They were not much apart, those two. Sometimes Harlson would be called away by some business or political emergency, and then would occur what impressed me as a silly thing, deeply as I cared, for each. He would get railroad tickets for two, and they would go riotously across the country, playing at keeping house in a state-room, and enjoying themselves beyond all reason. I explained often to each of them that it wasn't fair to the other; that he could attend to business better in some distant city without having to report to her at a hotel, and that it would be more comfortable for her in her own fair home; and the two idiots would but laugh at me.

The library was their fad together, for Jean was as much of a bibliomaniac, almost, as was her husband, and I confess I enjoyed myself amid the rich collection, made without precedent or reason, but, somehow, wonderfully attractive. They were whimsical, the pair, with books as with regard to other things, but the few who might invade their library were inclined to linger there. I always found a mingled odor there of cigar-smoke and of some perfume which Jean preferred, and I learned to like the combination. Maybe that was a perverted taste,—cigar-smoke and delicate perfumes are not consorted in the code of odor-lovers,—but, as I say, I learned to like it.

I have but little more to tell of this first wedded year of my dear friends. One incident I may relate. It occurred less than a year from the date of the outing in the woods. There were relations each of the two should meet, and he was very busy with many things, and it was, finally, after much thought, decided that Jean should go her way and he his for two long weeks; so they bade good-by to each other and left the city, in different directions, the same day.

It was just four days later when I got a note asking me to call at the house. It was from Jean, and she was a little shame-faced when she met me. Certain business complications had arisen in Grant's absence to which I might attend, and it was for this that she had summoned me; but she had an explanation to make. She did it, blushing.

"I went to my people, Alf," she said, "but it palled in a couple of days. That is all. I'd rather be here alone, where he has been, and await him here, than be anywhere else. It's foolish, of course, but you, who know us both so well, may possibly understand." And she blushed more than ever.

The next day there stalked into my office a man who asked me to lunch. It was Grant Harlson. There was a quizzical look on his face, and a rather happy one.

"I won't tell you anything, old man," he said. "I was only a few hours behind the girl. That's all. I suppose we might as well keep up the fool record we have begun. It suits me, anyhow."

And a single man, knowing nothing about such things, could give no opinion. I was abusive and sarcastic, but he insisted on buying a great luncheon.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE APE.

Given a man and a woman, married, loving each other, and what a recent clever writer calls "the inevitable consequences" ordinarily come and cause the inevitable anxiety, more, doubtless, to the man than to the woman. There comes a time when she he loves must bear him their first child. In primitive existence this trouble to the man must have been much less, must have been little more than the sympathy of an hour, because, in nature, unaffected, there is seldom much of suffering and almost never death prematurely. But we have changed all this. We have violated gentle Nature's laws in our ways of living, and inasmuch as we have done this, we have lost, to such extent, her soft protecting hand. We breathe too little of the pure air; we are lax in physical effort, and, even though the individual man or woman be wise, he or she must bear the burden of the errors of an ancestry or the evils of the present. So, to the woman gentle-bred there comes a risk in the undergoing of that which she has most hoped for since she loved a man, and since she would be all there is of perfect womanhood. There is peril, and she knows it, but is braver than man at this time. There is peril, and he knows it, and he is helpless and clinging as a child. What can he do? Nothing, save to bring in a hard hour the presence of one who may not bear a portion of the real trial. Yet this is something. It has saved dear women's lives. There is something—we do not quite understand about it yet—which is a band of more than steel between two close together, and which holds back the one sometimes from even the grip of that force seldom denied, which is named Death, the one who fills the graveyards.

And, one evening, there was a man in deep trouble, and in the morning he sat beside a bed in which was his small wife and beside her a tiny red thing, "rather underdone," he said, in the buoyant reaction which came upon him, for that was Harlson's way when he had emerged from trouble; and the small red thing was the son of the two of them. And who can tell what the man said to the woman. There are precious, sacred overflows of love, sweet outbursts of what makes life worth the living, never yet in words for all, never yet written in black upon some white surface. There is a sanctuary.

It was a healthy baby, and the mother was soon herself, and the most foolish of small women over it. I rather liked the young animal myself, for they let me see it when its days were few, and it clutched at my fingers in a way that won me. It was a curious young animal to me. It took to the water wonderfully, and all three of us together sometimes, when I would call, would summon the nurse and see the young villain bathe. This was when he was but a few months old. He was such a royal fellow, so brave and buoyant, that I fell in love with him. How could a lonely man help being foolish?

An odd name had the child. It all came from the hours, when, all danger passed, a proud and happy man sat upon a bedside and looked down into the face of a proud and happy woman, and, at times, studied the quality of the odd mite beside her, half hidden in the waves of pillow and of sheet. He would look at the thing's wonderful hands, and its wonderful pink feet, and have remarks to make. One hour he came in and examined the creature and repeated great words from some authority:

"How many people have ever taken notice of a baby's foot, except to admire its pinkiness and its prettiness?" said he. "And yet, to the anatomist, it is a revelation. Take, for example, the feet of a child of ten months, that has never walked nor stood alone. It has a power of grasping to some extent, and is used instinctively like a hand. The great toe has a certain independent working, like a thumb, and the wrinkles of the sole resemble those of the palm. These markings disappear when the pedal extremity has come to be employed for purposes of support.

"The hands and feet of a human being are strikingly like those of the chimpanzee in conformation, while the gorilla's resemblance to man in these respects is even more remarkable. The higher apes have been classified as 'quadrumana,' or 'four-handed,' because their hind feet are hand-shaped; but this designation is improperly applied, because the ape's posterior extremities are not really hands at all. They merely look like hands at the first glance, whereas, in fact, they are but feet adapted for climbing. The big toes cannot be 'opposed' to other toes, as thumbs are to the fingers, but simply act pincer-wise, for the purpose of grasping. Now, oddly enough, the 'infant's' feet have this same power of grasping, pincer-fashion, and the action is performed in precisely the same way. Advocates of evolutionary theories take this to signify that the human foot was originally utilized for climbing trees also, before the species was so highly developed as it is now. Also, they assert that the fact that the art of walking erect is learned by the child with such difficulty proves that the race has only acquired it recently.

"There, darling," he said, "you see how it is. We have but come into possession of a little ape! What shall we do?"

She was not troubled. In his eyes she saw that which is worth more to the young mother than all else the world can give, but she entered into the spirit of his mood. She replied, gently, that she didn't know what to do, but had he the bad taste to kiss an Ape? And he admitted that he had, and kissed the object gently, as if afraid of breaking it, and kissed the gentle mother a hundred to one.

I liked the Ape—for so they came to allude to that sturdy babe. He may be my heir some day—though he was named, as Jean insisted, for his father—and I had many a frolic with him in his babyhood, when I was allowed to enter the sanctuary of that home. He was a little viking, a little raider, this child, conceived in the forest. There seemed to have come to him the daring and the vigor of outdoor things, and the force of nature. A great man-child was this.

I was not alone in the rejoicing over the infant, though really he was, it seems to me, as dear to me, the isolated man, as to his parents. They rioted in their vast possession, and were very foolish people. But why should I keep repeating that these two were very foolish people together?

They were like other fathers and mothers, in some respects, but one difference I noted. They seemed almost to adore the child, but he was never first with either of them. He but bound the two more closely together, and the looks of the man were sometimes almost worshipful as he looked upon the mother of his child. And she—she understood, and they were glad together. Their kingdom had been but enlarged.

It is not to be supposed that this whimsical couple—for they were really whimsical, these friends of mine, as must have appeared often in my account could rear a child without grotesqueries. The woman, I am afraid, was, before she became a mother, addicted to monkey tricks, even to the extent of bounding leopard-like upon the man from unexpected places, and the Ape was, in his early days, bred in a way barbaric. They had great times with the Ape.

One day Grant Harlson had his business for the day concluded early. He could reach home as a little after five o'clock, where dinner came at six. One of the fiercest of summer rains was falling. He started buoyantly. He wanted his wife and boy.

He reached the house and entered. No wife was there to greet him; no drunken-footed babe, for the Ape had learned to walk now, albeit unsteadily; not even a servant girl to make some explanation. He stalked through the house wonderingly, back to the kitchen, which looked out upon a green back-yard where they had erected a tent, and had there had dinners and inhaled the odor of the grass. He found in the kitchen the two girls, who were all delight, and exhibited but slight awe at his presence. He recognized that all was well, and looked out through the descending sheets of water.

There, beside the quaint tent set upon the green-sward, were two people. One was a graceful woman, one a sturdy, shouting child. Neither was garbed save in the simplest way. She wore a wrap of some sort, a careless thing, the boy a night-gown, and they were moving about in the warm rain and bathing in nature's way, and particularly happy.

The man was righteously indignant at all desertion of him. He shouted manfully, and at last attracted the attention of the pair. He told them to come in to him. As well have talked to the wild winds. He looked from the porch upon the riant, dissipated two, and commanded and cajoled and made tremendous threats, but to no purpose. He reproached his wife with unwifely disobedience, and with the crime of turning her own offspring against his father, and the two but mocked him! Then he disappeared, and appeared five minutes later in a frayed old swimming suit, and there was terror in the camp of the foe! He made a charge through sheets of rain, and a fair woman was, in most unmanly way, laid in a puddle, and her son set aloft in pride upon his prostrate and laughing mother. And high jinks ensued. So did these two conduct themselves!

But an hour later, when guests came to the dinner, the Ape had gone to his nursery without a whimper, and no more grave and courteous man or more stately and gracious dame sat down at table that evening in all the city of a million people.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE FIRST DISTRICT.

The trouble with us in the First Congressional District was that we could not carry the Ninth Ward. But for this weak point we would have felt assured at any time. With the Ninth Ward eliminated we could control the district barely. With the Ninth Ward for us it would be a walk-over. But the ward belonged to Gunderson.

Gunderson employed three thousand men. He was not a party man, but he was a partisan; that is, he would get interested sometimes in a campaign, and when he did, each workman in his big manufactory must vote as indicated or go. And Gunderson did not like Harlson. The ways of the big employer were not what Harlson admired, and he had never tried much to conciliate him. So it came that in more than one legislative and local contest we had lost the Ninth Ward. And now Harlson was a candidate for Congress.

We were puzzled. "I'm afraid Jean will have to lock me out again," laughed Harlson, as we were discussing the problem one night after a committee meeting, and herein he referred to a funny episode, dating back to the time when the Ape was but a yearling. Jean, dignified, chatelaine, sweet wife and fond mother, was as interested in politics as in anything else that commanded her husband's attention at any time, and had learned from our conversations all about the Ninth Ward. We were confident one spring, and as Grant left home on the morning of election day he was informed that unless he came as a victor he must not expect admission to the home containing his wife and baby boy. He said he would return in triumph or upon his shield, but he did neither. At five o'clock in the afternoon we knew that we were whipped, whipped beautifully and thoroughly, and all because of that same black demon of a Ninth Ward, and the fact was so apparent that we became suddenly philosophical, and Grant turned to me and said:

"Come to dinner with me, Alf, and let's go now. What's the use of staying to the funeral? We'll eat a good dinner and smoke, and good digestion will wait on appetite, and we'll plan and say we'll do better next time."

So we left the hurly-burly and took the train, and were at Harlson's home a little before the dinner hour. Grant tried his latch-key, but it would not serve. He rang the bell, but there came no answer. Then there came a tapping and clatter from inside a window, and both of us left the porch to get down upon the sward and visit the window and investigate.

Inside the window, and smiling, was a small, brown woman, holding in her arms a crowing youngster, who was making a great ado and reaching out his hands toward his father. She raised the window just a little, and put a question, gravely:

"What is it that you wish, gentlemen?"

Grant intimated, humbly, that we wanted to get in and be given some dinner.

"Are you the gentlemen who were going to carry the Ninth Ward?"

"Yes."

"Did you carry it?"

"No."

The laughing face fell a little, but the stately air was recovered in a moment. "Well," she said, with dignity, "I'm very sorry. We do not wish to seem inhospitable, neither the baby nor I, but really we do not feel justified in harboring people incapable of carrying the Ninth Ward."

We explained and pleaded and apologized and promised, but for a long time to no avail. At last, after the dinner-bell had sounded, and after we had pledged ourselves to carry that ward yet or perish, we were admitted, only then, though, as was explained, for the child's sake. He was accustomed to climb upon his father after dinner.

So carrying the Ninth Ward became a synonym for any difficult feat with us, and if Grant accomplished this or that, or I made a good turn, or Jean gave her cook or dressmaker an inspiration, the Ninth Ward was referred to as having been carried. And here was that ward before us again in a greater emergency, and in its own proper person.

Gunderson had a wife. He would have owned two wives had the one in his possession been surveyed and subdivided properly, for she was big enough, abundantly, for two. She was the best illustration I ever saw of what difficulties burden the ignorant rich who have social ambitions. She was good-hearted, coarse, shy and hopeful. A woman may be coarse and yet timid, as I have noted many a time, and Mrs. Gunderson was of this type. She hungered for social status, but knew not how to attain it. To her burly husband's credit, he wished, above all things, to gratify his wife's ambition, but he was as ignorant as she regarding ways and means. He had learned that there was a limit even to the power of money.

Jean had met Mrs. Gunderson in a social way, but of course there could be no affinity between the two, and the heavy-weight matron, anxious for recognition, had hardly attracted a second thought from the small aristocrat. I do not know, by the way, that I have told of the social status of these friends of mine. I don't think either Grant or Jean ever gave the matter much attention. Grant was democratic in every principle, and yet, unknowingly, it seems to me, exclusive arbitrarily. He had those about him whom he liked, and they were necessarily somewhat of his kind. And Jean was, a little more thoughtfully, perhaps, of the same sort. Unconsciously they were the center of a set for admission to which rich men would have given money. But, as I said, this key is one of the few things money cannot buy.

The political fight was on, and fierce. We did good work in that campaign. The struggle was so keen, the supervision of everything so searching, that daring fraud became a thing impossible. It was simply a test of persuasion, of popularity and of relative skill in those devices which are but the moves upon the chessboard in a game where chances are nearly even. We were but moderately hopeful. Harlson was immeasurably the better candidate. He was, at least, earnest and honest, and would represent the district well. I asked once why he wanted to go to Congress.

"I'll have to think," he said, "to answer you in full. Firstly, I believe I want to go because I have some fool ideas about certain legislation which I think I can accomplish. I believe they'll like me better in this district, and, perhaps, in a broader way, after I have been there. Then I want Jean to enjoy with me all the mummery and absurdity of the most mixed social conditions on the face of the civilized globe, and, besides that, I've been invited to take black bass with her out of a certain stream in the Shenandoah Valley, and to kill a deer or two, with headquarters at an old house up in West Virginia."

He said this lightly, yet I knew it was not far from the full truth. He had ideas of changes and reforms, and was prepared to fight for them. As for Jean and the fishing and the shooting, that was a matter of course. He must get out to nature, and he must have her with him certainly. As for me, personally—well, we had fought the world together for many a year, and I never knew him to fail me, and I could not very well fail him. I worried about this battle, though we had gained steadily. There was an element in the district, led by shrewd politicians, of the graduated saloon-keeper type, which did not lack large numbers. Outside one ward, though we had practically beaten them, Grant had invoked everything. He had stood up squarely on every platform, and as well in every drinking-shop and den, and almost bagnio, and explained to whom he found the nature of the contest, and told them what he wanted to do, and what all the hearings were, and told them then to conduct themselves as they pleased—he had but put his case as it was.

And there are men among the thugs, and humanity is not altogether bad, even in the slums, and help had come to us from unexpected places. More than one man, brutal-looking, but with lines in his countenance showing that he had once been something better, came around and worked well, and all to his future advantage, for Harlson's memory of such things was as the memory of that cardinal—what was his name?—who never forgot a face or incident or figure. We were what the politicians call "on top," a week before election, save in that same Ninth Ward. I had seen old Gunderson myself. He was not what we call affable. I had to wander through many offices, and finally to send in my card. I found this burly man in his private room, looking over papers on his desk. He did not look up as I came in. I took a seat, unasked, and waited. It was five minutes before he turned his head. Then he muttered a "good-morning," for we had met before.

I tried to be companionable and easy. I returned his salutation, somewhat too effusively, it may be, and asked him about his business, and then wanted to know, in a general way, how be stood on the Congressional issue. He hardened in a moment.

"I don't know why I should support Harlson," he said.

"Isn't he honest?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," he grunted; "but he's not my kind."

"Is the other man?" I asked.

Even the burly animal before me flushed. The other man was but a tricky politician of the creeping sort, a caterer to all prejudices, and a flatterer and favorer. This everybody knew. But he had become a part of the machine, was shrewd, and, with the machine behind him, was a power.

"I've nothing to say about that; but Harlson's not my kind. He's like one of those stag-hounds. He has nothing to do with the other dogs."

"He's fought some of the other dogs," I suggested.

The man grunted, again: "He's not my kind." And I left the place. I had little hope of the Ninth Ward.



CHAPTER XXX.

THE NINTH WARD.

Unaccustomed to story-telling, it is possible that I have neglected chronology in this account. I referred just now to the time we couldn't get into Harlson's house because we hadn't carried the Ninth Ward and to the Ape crowing at the window in his mother's arms. Time passed after that, and, we all grew older, though, somehow, Jean did not seem to change, nor, for that matter, did Grant, though he was years her elder. But the Ape changed amazingly. He grew into a stalwart youth of fourteen, and became, about that time, addicted to a bad habit for which I reproved him in vain. He had discovered that he could pick up his little mother and carry her about in his arms, and he did so frequently. And his two younger brothers looked on enviously, and his pretty sister, the youngest of the group, with gravest apprehension. But Jean seemed rather to like it, though it was most undignified, and Grant, though he ruled his children well, seemed rather to approve of their treatment of her majesty. They were a happy lot together. The Ape was a good deal interested in the election, but was not allowed to talk outside the house. And Jean wore a serious look. She lived for one man.

I attended a party soon after my visit to Gunderson, and a very pretty affair it was. A very pretty incident I saw there, too.

What I saw was the advent of a big, blowsy woman, who was blazing with diamonds, whose face was good-natured, but who seemed ill at ease. She was like a Muscovy duck among game fowl. She was well received by the mass and overlooked by the few, and, being a woman, though of no acute comprehension, she understood vaguely her condition. She was unhappy, and there was a flush, upon her face.

I saw a small woman, neat in a gown of the Directory, it seemed to me, though of course not so pronounced, brought by apparent accident in contact with the big, blazing creature. The smaller woman was self-contained and of the blue-blooded in look and unconsciousness from head to heel. The two engaged in conversation, the one affable and interested, the other flushed and happy.

I do not know that I ever enjoyed a party more, yet I did nothing on that occasion, save to watch at a distance the two people I have mentioned. They drifted along together, and there was soon a group about them. Was not Mrs. Grant Harlson a social power, and was not a friend of hers fit friend and confidant for any one? I do not understand the ways of women. I do not comprehend their manner of doing things, but I know a thing when it is done. And when that party ended I knew that fat Mrs. Gunderson had risen to a higher plane than she had dared to covet for the time, and that she knew who had accomplished it. Grant was not present at the party, and of the incident I told him nothing then. I wanted him to note its possible sequence first.

The day of election came, and a great day it was. Outside the Ninth Ward we had passed beyond our hopes. That ward, though,—at least from the first reports, and we paid slight attention to the later ones,—remained, through Gunderson, sullen, incomprehensible, uncommitted. And at night, the voting over, newspapers began to show the bulletins as the ballots were counted and the returns came in. We were at campaign headquarters and got the figures early.

The scattering returns were satisfactory. Through most of the district they showed a gain for us over past encounters. The drift was all our way, but it was not big enough to offset all contingencies. There was nothing from the Ninth Ward yet. The counting was slow there.

It was eleven o'clock before the vote of any precinct from the Ninth Ward came in. It stood as follows:

Harlson, 71.

Sharkey, 53.

Harlson picked up the filled-out blank, glanced at it, and threw it down again.

"It's some mistake," he said; "that precinct is one of the stiffest the other way. Wait until we get more of them."

We waited, but not for long. The returns came fluttering in like pigeons now. The second read:

Harlson, 33.

Sharkey, 30.

There dawned a light upon me; but I said no word. I was interested in watching Harlson's face. He was a trifle pale, despite his usual self-control, and was noting the figures carefully. Added precincts repeated the same story. Harlson would take up a return, glance at it, compare it with another, and then examine a dozen of them together, for once in his life he was taken unawares, and was at sea. He left the table at length, lit a cigar, and came over to where I stood, leaning against the wall.

"What does it mean, Alf? If those figures don't lie, the Ninth Ward has swung as vigorously for us as it ever did against us. With an even vote in the ward the chances were about even. Now, unless I'm dreaming, we own the district."

"We do."

"But how is it? What does it all mean?"

"I suppose it means that Gunderson is with you."

"But how can that be?"

"Were you at Mrs. Gorson's party?"

"No."

"Jean was there, though."

"Yes."

"So was Mrs. Gunderson."

The man's face was a study worth the scrutiny. For a moment or two he uttered no word. The whole measurement of it was dawning on him. "The little rhinoceros-bird!" he said, softly.

The room was thronged, and there was a roar of cheers. The issue was decided beyond all question. The newspaper offices were flashing out the fact from illuminated windows. There were shouting crowds upon the streets. Hosts of people were grasping Harlson's hand. He had little to say save to thank them in a perfunctory manner. He was in a hurry to get home.

When I dined with Harlson the next day I hoped to learn some details, but I was disappointed. Jean was herself a trifle radiant, perhaps, for she remarked to me, apropos of nothing, and in the most casual way, that men were dull, and Harlson had little to say. Judging from his general demeanor, though, and the expression on his face, I would have given something to know what he said to his wife when he reached home the night before. Something no bachelor, I imagine, could comprehend.

And before the year ended Harlson had the Ninth Ward so that it couldn't bolt him under any ordinary circumstances.



CHAPTER XXXI.

THEIR FOOLISH WAYS.

It is, as I have said so often, but the simple story of two friends of mine I am trying to tell, but I wish I had more gift in that direction. I wish I could paint, just as an artist with brush and colors reproduces something, the home life in the house where much of my time was spent. I can but give a mechanical idea of what it was, but to me it was very pleasant.

A very shrewd politician Jean became, after the famous contest in which the Ninth Ward aided us to victory, and we were accustomed to consult her on the social bearings of many a struggle. In case she became too arbitrary on any occasion Grant had fallen into the way of calling the Ape, and asking him to remove her, whereupon the youth would carry off his small mother in his arms and insist that, as he put it, from a childhood expression, with a long "a," she "'have herself." There was ever this quality of the whimsical about life in this home. And I am inclined to believe that the world is better for such a flavor.

The children, were well grown now, the family was rounded out, and Grant's mustache, gray when he was forty, was now grayer still, though Jean's brown hair showed yet no glint of silver. I asked one day after dinner, when we two were idling and smoking in the library, and Jean was hovering about, if she hadn't a gray hair yet, and Grant said no, without hesitation, though the lady herself seemed less assured. Then happened a curious thing, at least to me. I asked Grant how he knew so well, if even his wife, who, being a woman and fair to look upon, would be naturally apprehensive of any change in aspect, could not tell if a gray hair had come, and he but laughed at me. "Come here, Jean," he said.

She came and stood, beside him, close to me.

"Alf," said he, "I have a vast opinion of you, but there are some things I imagine you do not comprehend. You should have blended your life with that of some such creature as this, and you would have developed a new faculty. Now I close my eyes. Ask me anything about her—I don't mean about her dress, but about her head or hands, all you can see of the real woman."

I accepted the challenge, and there was great sport, and a little-great result. I made the inquest a most searching and minute affair. I asked him to tell me if there were any mark upon the neck, near one ear, and he described the precise locality and outline of a tiny brown fleck, no larger than a pin's head. He told of any little dimple, of any sweep of the downward growth of the brown hair, of any trifling scar from childhood. And of her chin and neck he told the very markings, in a way that was something wonderful. His eyes were closed, and his face was turned away from us, but this made no difference. He described to me even the character of the wonderful network in the palms of her little hands. Then he opened his eyes and turned to me, chaffingly:

"You see how ignorant is a man of your sort. Having no world worth speaking of, he knows nothing of geography."

I do not believe that even Jean herself knew, before, of how even the physical being of her had been impressed upon the heart and brain of this man. She listened curiously and wonderingly when, he was talking with his eyes closed, and when he opened them and began his nonsense with me she stood looking at him silently, then suddenly left the room. It was a way of Jean's to flee to her own room for a little season when something touched her, and I imagine this was one of the occasions. She had known for long years how two souls could become knitted and interwoven into one, but I do not believe that before this incident she had ever comprehended how her physical self, as well, had become an ever present picture upon the mind's retina of her lover and her husband.

I am worried, and bothered. I am a man past middle age. I shall never marry now, and shall but drift into a time of doing some little, I hope, toward making things easier for some other men and some women, and then—into a crematory. I have a fancy that my body, this machine of flesh and muscle in which I live, should not be boxed and buried in seeping earth to become a foul thing. That was an idea I learned from this firm friend of mine. I want it burned, and all of it, save the little urn full of white ashes which some one may care for, to go out and mingle with the pure air, and there to be one of earth's good things, and to be breathed in again and make part of the life of the maple leaf, or the young girl going to school in the morning, or the old-fashioned pinks in the front yard of the old-fashioned people, or the red roses in the florist's hot-houses. I have that fancy.

I am worried because I, clumsy, dull-thinking man, cannot tell what I wish to tell of a life I saw. I am worried because I cannot make others understand it as it was. It seems to me it would do some good in the world. It seems to me that many a man and woman, if they could know about Grant and Jean, who really lived,—for this is but a tale of fact,—would be now more loving and better men and women because of it. But I do not know how to tell of what I saw and what I knew.

Grant was over sixty years old at this time of which I write, and I am coming very near the end, and Jean was past forty, and the two were not much different from what they were when I first saw them together. I suppose it was partly because I had been with them so much that I did not note the changes nature wrought in this pair of her children, but certainly they were far younger than their years. They had found together the only fountain of eternal youth which exists or ever will exist upon this planet which threw off a barren moon and bred monsters and, later, mastodons and apes, and finally made a specialty of men and women. They laughed at time, and hoped for a future of souls after this trial. I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, when they spoke together. They were blended, and it made life worth the living. What I learned conveyed to me new things. It taught me that all there is in novels is not romance nor untrue. It taught me that a male and female of this species of ours may meet, and from the two may come an entity which is something very near divine. Why is it, I wonder, that the right man and the right woman out of the hundreds of millions meet so seldom at the fitting time, and that life is either so barren or so jagged and hurtful because of the non-meeting of those who should be mated? What a world this might be! Of course, though, there is some higher thought, and it is all right in some way.

They were what you would call religious, Grant and Jean. They liked the same church—it doesn't matter which it was—and attended regularly, and worshiped without much regard for its more narrow legends. They did not trouble themselves with the idea of the everlasting punishment of babes, nor the fate of the untutored heathen. They had, somehow, a simple idea that the human being who tried to do right according to his or her views was all right as to the future. They were not much in sympathy with what is called heretic-hunting. They had each read the story of the gentle Nazarene, and had failed to learn that there was more than one church—a church without either spectacular effects or creed bickerings. A church of the group who, at one time, clung to Him and His teachings, and so had shaped their course. To them a narrow, grim old Presbyterian—were he but honest and earnest according to his inherited brain and intelligence—might, some time, a year or ten million years from now, be walking arm and arm along the sidewalks of some glorious street of some New Jerusalem with the Jesuit of to-day, honest and earnest according to his brain and his intelligence. This is not reasoning. Was it a bad creed?

They were not afraid of old age as it came nearer, hour by hour and day by day, these friends of mine. They had pondered of it much, of course, for they were thoughtful people, and they had talked of it doubtless many times, for there was little of which they thought that the two did not reveal to each other in plain words; but they were not troubled over the outlook. They seemed to realize that the flower is no greater than what follows, that fruit is the sequel of all fragrance, and that to those who reason rightly there is no difference in the income of what is good in all the seasons of human being. I remember well an incident of one evening.

We had been playing billiards, Grant and I. He had a table in his house and had taught Jean how to play until she had become a terror, though the Ape had nearly caught up with her in skill, and there was, at this time, a great pretended struggle between them, and we had come up into the library after a hard after-dinner game. Jean came in, and we talked of various things, and looked at some old books, and, somehow—I forget the connection—began talking of old age. It was in the midst of our debate that Grant, after his insane way, suddenly leaped up and, standing beside me as I sat, proceeded to make me an oration. He talked of the friction of things and of the future of this soul or mind of ours, concerning the luck of which we know so little. And, while I may or may not have agreed with his general theories, I did not disagree with the one that the autumn is as much a part of what there is as is the spring, and that all trends toward a common end, which must be for the best in some way we do not comprehend, because we see, at least, enough to know that nature, wiser than we, makes no mistakes. "The fruitage 'goes'!" Grant exclaimed larkingly, and then, forgetting me for the moment, he caught up Jean, and, carrying her gravely about, repeated to her these lines:

"Grow old, along with me; The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made!"

And they were at least exponents of the belief they had, and it was to me an education and a comfort. I learned, what I could not profit by, that a man and woman together are more than twice one man or twice one woman, when the man and woman are the right two. It was like an astronomer studying the sun. And what warmth and light there was to look upon!

I have tried in these rambling words to tell how these two people faced the autumn and found it spring, since they were still together. I wonder why I made the attempt? It is but a simple relation of certain things which happened, yet I do not, somehow, get the pulse of it. It must be because I have known the people all too well. My heart is so much in what I try to say that I am not clear.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE LAW OF NATURE.

Of what was the result of finally owning the Ninth Ward and the district I have only to say that it, of course, added to the reputation of one man—and of one woman as well, it may be added, for Jean in her necessary social functions grew in her way with Grant; but otherwise it made little difference. There was the family hegira to the capital, and much enjoyment of the limited attractions of the semi-Ethiopian and shabby but semi-magnificent city in a miasmatic valley, and it was, no doubt, some education for the children. To Grant it was a fray, of course, and to Jean it was enjoyment of his successes, and probably more sorrow than he felt at his failures. The successes were the more numerous. Jean herself never failed. She was an envied woman in the social world. She was a strong man's wife, and possessed of all tact and gentle wisdom in aiding him, but she was not a rival of the mere self-advertisers among the queens of a shifting society. She could not afford it, even had her inclination bent that way. She had absorbing riches. They were a man and her children.

When I brightened up, because my friends were coming back to me, was the great season of the year to me, as to them. When the family returned from the capital and reoccupied the home there was rejoicing. And what rioters we were! But once more, each time, it was said by Grant, and by me as well, the battle must be fought, and so came re-elections and the flittings. And, after all, it was good. It was not the rusting in the sheath.

And it came that there was another gallant fight on. The city Congressional district is not like the country one, where a man once firmly in the saddle may stay there for a quarter of a century. The city constituencies have the fault in make-up that their Congressmen are not selected as those who will do best for the districts, but because they have hands on the lever of some machine. Of course, there are always exceptions, as in Grant's case, but the rule prevails. And now there had been flung down the gauntlet of a clever adversary, and the battle was a warm one.

We both enjoyed this contest, for, though the struggle was likely to be sharp, we knew the issue was ours, from the beginning, and the whole thing, as Grant said, was like a hunting trip. But how it ended!

He had been out much at night, for it was a large district and there were many meetings, and had been as tireless as was usual with him. His thought was never given much to the care of himself, and in this campaign he appeared more than ordinarily reckless. Jean, watchful ever, reproached him and made him change his ways a little. Perhaps it was not all his fault that one day he felt ill. It was on the eve of the election.

We carried the day as we had hoped, and easily, and there was a demand for Harlson that night which could not be refused with grace. He was compelled to speak, and in the open air of a chill November evening. He told me he felt ill. When, late at night, we reached his home and he found Jean awaiting him, he turned to me and said:

"It's all right, Alf. I'll be myself again by morning. I'm where all that is good for me is, and should be well in no time. She will but pass her hands above my head, and—there you are!"

And we parted, as carelessly as usual, and as I went home I was speculating on what the revised returns would show the majority to be, not as to the outcome of Grant Harlson's indisposition.

Jean sent for me the next morning. I found a look upon her face which troubled me.

"Grant is not well," she said. "He came home late and spoke of an odd feeling. We cared for him, but this morning he was listless and did not want to dress and come to breakfast. He is in bed still. Please go up and see him, and then come down to the library and tell me what you think the matter is."

I went upstairs and found Grant lying in his bed and breathing heavily. I shook him by the shoulder.

"What's the matter, old man?"

He turned over with an effort, though laughing. "I don't know," he answered. "I only know I haven't been well since last night, and that there is a queer feeling about my throat and chest. I ought to be up, of course, but I'm listless and careless, somehow. By the way, what were the totals?"

I gave him the figures, and he smiled, and then with an "Excuse me, old man," turned his face to the wall. A moment later, as I sat watching him, alarmed, he roused himself and turned toward me again. "Won't you send Jean to me?" he asked.

I saw Jean, and she went upstairs, and when she came down her face was white. The Ape, rugged young man as he was, had tears in his eyes, and his brothers and sisters were crying quietly. I left the house, and an hour later a physician, one of the most famous on the continent, was by Grant Harlson's bedside. He was a personal friend of both of us. When he came down his face was grave.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"It's pneumonia, and a bad case."

"What can we do?"

"Nothing, but to care for him and aid him with all hopefulness and strength. He has vitality beyond one man in a thousand. He may throw off all the incubus of it. But it has come suddenly and is growing." Then he got mad in all his friendship, and blurted out: "Why didn't the great blundering brute send for me when first he felt something he couldn't meet nor understand?" And there were almost tears in his eyes.

The doctors have much to say about pneumonia. Doubtless they know of what they talk, but pneumonia comes nevertheless, and defeats the strong man and the doctors. The strong man it strangles. The doctors it laughs at.

All that medical science could command was brought to the bedside of Grant Harlson. The doctor, his friend, called in the wisest of associates in consultation, and as for care—there was Jean! He was cared for as the angels might care for a wandering soul. But the big man in the bed tossed and muttered, and looked at Jean appealingly, and grew worse. The strength seemed going from him at last—from him, the bulwark of us all.

All that science could do was done. All that care could do was done, but our giant weakened. The doctors talk of the croupous form of pneumonia, and of some other form—I do not know the difference—but I do know that this man had a great pain in his chest, and that his head ached, and that he had alternate arctic chills and flames of fever. His pulse was rapid, and he gasped as he breathed. Sometimes he would become delirious, then weaker in the sane intervals. He would send us from the room then, and call for Jean alone, and, when she emerged—well—God help me!—I never want to see that awful look of suspense and agony upon a human face again. It will stay with me until I follow the roadway leading to my friends.

The doctor gave the sick man opiates or stimulants, as the case might at any moment seem to need, and they had some slight effect; but there came a shallower breathing, and the quilts tossed under the heaving of the broad chest, fitfully. It reminded me in some strange way of the imitation sea scenes at the theater, where a great cloth of some sort is rocked and lifted to represent the waves. Only one lung was congested in the beginning, but, later, the thing extended to each, and the air-cells began filling, and the man suffered more and more. He fought against it fiercely.

"Grant," said the doctor, after the administration of some strong stimulant, "help us all you can. Cough! Force the air through those huge lungs of yours, and see if you can't tear away that tissue which is forming to throttle you!"

And Grant would summon all his strength, by no means yet exhausted, and exert his will, and cough, despite the fearful pain of it; but the human form held not the machinery to dislodge that growing web which was filling the lung-chambers and cutting off, hour by hour, the oxygen which makes pure blood and makes the being.

And the man who laughed at things grew weaker and weaker, and, though he laughed still and was his old self and made us happy for a brief interval, when he had not the fever and was clear-headed, and said that it was nothing and that he would throw it off, we knew that there was deadly peril. And one evening, when Grant was again delirious, the doctor came to me and said there was very little hope.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

WHITEST ASHES.

What is the mood of fate? Must strong men die illogically? What does it all mean, anyhow? About this I am but blind and reasonless. I wish I knew! The world is more than hollow to me, yet I have a hope, I'll say that. There was some one very like Jean, one whom I loved and who loved me, thirty years ago. Will she and I meet some day, I wonder? And what will she be to me then? I suppose I have the philosophy and endurance of the average man; but this is, with any doubt, a black world at times, and one in which there is no good. The breaking of heart-strings mars all music. I am alone and dull and wondering, and in a blind revolt. Why should all things change so, and what is this death which comes? There must be some future world. If there be not, what a failure is all the brutal material scheme.

One day Grant was clear of head, but weaker, and talked with me long of his affairs.

"I'm afraid I can't fight it out after all," he said, "though you mustn't let Jean and the children know that yet."

We talked more of what I should do if the worst came, and then he sent for the children. He addressed himself to the Ape first, the brave boy's eyes full of tears and his whole body trembling as he listened:

"My boy, you are hardly a man yet, but I know your manliness. If I cannot stay with you, you will become the practical head of the family. Make them all proud of you. And care for your mother always as you would for your own life or whatever is greatest." Then he called the others to him:

"You heard what I just said. I spoke to the Ape only because he is oldest. Remember that I have said this thing to all of you. I needn't say it, I know—my blessed boys and girls—you understand. But live for your little mother always."

I cannot describe what those young people said or did. It was most pitiful. It was brave and sweet, too. But they would not let their father die. He must not! They could not face the fact.

Jean came then, and we three were left alone for a time. She sat beside the bed, for he wanted his hand in hers when possible, and he spoke slowly:

"Jean, I don't know. There must be another world, as we have trusted. The great Power that fitted us to each other so will surely bring us together again. Let us look at it that way. We'll imagine that I'm only going to the country, and that you are to join me. That is all. I know it. God knows. He will adjust it somehow."

Jean did not answer. She but clasped his hand and looked into his face. I feared she would die of a bursting heart. From that time till the end she never left his bedside.

Murderous Death has certain kindnesses in his killings. Just before the end is peace. The struggles of this strong man became something fearful as the lungs congested, and the most powerful of anti-pyretics ceased to have effect, and then came the peace which follows nature's virtual surrender, the armistice of the moment. What trick of reversion to first impressions comes, and what causes it, none have yet explained, but long before the time of Falstaff men, dying, had babbled o' green fields. Grant Harlson, now, was surely dying. The physicians had warned us all, and we were all about his bedside. As for me, thank God, the tears could come as they did to the children. But there were none upon the cheeks of Jean. Her sweet face was as if of stone; whiter than that of the man in the bed.

The convulsions had ceased, but his mind was wandering and his speech was rambling. It was easy to tell of what he was thinking. He was a little boy in the woodland home with his mother again, and was telling her delightedly of what he had seen and found, and of the yellow mandrake apples he had stored in a hollow log. She should help him eat them. And then the scene would shift, and he was older, and we were together in the fields. He called to me excitedly to take the dog to the other side of the brush-heap, for the woodchuck was slipping through that way! There was the old merry ring in his voice, and I knew where he was and how there came to him, in fancy, the sweet perfumes of the fields, and how his eyes, which were opened wide but saw us not, were blessed with all the greenness and the glory of the summer of long ago. Then his manner changed, and the word "Jean" came softly to his lips, and again I knew they were camping out together, and he was teaching to his wife the pleasant mysteries of the forest, and all woodcraft. There was love in his tones and in his features. The breast of the woman holding his hand heaved, and the pallor on her face grew more.

There was another struggle for breath, then a desperate one, and with its end came consciousness. Grant smiled and spoke faintly:

"It must he pretty near the end. I am very tired. Jean, darling, get closer to me. Kiss me."

She leaned over and kissed him passionately. He smiled again, then feebly took one of her little hands in each of his and lifted them to his face and kissed them; then held them down upon his eyes. There was a single heave of his great chest, and he was dead.

And the woman who fell to the floor was, apparently, as lifeless as the silent figure on the bed.

She was not dead. We carried her to her own room—hers and his, with the dressing-rooms attached—and she woke at last to a consciousness of her world bereft of one human being who had been to her nearly all there was. She was not as we had imagined she would be when she recovered. She was not hysterical, nor did she weep. She was singularly quiet. But that set, thoughtful look had never left her face. She seemed some other person. I talked to her of what was to be done. What a task that was, for I could scarcely utter words myself. She suddenly brightened when I spoke of the crematory and what Grant's wishes were.

"It must be as he wished," she said—"as he wished, in each small detail." Then she said no more, and all the rest was left to me.

She was quiet and grave at the funeral of her husband and my friend. She shed no tears; she uttered not a word. She listened quietly while I told her how I had arranged to carry out all his wishes about himself, or, rather, about his tenement. She did not accompany me. There came with me on that journey only the Ape, who was red of eye and vainly trying to conceal it all. How the youth was suffering!

I came to the home one day with an urn of bronze. There were only ashes in it, clean and white. Jean looked at them and asked me to go away. The urn was put, at her request, in her own apartments. It was sealed and stood upon a mantel of the room in which she slept. I do not believe she thought much of the ashes as representing the man who had gone away from her. She may have thought of them as precious, just as she did of a pair of gloves she had mended for him just before his illness, and which she kept always with her, but I believe that of the ashes, as of the gloves, she thought only of what her love had used in life and left behind. That was the total of it. It was the heart, the soul, the knowing of her that was gone.

How the Ape, how all the children cared for the small mother now! Never was woman more watched, and guarded and waited upon. She recognized it all, too, but said very little. Her soft hands would stroke the forehead of her first-born, or of her eldest daughter, or of any of the offspring of the two, the product of their love, and she would tell them that she was glad they were so good, but, gentle and thoughtful as she was, there was something lacking. She seemed in another world.

I talked to Jean. I tried to be a philosopher, to tell her of the children and of the broadness of life, and that she must drift into it again. She was kind and courteous as of old with me, but it was somehow not the same. And she grew weaker day by day, and would lie for hours, the children told me, in the room where Grant and she had been together all those years.

How can I tell of it! Jean, who had become my sister, who was part of Grant Harlson, drifted away before my eyes! It was harder, almost, for us than the fierce fight with death of the one who had been the mainstay of us all. Somehow, we knew she was going to leave us, and the grief of the children was something terrible. She listened to them and was kind to them, wildly affectionate at times, but she lapsed ever into the same strange apathy. We had the best physicians again. I talked with one of them. "What shall we do?" I asked.

He was a great man, a successful one, a man above the rut, and he answered simply:

"I cannot advise. The mind governs the body beyond us sometimes,—very often, I imagine. She does not want to live. That is all I can say. Drugs are not in the treatment of the case."

She grew thinner and thinner and more listless, and finally, one day, the Ape came to my office and said his mother had not left her room for a day or two. I went with him to the home which had been almost as my own.

I was admitted to Jean's room as a matter of course. I was one of the household. She was lying upon a great sofa, one Grant had liked. I asked her to tell me what to do.

She was calm and quiet as she answered. "There is nothing," she said. Then suddenly she seemed to be the Jean I had known one time. She raised herself up: "Alf, you were very close to us. Cannot you see?" She began another sentence, then stopped suddenly, and only smiled at me and said I was the nest friend ever two people had in all this world. She still spoke of two people. As if Grant were with us still!

How can one tell of the fading of a lily. No one ever told of it all. One day they sent for me, and when I came the sweetest woman lay upon her couch! She had talked with her children much that day, and told them many things—of plannings for their futures. She had, for the first time, told them of all their father had designed, or hoped, or guessed for each of them. And they had been very happy, and thought she would recover. And she had slept peacefully, and had not awakened.

I looked upon her face, and the smile upon it was something wonderful. It was one of the things which makes me believe there is some great story to it. There was none with her but her youngest daughter when she left us, and the child could not tell when worlds were touching. But upon that face was the expression which tells of what is all beyond. I do believe that, even before she quitted her earthly frame, dear Jean knew that she had found Grant again.

Why have I told this story of two people, which is no story at all, but only what I know of what has happened to those closest to me? There is no more of it. It ends with the deaths of them, and yet I do not know that it is sad. They lived and loved and died. They had more happiness than comes to one-half humanity. Their life was of the gold of what is the inner life of the better ones of this great new nation of a new continent. They lived and loved, and their children live, and will be good men and women.

* * * * * *

I cannot understand the problem. No learning clears it. I only know that there were Grant and I, that there were bees and perfumes, and wild, boyish delights, and the older life, and the feverish life of a city, and the rare, great love I looked upon.

THE END