Mrs. Scott said "Gracious alive!" Then Dr. Green began to talk in a loud
voice about nothing. He saw Mrs. Lister's white, shocked face and
watched a little uneasily the rapid pulse in her neck. He continued to
talk until Richard and Cora had finished passing the ice-cream and cake.
The stranger seemed to be drowned by his words.

Then every one sat dully. Utterly said no more. Mrs. Lister waited for
him to go. He waited for Thomasina and she waited for Mrs. Lister.
Finally Mrs. Myers rose, still half asleep. Thomasina found Utterly at
her side.

"May I come to see you to-morrow morning?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to see Basil Everman's stories?"

"Yes."

"I'd quite forgotten about Basil Everman," said Dr. Green as he and
Thomasina passed through the campus gate. "He was Mrs. Lister's brother
and he has been dead for many years, hasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Did you know that he was a writer?"

"Yes."

"And that he published what he wrote?"

"No."

"I think he had just gone away when I entered college. This man Utterly
was at Commencement. I never saw a man I liked less. What did you do
while you were away?"

"I bought some clothes and visited an old friend and selected a piano, a
very fine piano for Eleanor Bent."

"She plays well, doesn't she?"

"Yes, but not as well as Richard Lister." In the darkness Thomasina
turned upon Dr. Green an inquiring glance. "It is the finest piano in
the county."

Dr. Green did not seem interested in Eleanor Bent's piano. "This man
said he found some stories of Basil Everman's; wasn't that it?"

"Yes."

"Was Basil Everman an extraordinary person?"

Thomasina stumbled a little on the brick pavement whose roughnesses she
should have known thoroughly.

"There have been two persons in Waltonville in fifty years who have been
ambitious," said she grimly. "I was one, and Basil Everman was the
other. In addition to his ambition, Basil had genius. He could have done
anything. He is dead, he died before he had really lived. And here am I,
burning to the socket!"

Dr. Green looked at Thomasina in amazement. They had traversed the flag
walk and had come to her broad doorstone upon which a light from within
shone dimly. It was evident that she was deeply stirred. Dr. Green was
not in the habit of giving much thought to the problems of other people,
and now it came upon him with a shock that she could hardly have arrived
at the peaceful haven in which she seemed to spend her days without some
sort of voyage to reach it. Disappointed ambition was enough to chasten
any one, thought Dr. Green, and Dr. Green knew.

"You mean you would like to have been a musician?"

Thomasina answered cheerfully, already ashamed of herself.

"Yes," she said; "that is what I mean. Thank you for seeing me safely
home."

Dr. Green bade her good-night, and went swiftly out the flag walk. Basil
Everman's step could have been no more rapid or more light.

Inside her door Thomasina stripped from head and shoulders the filmy
lace with which she had covered them. Then she went into her parlor and
turned out the light and opened a long French door at the back of the
room and sat down in a deep chair just inside it and looked out upon her
garden. The garden was shut in by a high wall; in the center stood a
pair of old, low-spreading apple trees; round its edge ran a flag walk,
and between the wall and the walk were beds in which grew all manner of
sweet flowers. Dr. Scott, when he first saw it, had said "San Marco!"
and Thomasina's eyes had glowed.

"It has required the most Herculean of labors to establish it and the
greatest Niagaras of water. You are the first human being who has known
what I have tried to do. You have been there, of course?"

"No," answered Dr. Scott, sadly, "I have never been there."

Now the moon floated over its scented loveliness. There was neither
sound nor motion except that of a moth, huge and heavy-winged. Thomasina
herself sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap. Presently she
raised them, one to each burning cheek.

"What is to come of this?" said she aloud.

After a while she rose and stepped out into the garden and began to
pace up and down. An hour later, when even Mrs. Scott was asleep,
Thomasina was still pacing up and down.

Dr. and Mrs. Lister did not cross the campus directly, but went round by
one of the paths, since a direct course would have brought upon them the
company of the Myerses. Mrs. Lister was trembling; her husband felt her
lean more and more heavily upon him.

"Mother," said he impatiently, "what is the matter? What is it that
troubles you?"

Mrs. Lister did not answer until they had reached the porch.

"They dare not drag poor Basil from his grave! I can't have it! It can't
be!"

"But is there anything against Basil? Did he commit any crime? Did he
wrong any one? This young man is ill-bred, but he is evidently sincere
in his admiration. What is there to fear? What can be found out?"

Mrs. Lister answered hesitatingly, choosing her words.

"He did not get on with my father. He--he went away. He was always
strange--we loved him dearly. I--oh, Thomas, he went away in anger and
we couldn't find him; we never saw him or heard of him till he was dead.
No one knew that he was alienated from us. I cannot endure it that any
one should know!"

Then Richard came up on the porch.

"Little Cora might have amounted to something with another mother,"
said he. "Who is this man Utterly? He sat there beside Miss Thomasina
and rattled like a dry gourd full of seeds. What is his business here?"

Dr. Lister remembered that Richard had been out of the room when Utterly
had said his say about Basil Everman. Mrs. Lister found in his absence
one cause for thankfulness. She answered with an evasion and the three
went into the house.




CHAPTER X

"MY BROTHER BASIL WAS DIFFERENT!"


In the morning Utterly sought Thomasina early. He looked about her
beautiful room and out into the quiet garden and his hopes rose. Here
was atmosphere! If he had only seen Miss Davis first, he might have
saved a great deal of time. He had accounted to himself for her sudden
silence the evening before. Mrs. Lister was within hearing and her
morbid attitude toward the memory of her brother was doubtless known to
her friends. He had brought with him the copies of "Willard's Magazine"
and had laid them on the table beside him.

Thomasina, cool and pretty in a white dress, sat in a winged chair
inside her garden door and rested her slippered feet on a footstool. The
excitement had disappeared from her brown eyes, and she had evidently
slept in the few hours which she had allowed herself.

Utterly, who arrived with such high hopes, went away in anger. Thomasina
either would or could tell him nothing; insisted, indeed, that there was
nothing to tell.

"He was brighter than other people and he did things in a different
way--if Mrs. Scott really thinks he was 'wild' as you say, that is the
source of her impression. But she is a newcomer, and--" Thomasina
hesitated, flushed, and then said exactly what she had determined not to
say--"if it were not for her husband's position she would be entirely
outside the circle in which Basil Everman moved."

"But Mrs. Lister does not speak of him frankly; there's no gainsaying
that!"

"I dare say she didn't approve of everything he said or did. Few sisters
do wholly approve of their brothers. The style of Basil's writing would
probably not have been appreciated by one brought up on Maria Edgeworth.
But she loved him with her whole soul. Did you ever read Maria
Edgeworth, Mr. Utterly? Do you know about 'Rosamund and the Purple
Jar'?"

Utterly brushed Maria Edgeworth aside. He was certain that while Mrs.
Lister had risen up like a stone wall against him, this person was
laughing at him.

"Did Basil Everman come here?"

"A thousand times. I chased him under the piano usually. He was a very
dignified, polite little boy, and I was a very undignified and impolite
little girl."

"Miss Davis--" Utterly moved impatiently in his chair--"I have journeyed
all the way from New York to be told that this really extraordinary
young man, of whom this whole community ought to be proud, was chased
round the leg of the piano and that he had gray eyes. What do you
suppose would become of literary biography or of any sort of biography
if all the relatives and friends of talented men acted as you do?"

"I dare say it would be greatly improved," said Thomasina, smiling. "I
dare say many of the facts which make biographies interesting are
inventions."

The nearer Utterly approached the railroad station and the farther the
B. & N. train drew him from Waltonville, the more certain did he become
that he had been cheated.

During the days following his visit, Mrs. Lister told her husband more
about Basil. The facts came out gradually. To Dr. Lister the revelation
was almost incredible. It was not that the facts were so startling, but
that Mary Alcestis could have remained silent all these years of their
married life: she who was so open, so confiding, so dependent upon him
for advice and sympathy in everything.

As she proceeded with her story, he was still more astonished at her
amazing conclusions.

"Basil was different from other children even when he was a little boy.
I remember that my mother said that he used to require less sleep than
other children, and that when she would go to his crib, she would find
him lying awake and staring in the strangest way at nothing. She used to
be afraid when he was a little boy that he might go blind, he looked at
her so steadily. He never cried loudly like other children when he was
tired or hungry, but sat with great tears rolling down his cheeks. Even
as a little boy he liked to be alone. He was forever disappearing and
being found in queer places, such as a pew in the college church in the
dark. Sometimes he would sit alone in the dark tank room in the third
story. He said he had 'strange thoughts' there.

"As he grew older, he would not accommodate himself to the ways of the
household, would not come to meals regularly. He didn't seem to care
whether he ate or not. He didn't come to breakfast on time, and he would
not go to bed at the proper hour. Then my father said he could not have
any breakfast, and my father took his lamp away at nine o'clock.

"He would not study the subjects which were assigned to him. It was
almost intolerable to my father as president of the college. He would
not even open his mathematics. He said life was too short. I believe
that was the only time he ever said anything in answer to my father. He
took punishment without even crying out."

"Punishment!" repeated Dr. Lister.

Mrs. Lister gasped. "Once or twice my father punished him--corporally.

"Once he went away on a walking trip to the Ragged Mountains alone. We
didn't know where he had gone, and when people asked where he was, we
had to--to invent. My father used to try to pretend that it made no
difference, that he had done his best and that God would not hold him
responsible. But I used to hear him at his window at night. He used to
pray there.

"Basil used to go down and sit at the edge of the colored settlement and
hear them sing. It was as though he let himself dwell on all evil
things."

"Oh, mother, not evil things!" protested Dr. Lister.

"Some of the songs were evil. You could hear him singing them
afterwards in his room. They were songs that made you shiver."

"Did he ever drink or gamble, or do anything of that kind?"

"I don't know certainly. My father kept some things from me. I know,
though, that my father fetched him from the tavern once. He used to sing
sometimes as he came home. You could hear him coming from far away."

"But, mother, surely you can see in 'Bitter Bread' why he went walking
to the Ragged Mountains! He wanted new impressions, different
impressions from those of humdrum people. Did you never suspect that he
was trying to write? Did you never see anything he wrote? Didn't your
father realize that here was no ordinary boy, here no ordinary talent?"

"My father found one of his stories and read it. It was then that he
told Basil that he could not stay if he continued in his course. My
father really didn't mean that he was to go away, but he took him at his
word. Then we tried to find him again and again. His going away killed
my father. All the clues led nowhere. We didn't hear anything about him
till he was dead and buried. Then my father died." Mrs. Lister became
excited. "I feel as though it would kill me. I thought at the time I
couldn't live. Everything came at once."

"But, mother, it is all so long ago!"

"It is all as plain and dreadful as though it were yesterday. I have
been afraid for twenty years that people would find out about Basil,
that they would put this and that together. I have thought of Mrs.
Scott finding it out and of how she would talk and talk and of all the
tradespeople knowing, and--"

"But, my darling, what could they know?"

Mrs. Lister seemed suddenly to repent her vehemence.

"That he was alienated from us," said she. "Isn't that enough? And I
shall never get over grieving for him. If he had done as my father
wished he might have been here with us yet, and not be lying in his
grave!"

"But he did live intensely. He probably got more happiness out of a day
than ordinary mortals get out of a month. And you must learn not to
grieve. It's unnatural. You have Richard and all your friends--and me!"

Mrs. Lister was slow to take comfort. For several days she did little
but wander round the quiet house. It dawned upon her presently that the
house was unusually quiet and that she had seen little of Richard since
Commencement. In the thought of him she found at last her accustomed
consolation. He was normal; he would give her no hours of misery as
Basil had. He would do just what she wanted him to do--he was
_darling_--even to think of him healed.

But where was Richard? Probably at Thomasina's. Mrs. Lister put on her
bonnet and walked thither.

Richard was not there, and Thomasina in her trying way would talk of
nothing but his musical talent. She had an annoying fashion of assuming
that people agreed with her. When Mrs. Lister reached home, Richard had
not come.

During the absence of his wife, Dr. Lister had visited the third story
and looked through some of Basil's belongings. In the bottom of his
little trunk lay his books, his tiny Euripides and his Æschylus with
their poor print and their many notes. How strange it was to think of
these books as the pocket companions of a young man! How mad to pick
quarrels with any young man who went thus companioned!

The old bureau in which Mrs. Lister kept Basil's clothing was locked.
From it came still a faint, indeterminate, sickening odor of
disinfectants, and more faintly still that of tobacco. In the corner
stood his stick, that stick which he had doubtless carried with him into
the Ragged Mountains. Dr. Lister saw him suddenly, his cane held aloft
like a banner, his eyes shining. He felt a chilling sensation along his
spine. Then he smiled. Thus traditions of haunted rooms were
established. The boy was dead, _dead_. Dr. Lister said the word aloud.
The shrine was empty, deserted, forlorn.

For a long time he sat by the window in the dim, hot room. He meant to
shake off the vague, uncanny sensations which he felt; he said to
himself that he was too sober and too old for any such nonsense as this.

But while he sat still, his eyes now on the smooth white bed, now on a
faded picture of Basil's mother above the bed, now on the bureau with
its linen cover and its beadwork pincushion, his heart began to throb.
He remembered a picture of Basil somewhere in the house, a picture
brighter, younger, less severe than the one in the family album; he must
ask Mary Alcestis to find it for him. He saw the boy, eager, alert, with
a sort of strangeness about him as his sister had said, the unnatural
product of this puritanic household in which he was set to grow. He did
not like regular meals--even Dr. Lister had hated them in his youth. He
had not liked to go to bed when other people went or to get up when they
got up. Did any boy ever like it in the history of the world? His father
had once or twice punished him--"corporally." A portrait of Dr. Everman
hung in the library--it was difficult to fancy that delicate hand
clutching a weapon, especially a weapon brandished over his own flesh
and blood!

Dr. Lister was a placid person to whom the consciousness of immortality
was not ever present. He had had few personal griefs; he had had little
Christian experience; he was not quite certain, indeed, that immortality
was desirable. But now there swept into his heart, along with a
passionate grief for this forgotten lad, a passionate demand that he
should not be dead, but that he should have made up to him somewhere,
somehow, his loss of the sunshine and the pleasant breeze and the chance
to go on with what was unquestionably remarkable work.

He wished, though from quite another reason than Mrs. Lister's, that the
stranger had not come. The search could lead nowhere; the boy was dead
and all his unborn works had perished with him. The thought of him hurt,
and in spite of his admonitions to his wife, Dr. Lister mourned him.




CHAPTER XI

A DUET AND WHAT CAME OF IT


Richard Lister played with Eleanor Bent for the first time on the
afternoon of Commencement Day, which was Thursday. He played with her
also on Friday and Saturday and again on Monday and Tuesday. In the
mornings he played with Thomasina, who was certain that she had never
seen her beloved pupil so anxious for perfection. Never was there such
gilding of the lily, such painstaking practice of trill and mordent. She
would have opened her brown eyes to their greatest possible diameter
could she have known that what he practiced with her in the mornings he
played with Eleanor Bent in the afternoons, when he displayed all the
fine shadings of expression, all the tricks of fingering which he had
learned from her. With Eleanor's mistakes he was patient, to himself he
allowed no mistakes.

As little as Thomasina suspected that his playing with her was for the
time mere practicing for a more important audience, so little did
Richard suspect that the young lady beside him neglected all other tasks
in order to prepare as well as she could to support his treble.

On two evenings of the week, they read poetry together, sitting on the
little porch facing the wide valley and each taking a turn. They looked
at the beautiful prospect, then they read again. Each watched the
other. When Eleanor's eyes were turned definitely toward the western
mountains and her head away from him, Richard's eyes took their fill of
her. When his eyes were upon his book, she learned by heart each line of
his countenance. She had quite forgotten by now her uncertainties and
fears. Within doors Mrs. Bent sat under her lamp, forever embroidering
beautiful things.

Together the two read "Abt Vogler," together "A Toccata of Galuppi's."
Thomasina, appealed to by Richard, produced "A Toccata of Galuppi's" and
played it smilingly.

"Curious, isn't it? You've been reading Browning. Yes, take it with
you."

To Richard Eleanor carried from her neat bookcases, volume after volume.

"How many books you have!"

"My mother gives them to me, and Dr. Green has given me a great many."

"Your mother and Dr. Green have good taste," said Richard.

Together they read the "Blessed Damozel," together "Love among the
Ruins," together "Staff and Scrip." Then in an instant the old, common
miracle was wrought. Life was short and troubled and often tragic--one
must have companionship to make it endurable. Looking up they met each
other's eyes.

Richard's hands trembled, a solemn thrill was succeeded by a warm wave
of emotion, all emotions which seemed to gather themselves into one. He
could not look long into the bright eyes so near him, he could say
nothing, he must rise and go away, even though Eleanor begged,
trembling, "Oh, do not go!" He had not reckoned upon anything like this,
was not prepared for it.

"I have forgotten something. I will come to-morrow."

Richard went home and sat by his window and looked out over the campus
with its deep shadows, a broad shadow here by the chapel, a lesser
shadow by the Scott house. He heard in a daze his mother's voice and his
father's footstep, and when all was quiet once more he gave to his
youthful fancy, still clean and fresh, free rein. He leaned his head
against the window frame, then, hiding his eyes, he laid his cheek on
his folded arms. The night seemed to excite while it blessed him.

He began to be sorry that he had left her. What was she doing now? Had
she thought him rude? Did she think of him at all when he was not with
her? She seemed far above him, she had been more conscientious about
college work, she knew more than he did. But he would work, there should
be no limit to his working. If only he had his clavier now! He would
have at least the noblest profession in the world. He began to count the
years before he could amount to anything. And she was already complete,
already perfect!

When he thought of Thomasina, it was to bless her for setting his feet
in the right way and for guarding him and guiding him. He thought of his
mother with a slight feeling of uneasiness about her opinion of
Eleanor. She had never even invited Eleanor to the house. But that
should not worry him. His mother loved him, wished him to be happy; she
would not deny him that which would be the most blessed source of
happiness. He would tell her about Eleanor to-morrow. It should be a
casual sentence at first, a word or two about the pretty house or the
magnificent piano or the many books.

It was long past midnight when he went to bed and almost morning when he
fell asleep. He was certain that he was the only person awake in
Waltonville and he felt as though he were guarding his beloved.

Mrs. Bent said nothing to her daughter about the sudden and frequent
visits of this young man. Certainly no two persons could be more safely
or profitably employed than in playing or reading together! She did not
listen to what they read, but sat wrapped in her own thoughts, or in
that blankness of mind which serves even the most mentally active for
thought at times. There were now many moments when she looked worried
and harassed. A course which had once seemed reasonable was beginning to
seem more and more mad.

On Wednesday evening Richard returned, having kept himself away since
Tuesday afternoon. He had said nothing to his mother about Eleanor or
her books or her piano. He had been making vague plans. Certain
expressions of his mother's came back to him; a sigh when he sat down at
the piano, and an unflattering opinion of Thomasina's finger exercises,
heard by Mrs. Lister as she passed the house. Thomasina, she had said,
had been "tinkling and banging," two favorite words from her small
musical vocabulary. Richard felt that the time was not propitious. He
would wait a day or two until the confusion in his mind had given place
to those even and regular processes which had always been his.

He found Eleanor seated on the upper step of the porch, trying to read
by the failing light, and he sat down and leaned against the other
pillar from where he could watch her. She told him what she had been
doing, how she had practiced--this a little wistfully--all the morning,
and how she had found that Dr. Green had sat in his carriage listening
to her for dear knows how long.

"He's a funny soul," said Eleanor. "He's always bossing me and
correcting me, but I love him. Aren't you very fond of him?"

"I don't know that I am," said Richard, conscious of a sudden cooling of
whatever emotion he had felt toward Dr. Green.

"Well, I am," said Eleanor. "Did you ever hear how he disposes of his
books?"

"No."

"If he begins a book and doesn't like its theories, he drops it into his
waste-basket. Then his Virginia carefully fishes it out and carries it
down to the cabins. She has a lot of shelves made of soap-boxes, and
there stand Billings on the Eye and Jackson on Bones and Piatt on dear
knows what."

Eleanor talked easily and well. Her teachers and her friend Miss
Thomasina and her acquaintance Mr. Utterly would have been astonished to
hear her. It seemed to her that some confining band within her had
parted and that she was expanding out of the former compass of her body
and her mind. She talked about the moonlight, about the lovely valley,
about the poetry she had been reading. Suddenly she turned to Richard.

"What are you going to do this fall?"

"I'm going to study music." Richard woke from a trance to his uneasy
thoughts.

"How lovely!" Eleanor sighed. She was beginning to know him and now he
would go away; he would become famous, he would forget her entirely. To
her came also a determination to be more devoted to her work, to grow as
he grew. "When are you going away?"

"In the fall."

"And where will you study?"

"In New York, with Faversham."

"Miss Thomasina's friend?"

"Yes."

"How fortunate you are!" Eleanor meant not only that he was fortunate to
be able to do as he pleased, but that he was fortunate to be Richard.
"Then you'll forget all about Waltonville."

"It's not likely." Richard remembered miserably that after all nothing
was settled. An exceeding high mountain blocked his path and it was
growing higher and higher. He looked out over the valley, chin on hand.
It seemed to Eleanor that he shut her out of his thoughts, that he had
already forgotten her.

"I have written a story that has been accepted," she said timidly,
forgetting all her fears and compunctions about what she had written.
"It has been accepted by 'Willard's Magazine' and it is to be published
very soon. A Mr. Utterly came here to tell me."

Richard's comment came after a long pause.

"I think that is splendid!"

"I haven't told any one but my mother," faltered Eleanor, certain that
he must think her boastful and conceited. It seemed to her that again he
left in a sudden, unceremonious way.

Again Richard sat by his window. He would have liked to walk the floor,
but he was afraid that his mother would hear and that she would come to
his room and talk to him. He must have this time alone. He had
accomplished nothing, was accomplishing nothing. Only a little while ago
he had been so happy and so certain of himself and of all that he was
going to do. But Eleanor Bent had had a story accepted for publication!
He did not believe that Dr. Scott, whom he called "Old Scotty," had ever
dreamed of such an honor. That man Utterly had come to tell her! Utterly
had seemed a counterfeit, but he must be a man of some parts or he would
not hold a responsible position. She was now even farther above him than
before. To-morrow his own future must be definitely settled.

The next afternoon he went to see Thomasina. She would help him as she
had always helped him. She sat upon her throne by the garden door with
a new life of Beethoven open on the table by her side; she had put it
down as he came in to take up a piece of sewing.

"It is amazing and incredible and inspiring to contemplate the obstacles
which great spirits have overcome," said Thomasina with shining eyes.
"Physical defects, mental defects, opposition of relatives, of all
mankind, of fate itself--none of them ever daunted an earnest man set
upon achieving a great thing. All great achievement seems to have had
the history of Paul's! 'In weariness and painfulness, in watchings
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.'
Richard--" Her bright eyes searched his troubled face--"What is the
matter, my dear?"

"Everything," said Richard.

"Suppose we begin with one thing."

Richard slapped his cap up and down on his knee. "I want to get to
work."

"Why don't you?"

"What do you suppose my father and mother will say to my studying
music?"

"The sooner you hear what they have to say the better for all of you.
Your parents are persons of excellent common sense. And I have some news
for you. Henry Faversham is to be in Baltimore for a few days before
long."

Richard's head whirled.

"Do you suppose I could play for him there? Do you suppose he will ever
take me as a pupil?"

"Certainly he will! I haven't spent all these years teaching you to
have you refused by anybody."

"Suppose I did go, what should I prepare to play?" The unhappy look was
gone from Richard's face. Thomasina had the gift of wings, no less than
Basil Everman. Moreover, she lifted others out of fog-dimmed valleys up
to mountain peaks. Richard's eyes shone, his cheeks glowed, ambition and
aspiration now quickened by a new motive, took up their abode once more
in his breast.

On his way home Mrs. Scott called to him from her porch. Impatiently he
obeyed the summons. He did not like her, and had never disliked her so
much as he did at this moment. She had many foolish questions to ask.
What did he think of her friend Mr. Utterly? What did he suppose was Mr.
Utterly's business with Eleanor Bent? She understood that he had spent
an evening with her. The Bents were strange people, they behaved well,
yet everything that one knew definitely about Mrs. Bent was that she was
a hotel-keeper's daughter.

Richard said shortly in reply that he had had no conversation with Mr.
Utterly and that he knew none of his business.

"And I do think it is the most pathetic thing about your Uncle Basil,"
said Mrs. Scott.

"My Uncle Basil," repeated Richard. "What of him?"

Mrs. Scott's hands clasped one another in a gesture of amazement.

"Why Mr. Utterly said--why where were you?--oh, yes, you were in the
kitchen so kindly helping Cora!--he said your uncle wrote wonderfully.
I think it's very strange--"

Richard was suddenly certain that his neighbor wished to "get something
out of him."

"Oh, that!" said he, without having any idea what she meant.

Mrs. Scott made him promise to come the next afternoon to play with
Cora. He could not escape. He almost added poor, inoffensive Cora to her
mother and the metallic piano in the limbo to which he consigned them.
Now his wings drooped. He decided that after supper he would lie down
for a few minutes to get rid of the sharp pain which too much practicing
had put into the back of his neck. Then he would join his father and
mother on the porch and settle the important business of his future.

At the supper table he asked about his Uncle Basil and his mother
answered placidly, prepared for the question.

"He had published anonymously some stories and this Mr. Utterly came to
ask questions about his life."

"Why wasn't I told?"

"You haven't been here very much of late, my dear."

"Where are the stories?"

"Mr. Utterly has them."

"Couldn't we get them?"

"Perhaps we could."

"How did Mrs. Scott know about him?"

"Mr. Utterly went there to inquire."

"Did you know they had been published?"

"No. You had better stay with us this evening. We scarcely know our
boy."

There was to be no escaping to his room. Mrs. Lister laid her arm across
his shoulders and together they went out to the porch. The air was cool
and sweet; near by a woodpecker tapped slowly, wrens chattered, anxious
about their late nestlings, song sparrows trilled, and flickers and
robins hopped under the spray which Dr. Lister was sending over his
cannas and elephant ears.

Mrs. Lister, with Richard at her side, felt her heart at rest. Utterly
had vanished definitely, leaving no trail behind him. She could now
think of Richard's future, both immediate and far removed. She asked him
whether he would like to pay a visit to Dr. Lister's kin in St. Louis.

"No, indeed," said Richard.

"But you used to want to go out there!"

"But I don't now, mother--unless you want me to take you," he added with
sudden compunction.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Lister.

Further conversation was postponed by the arrival of the Myerses to
call. When all possible themes of common interest had been discussed and
they had moved on to talk of the same subjects at the Scotts', darkness
had come. Mrs. Lister did not wish to give up the idea of a visit.

"You have had a busy winter and this fall you will go to the university,
and you may wish to do something else in vacations."

Richard cleared his throat. He sat about a dozen feet away from his
father and mother and facing them as a culprit might have sat.

"But I don't wish to go to the university, mother."

"What do you wish to do?"

Richard almost said passionately, "You know what I wish to do!" But he
would have been wrong. Mrs. Lister was certain that Richard had put away
all childish things.

"I wish to study music."

Mrs. Lister dropped her hands, palm upward, into her lap.

"I thought you were over _that_!" said she, much more sharply than
Richard had ever heard her speak. "I thought you had given it up."

"I have never given it up for a minute. I never shall give it up."

Mrs. Lister gasped. Richard might almost as well have announced that he
had ceased to think of her or love her. She could not brook difference
of opinion in her son.

"It cannot be. I cannot hear of it. You are a man and you must do a
man's work."

"It is a man's work!" cried Richard. The pain in the back of his neck
was growing more acute. "Father, don't you consider it a man's work?"

Dr. Lister moved uneasily.

"We haven't had musicians in the family thus far. Suppose you tell us
about it."

Richard drew a long breath.

"It's what I have wanted to do ever since I have wanted to do anything!
I have planned for it all my life. I have practiced for professional,
not for amateur playing. The two are very different. Miss Thomasina has
drilled me with the greatest care. I have taken pains with my German and
French and Italian. I have talent, Miss Thomasina says so, and I know
that I have no other talent, at least. I--"

"Thomasina has been encouraging you, I suppose?" said Mrs. Lister.

"She was my teacher, of course she encouraged me. I am prepared for
Faversham. I--"

"Faversham?" Mrs. Lister's tone was as nearly scornful as she could make
it. It was as though she alluded to a mountebank.

"I have often told you about him, mother. He is the greatest teacher in
New York and he is Miss Thomasina's old friend. She has prepared me for
him as though she were a pupil teacher."

"What is a pupil teacher?" asked Mrs. Lister in the same tone.

"He is the pupil of a great master who prepares younger pupils according
to the master's methods. Miss Thomasina is the most wonderful person I
know."

After that sentence there was a pause, which grew longer and longer.

"Your mother would like you to be a preacher or a teacher like your
father and grandfather," said Dr. Lister at last. "Or, perhaps a lawyer
or doctor."

"I could not be a doctor. I hate the sight of Dr. Green's office with
all the bottles and knives. And a lawyer--I think a lawyer's business is
hideous. They make people pay to get what is theirs by right, and they
help to cheat the poor. They defend murderers when they know they are
murderers and try to hang innocent men. I'm not interested in sick
bodies or in crimes. I'm willing to be a teacher, but it must be a
teacher of music."

"To take children to teach, like Thomasina, for pay?"

"Why, certainly, for pay! A musician must live like any one else. I
wouldn't want to take absolute babies or too many stupid children, but
I'd be perfectly willing to begin that way."

"You would cover me with shame!"

"Mother!"

Dr. Lister tapped the arms of his chair nervously. Above all things in
the world he disliked acrimonious discussion between members of the same
family. Mrs. Lister was hard on the boy. Besides, she was becoming a
little ridiculous. He was apt to put off disagreeable duties in the hope
that they would not have to be performed or that they might cease to be
disagreeable.

"We needn't decide it all at this moment."

"It is decided," said Mrs. Lister.

"Mr. Utterly thought he played very well. I suppose he has had
opportunity to judge."

"I consider Mr. Utterly a poor judge of anything," Mrs. Lister went on
vehemently. It seemed to her agonized eyes that Richard looked like
Basil. Basil never argued, but he took his own way. "I cannot have it,"
said she. "I will not have it. You are my child. I brought you into the
world. I have some rights in you. If you persist--" Mrs. Lister
stopped, terrified, at a bitter reminiscence suggested by her tone and
her words. She put up her hand to hide her eyes.

Richard was frightened. It could not be that they would seriously oppose
him, that he could not persuade them! It could not be that he would have
to work his own way. It could not be that he must hurt and defy his
mother! He thought of Eleanor Bent, successful, honored, sought out,
lost to him.

"It will not be necessary for you even to get a new piano, mother. I can
use Miss Thomasina's and the assembly room piano. I am going to spend my
Commencement money for a clavier. It will not make any noise that can be
heard when the door of my room is shut. I need not practice at home at
all. I will not be a nuisance in the least."

Mrs. Lister looked at him as though he had struck her.

"It is not money," she said slowly. "And it is not noise. But what you
wish to do is impossible."

She rose and went into the house.

Richard turned to his father.

"I am sorry for mother," said he. "But I am going to study music."

Here at last was steel under the satin.




CHAPTER XII

GROWING PAINS


Eleanor did not yield without a struggle to the tyranny of this new
affection. The seclusion in which she and her mother lived, a natural
shyness as deep, though not as manifest, as that which her mother had so
strangely developed, and the keen ambition implanted and nourished by
Dr. Green had prevented thus far the characteristic seeking of youth for
emotion to match its own.

Nor had she been humiliated by the failure of a lover to seek her.
Waltonville had seemed to offer no one who was not too old or too young
or too dull or already married. She admired her teachers, Dr. Lister and
Dr. Scott, and would have selected Dr. Scott as a specimen of her
favorite masculine type.

Now she found herself changed. She could not rise in the morning and
fill her leisurely summer day as she had planned. The long mornings and
longer afternoons and quiet evenings were not hers to divide and use.
Instead of steady practicing at exercises and scales, she practiced the
bass or treble of duets; instead of sitting at her desk for many quiet
productive hours, she sat on the porch or in the little parlor. Plots
which she had expected to crystallize promptly now that school was over,
refused to progress beyond the point where she had left them in her
notebooks; images grew dim, words refused to fit themselves to thought,
thought itself was dull and valueless. She could put her mind upon one
object, Richard Lister; could wish for but one thing, his company.

In the mornings she was least possessed. Then she had still the hope of
his coming; the childis

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