If a female creature at the Mills broke the great social law, there was no leaning towards the weakness of pity for her, Janway's was not sufficiently developed, mentally, to deal with gradations or analysis of causes and impelling powers. The girl who brought forth a child without the pale of orthodox marriage was an outcast and a disgraced creature, and nobody flinched from pronouncing her both.

"It's disgustin', that's what I call it," it was the custom for respectable wives and mothers to say. "It's disgustin'! A nice thing she's done for herself. I h'ain't no patience with girls like her, with no fear o' God or religion in them an' no modesty and decency. She deserves whatever comes to her!"

Usually every tragedy befell her which could befall a woman. If her child lived, it lived the life of wretchedness and was an outcast also. The outcome of its existence was determined by the order of woman its mother chanced to be. If the maternal instinct was warm and strong within her and she loved it, there were a few chances that it might fight through its early years of struggle and expand into a human being who counted as one at least among the world's millions. Usually the mother died in the gutter or the hospital, but there had been women who survived, and when they did so it was often because they made a battle for their children. Sometimes it was because they were made of the material which is not easily beaten, and then they learned as the years went by that the human soul and will may be even stronger than that which may seem at the outset overwhelming fate.

When the girl Susan Chapman fell into misfortune and disgrace, her path was not made easy for her. There were a few months when the young mill hand who brought disaster upon her, made love to her, and hung about her small home, sometimes leaning upon the rickety gate to talk and laugh with her, sometimes loitering with her in the streets or taking her to cheap picnics or on rather rowdy excursions. She wore the excited and highly pleased air seen in young women of her class when the masculine creature is paying court. She spent her wages in personal decoration, she bought cheap feathers and artificial flowers and remnants on "bargain days," and decked herself with them. Her cheap, good looks reached their highest point because she felt the glow of a promotive triumph and her spirits were exhilarated. She was nearer happiness than she had ever been before. The other girls, who were mill hands like herself, were full of the usual rather envious jokes about her possible marriage. To be married was to achieve a desirable distinction and to work at home instead of at the Mills. The young man was not an absolute villain, he was merely an ignorant, foolish young animal. At first he had had inchoate beliefs in a domestic future with the girl. But the time came when equally inchoate ideas of his own manhood led him to grow cool. The New England atmosphere which had not influenced him in all points, influenced him in the matter of feeling that the woman a man married must have kept herself respectable. The fact that he himself had caused her fall from the plane of decency was of comparatively small moment.

A man who married a woman who had not managed to keep straight, put himself into a sort of ridiculous position. He lost masculine distinction. This one ceased to lean on the gate and talk at night, and went to fewer picnics. He was in less high spirits, and so was the girl. She often looked pale and as if she had been crying. Then Jack Williams gave up his place at the Mill and left the village. He did not tell his sweetheart. The morning after he left, Susan came to her work and found the girls about her wearing a mysterious and interested air.

"What are you whispering about?" she asked. "What's the secret?"

"'Tain't no secret," was the answer. "Most everybody's heard it, and I guess it ain't no secret to you. I guess he told you when he made up his mind to go."

"Who?" she asked.

"Jack Williams. He's gone out to Chicago to work somewhere there. He kept it pretty dark from us, but when he went off on the late train last night, Joe Evans saw him, and he said he'd had the offer of a first-rate job and was going to it. How you stare, Sue! Your eyes look as if they'd pop out o' yer head."

She was staring and her skin had turned blue-white. She broke into a short hysteric laugh and fell down. Then she was very sick and fainted and had to be taken home trembling so that she could scarcely crawl as she walked, with great tears dropping down her cold face. Janway's Mills knew well enough after this that Jack Williams had deserted her, and had no hesitation in suggesting a reason for his defection.

The months which followed were filled with the torments of a squalid Inferno. Girls who had regarded her with envy, began to refuse to speak to her or to be seen in her company. Jack Williams's companions were either impudent or disdainful, the married women stared at her and commented on her as she passed; there were no more picnics or excursions for her; her feathers became draggled and hung broken in her hat. She had no relatives in the village, having come from a country place. She was thankful that she had not a family of aunts on the spot, because she knew they would have despised her and talked her over more than the rest. She lived in a bare little room which she rented from a poor couple, and she used to sit alone in it, huddled up in a heap by the window, crying for hours in the evening as she watched the other girls go by laughing and joking with their sweethearts.

One night when there was a sociable in the little frame Methodist church opposite, and she saw it lighted up and the people going in dressed in their best clothes and excited at meeting each other, the girls giggling at the sight of their favourite young men—just as she had giggled six months before—her slow tears began to drip faster and the sobs came one upon another until she was choked by them and she began to make a noise. She sobbed and cried more convulsively, until she began to scream and went into something like hysterics. She dropped down on her face and rolled over and over, clutching at her breast and her sides and throwing out her arms. The people of the house had gone to the sociable and she was alone, so no one heard or came near her. She shrieked and sobbed and rolled over and over, clutching at her flesh, trying to gasp out words that choked her.

"O, Lord!" she gasped, wild with the insensate agony of a poor, hysteria torn, untaught, uncontrolled thing, "I don't know what I've done! I don't! 'Tain't fair! I didn't go to! I can't bear it! He h'ain't got nothin' to bear, he ain't! O, Lord God, look down on me!"

She was the poor, helpless outcome of the commonest phase of life, but her garret saw a ghastly tragedy as she choked through her hysterics. Who is to blame for and who to prevent such tragedies, let deep thinkers strive to tell.

The day after this was the one on which little Margery Latimer came into her life. It was in the early spring, just before the child had gone to Boston to begin her art lessons. She had come to Janway's Mills to see a poor woman who had worked for her mother. The woman lived in the house in which Susan had her bare room. She began to talk about the girl half fretfully, half contemptuously.

"She's the one Jack Williams got into trouble and then left to get out of it by herself as well as she could," she said. "She might ha' known it. Gals is fools. She can't work at the Mills any more, an' last night when we was all at the Sosherble, she seems to've had a spasm o' some kind; she can't get out o' bed this mornin' and lies there lookin' like death an' moanin'. I can't 'tend to her, I've got work o' my own to do. Lansy! how she was moanin' when I passed her door! Seemed like she'd kill herself!"

"Oh, poor thing!" cried Margery; "let me go up to her."

She was a sensitive creature, and the colour had ebbed out of her pretty face.

"Lor, no!" the woman cried; "she ain't the kind o' gal you'd oughter be doing things for, she was allus right down common, an' she's sunk down 'bout as low as a gal can."

But Margery went up to the room where the moaning was going on. She stood outside the door on the landing for a few moments, her heart trembling in her side before she went in. Her life had been a simple, happy, bright one up to this time. She had not seen the monster life close at hand. She had large, childish eyes which were the colour of harebells and exquisitely sympathetic and sweet. There were tears in them when she gently opened the door and stood timidly on the threshold.

"Let me, please let me come in," she said. "Don't say I mayn't."

The moaning and low choking sobs went on, and in a very few moments they so wrought upon her, that she pushed the door farther open and entered the room. What she saw was a barren, common little place, and on the bed a girl lying utterly prostrated by an hysteric tempest which had lasted hours. Her face was white and swollen and covered with red marks, as if she had clutched and torn it with her fingers, her dress was torn open at the bosom, and her hair tumbled, torn, and loose about the pillow; there was a discoloured place upon her forehead which was settling into a bruise. Her eyes were puffed with crying until they were almost closed. Her breast rose with short, exhausted, but still convulsive sobs. Margery felt as if she was drawn into a vortex of agony. She could not resist it. She went to the bed, stood still a second, trembling, and then sank upon her knees and put her face down upon the wretched hand nearest and kissed it with piteous impulsive sympathy.

"Oh! don't cry like that," she said, crying herself. "Oh, don't! Oh, don't! I'm so sorry for you—I'm so sorry for you."

She did not know the girl at all, she had never even heard of her before, but she kissed her hand and cried over it and fondled it against her breast. She was one of those human things created by Nature to suffer with others, and for them, and through them.

She did not know how long it was before the girl became sufficiently, articulate to speak to her. She herself was scarcely articulate for some time. She could only try to find words to meet a need so far beyond her ken. She had never come in contact with a woman in this strait before.

But at last Susan was lying in the bed instead of on its tossed and tumbled outside. Margery had done the nearest, simple things for her. She had helped her to bathe her face with cold water, to undress and put on her nightgown; she had prepared her narrow bed for her decently, and smoothed and wound up her hair. Then she had gone downstairs, got her a cup of tea, and sat by her and made her drink it. Then she set the room in order and opened the window to air it.

"There is a bruise on your forehead," she had said, as she was arranging the torn hair. "You must have struck it against something when you were ill last night."

"I struck it against the wall," Susan answered, in a monotonous voice. "I did it on purpose. I banged my head against the wall until I fell down and was sick."

Margery's face quivered again.

"Don't think about it," she said. "You ought not to have been alone. Some—some friend ought to have been with you."

"I haven't got any friends," Susan answered. "I don't know why you came up to me. I don't guess you know what's the matter with me."

"Yes, I do," said Margery. "You are in great trouble."

"It's the worst kind o' trouble a woman can get into," said Susan, the muscles of her face beginning to be drawn again. "I don't see why—why Jack Williams can skip off to Chicago to a new, big job that's a stroke o' luck—an' me left lie here to bear everything—an' be picked at, an' made fun of, an' druv mad with the way I'm kicked in the gutter. I don't see no right in it. There ain't no right in it; I don't believe there's no God anyhow; I won't never believe it again. No one can't make me. If I've done what gives folks a right to cast me off, so's Jack Williams."

"You haven't pretended to love a person and then run away and left them to—to suffer," said little Margery, on the verge of sobs again.

"No, I haven't!" said the girl, her tears beginning to stream anew. "I'm not your kind. I'm not educated. I'm only a common mill hand, but I did love Jack Williams all I knew how. He had such a nice way with him—kind of affectionate, an'—an' he was real good-lookin' too when he was fixed up. If I'd been married to him, no one would have said nothin', an'—an' 'tain't nothin' but a minister readin' somethin' anyhow—marryin' ain't."



CHAPTER XVI

This was before Margery went to Boston to try to develop her gift for making pretty sketches. Her father and mother and her brother strained every nerve to earn and save the money to cover her expenses. She went away full of innocent, joyous hope in the month of May. She boarded in a plain, quiet house, and had two rooms. One was her workroom and studio. She worked under a good-natured artist, who thought her a rather gifted little creature and used to take her to look at any pictures that were on exhibition. Taking into consideration her youth and limited advantages, she made such progress as led him to say that she had a future before her.

She had never deserted Sue Chapman after that first morning in which she had gone to her rescue. Janway's Mills was bewildered when it found that the Reverend Lucien Latimer's sister went to see Jack Williams' deserted sweetheart, and did not disdain to befriend her in her disgrace. The church-going element, with the Nottingham lace curtains in its parlour windows, would have been shocked, but that it was admitted that "the Latimers has always been a well-thought-of family, an' all of 'em is members in good standin'. They're greatly respected in Willowfield; even the old fam'lies speak to 'em when they meet 'em in the street or at Church.

"Not that I'd be willin' for my Elma Ann to 'sociate with a girl that's gone wrong. Maybe it's sorter different with a minister's sister. Ministers' families has to 'sociate out o' charity an' religion; go to pray with 'em, an' that, an' read the Scripture to make 'em sense their sinfulness an' the danger they're in."

But Margery did not pray with Susan Chapman, or read the Bible to her. The girl held obstinately to her statement of unbelief in a God, and Margery did not feel that her mood was one to which reading the Gospel would appeal. If she could have explained to her the justice of the difference between Jack Williams' lot and her own, she felt they might have advanced perhaps, but she could not. She used to go to see her and try to alleviate her physical discomfort and miserable poverty. She saved her from hunger and cold when she could no longer work at all, and she taught her to feel that she was not utterly without a friend.

"What I'd have done without you, God knows—or what ought to be God," Sue said. "He didn't care, but you did. If there is one, He's got a lot to learn from some of the people He's made Himself. 'After His own image created He them'—that's what the Bible says; but I don't believe it. If He was as good and kind-hearted as the best of us, He wouldn't sit upon His throne with angels singing round an' playin' on harps, an' Him too much interested to see how everything sufferin' down below. What did He make us for, if He couldn't look after us? I wouldn't make a thing I wouldn't do my best by—an' I ain't nothin' but a factory girl. This—this poor thing that's goin' to be born an' hain't no right to, I'll do my level best by it—I will. It sha'n't suffer, if I can help it"—her lips jerking.

Sometimes Margery would talk to her a little about Jack Williams—or, rather, she would listen while Susan talked. Then Susan would cry, large, slow-rolling tears slipping down her cheeks.

"I don't know how—how it happened like this," she would say. "It seems like a kind o' awful dream. I don't know nothin'. He was common—just like I am—an' he didn't know much; but it didn't seem like he was a bad feller—an' I do b'lieve he liked me. Seemed like he did, anyways. They say he's got a splendid job in Chicago. He won't never know nothin' about what happens."

Margery did not leave her unprovided for when she went to Boston. It cost very little to keep her for a few months in her small room. The people of the house promised to be decently kind to her. Margery had only been away from home two weeks when the child was born. The hysterical paroxysms and violent outbreaks of grief its mother had passed through, her convulsive writhings and clutchings and beating of her head against the walls had distorted and exhausted the little creature. The women who were with her said its body looked as if it were bruised in spots all over, and there was a purple mark on its temple. It breathed a few times and died.

"Good thing, too!" said the women. "There's too many in the world that's got a right here. It'd hev' had to go to ruin."

"Good thing for it," said Susan, weakly but sullenly, from her bed; "but if it's God as makes 'em, how did He come to go to the trouble of making this one an' sendin' it out, if it hadn't no right to come? He does make 'em all, doesn't he? You wouldn't darst to say He didn't—you, Mrs. Hopp, that's a church member!" And her white face actually drew itself into a ghastly, dreary grin. "Lawsy! He's kept pretty busy!"

When she was able to stand on her feet she went back to the mill. She was a good worker, and hands were needed. The girls and women fought shy of her, and she had no chance of enjoying any young pleasures or comforts, even if she had not been too much broken on the rack of the misery of the last year to have energy to desire them. No young man wanted to be seen talking to her, no young woman cared to walk with her in the streets. She always went home to her room alone, and sat alone, and thought of what had happened to her, trying to explain to herself how it had happened and why it had turned out that she was worse than any other girl. She had never felt like a bad girl. No one had ever called her one before this last year.

Three months after the child was born and died, Margery came back to Willowfield to spend a week at home. She came to see Susan, and they sat together in the tragic little bare room and talked. Though the girl had been so delicately pretty before she left home, Susan saw that she had become much prettier. She was dressed in light, softly tinted summer stuffs, and there was something about her which was curiously flower-like. Her long-lashed, harebell blue eyes seemed to have widened and grown lovelier in their innocent look. A more subtle mind than Susan Chapman's might have said that she seemed to be looking farther into Life's spaces, and that she was trembling upon the verge of something unknown and beautiful.

She talked about Boston and the happiness of her life there, and of her work and her guileless girlish hopes and ambitions.

"I am doing my very best," she said, a spot of pink flickering on her cheek; "I work as hard as I can, but you see I am so ignorant. I could not have learned anything about art in Willowfield. But people are so good to me—people who know a great deal. There is one gentleman who comes sometimes to see Mr. Barnard at the studio. He is so wonderful, it seems to me. He has travelled, and knows all about the great galleries and the pictures in them. He talks so beautifully that everyone listens when he comes in. Nobody can bear to go on with work for fear of missing something. You would think he would not notice a plain little Willowfield girl, but he has been lovely to me, Susan. He has even looked at my work and criticised it for me, and talked to me. He nearly always talks to me a little when he comes in, and once I met him in the Gardens, and he stopped and talked there, and walked about looking at the flowers with me. They had been planting out the spring things, and it was like being in fairyland to walk about among them and hear the things he said about pictures. It taught me so much."

She referred to this friend two or three times, and once mentioned his name, but Susan forgot it. She was such a beautiful, happy little thing, and seemed so exquisite an expression of spring-like, radiant youth and its innocent joy in living that the desolate and stranded creature she had befriended could think of nothing but her own awkward worship and the fascination of the flower-like charm. She used to sit and stare at her.

"Seems so queer to see anyone as happy an' pretty as you," she broke out once. "Oh, Lawsy, I hope nothing won't ever come to spoil it. It hadn't ought to be spoiled."

A month or so later Margery paid a visit to her home again. She stayed a longer time, but Susan only saw her once. She had come home from Boston with a cold and had been put to bed for a day or two.

One morning Susan was in Willowfield and met her walking in a quiet street. She was walking slowly and looking down as she went, as if some thought was abstracting her. When Susan stopped before her, she looked up with a start. It was a start which revealed that she had been brought back suddenly from a distance, as it were a great distance.

"Oh, Susan!" she said. "Oh, Susan!"

She held out her hand in her pretty, affectionate way, but she was actually a little out of breath.

"I'm sorry I came on you so sudden," Susan said, "I startled you."

"Yes," she answered, "I was—I was thinking of things that seem so far off. When I'm in Willowfield it seems as if—as if they can't be true. Does anything ever seem like that to you, Susan?"

"Yes," said Susan. One of her hopeless looks leaped into her eyes. She did not say what the things were, but she stared at Margery in a helpless, vacant way for a moment.

"Are you well, Susan, and have you got work?" asked Margery. "I am coming to see you to-morrow."

They spoke of common things for a few minutes, and then went their separate ways.

Why it was that when she paid the promised visit the next day and they sat together in their old way and talked, Susan felt a kind of misery creeping slowly upon her, she could not in the least have explained. She was not sufficiently developed mentally to have been capable of saying to herself that there was a difference between this visit and the last, between this Margery and the one who had sat with her before. Her dull thoughts were too slow to travel to a point so definite in so short a length of time as one afternoon afforded.

"Your cold was a pretty bad one, wasn't it?" she asked, vaguely, once.

"Yes," was the answer. "It made me feel weak. But it has gone now. I am quite well again."

After that Susan saw her but once again. As time went on she heard a vague rumour that the Latimers were anxious about Margery's health. Just at that time the mill hands gossiped a good deal about Willowfield, because the Reverend John Baird was said to be going to Europe. That led to talk on the subject of other Willowfield people, and the Latimers among them. In the rare, brief letters Margery wrote to her protegee, she did not say she was ill. Once she said her brother Lucien had quite suddenly come to Boston to see how she was, because her mother imagined she must have taken cold.

She had been in Boston about a year then. One afternoon Susan was in her room, standing by her bed forlornly, and, in a vacant, reasonless mood, turning over the few coarse little garments she had been able to prepare for her child—a few common little shirts and nightgowns and gray flannels—no more. She heard someone at the door. The handle turned and the door opened as if the person who came in had forgotten the ceremony of knocking. Susan laid down on the bed the ugly little night-dress she had been looking at; it lay there stiff with its coarseness, its short arms stretched out. She turned about and faced Margery Latimer, who had crossed the threshold and stood before her.

Susan uttered a low, frightened cry before she could speak a word.

The girl looked like a ghost. It was a ghost Susan thought of this time, and not a flower. The pure little face was white and drawn, the features were sharpened, the harebell-coloured eyes had almost a look of wildness; it was as if they had been looking at something frightening for a long time, until they could not lose the habit of expressing fear.

"Susan," she said, in a strange, uncertain voice, "you didn't expect to see me."

Susan ran to her.

"No, no," she said, "I didn't know you was here. I thought you was in Boston. What's the matter? Oh, Lawsy, Margery, what's happened to make you look like this?"

"Nobody knows," answered Margery. "They say it's the cold. They are frightened about me. I'm come to say good-bye to you, Susan."

She sank into a chair and sat there, panting a little.

"Lucien's going to take me to Europe," she said, her voice all at once seeming to sound monotonous, as if she was reciting a lesson mechanically. "I always wanted to go there—to visit the picture galleries and study. They think the climate will be good for me. I've been coughing in the mornings—and I can't eat."

"Do they think you might be going into—a consumption?" Susan faltered.

"Mother's frightened," said Margery. "She and the doctor don't know what to think. Lucien's going to take me to Europe. It's expensive, but—but he has managed to get the money. He sold a little farm he owned."

"He's a good brother," said Susan.

Suddenly Margery began to cry as if she could not help it.

"Oh," she exclaimed. "No one knows what a good brother he is—nobody but myself. He is willing to give up everything to—to save me—and to save poor mother from awful trouble. Sometimes I think he is something like Christ—even like Christ! He is willing to suffer for other people—for their pain—and weakness—and sin."

It was so evident that the change which had taken place in her was a woeful one. Her bright loveliness was gone—her simple, lovable happiness. Her nerves seemed all unstrung. But it was the piteous, strained look in her childlike eyes which stirred poor Susan's breast to tumult.

"Margery," she said, almost trembling, "if—if—if you was to go in a consumption and die—you're not like me—you needn't be afraid."

The next moment she was sorry she had said the crude thing. Margery burst into a passion of weeping. Susan flew to her and caught her in her arms, kneeling down by her.

"I oughtn't to have said it," she cried. "You're too ill to be made to think of such things. I was a fool not to see—Margery, Margery, don't!"

But Margery was too weak to be able to control her sobbing.

"They say that—that God forgives people," she wept. "I've prayed and prayed to be forgiven for—for my sins. I've never meant to be wicked. I don't know—I don't know how——"

"Hush!" said Susan, soothing and patting her trembling shoulder. "Hush, hush! If there is a God, Margery, He's a heap sight better than we give Him credit for. He don't make people a' purpose, so they can't help things somehow—an' don't know—an' then send 'em to burning hell for bein' the way He made 'em. We wouldn't do it, an' He won't. You hain't no reason to be afraid of dyin'."

Margery stayed with her about half an hour. There was a curious element in their conversation. They spoke as if their interview was a final one. Neither of them actually expressed the thought in words, but a listener would have felt vaguely that they never expected to meet each other again on earth. They made no references to the future; it was as if no future could be counted upon. Afterwards, when she was alone, Susan realised that she had never once said "when you come back from Europe."

As she was leaving the room, Margery passed the bed on which the small, coarse garments lay. The little nightgown, with its short sleeves stiffly outstretched, seemed to arrest her attention specially. She caught at Susan's dress as if she was unaware that she made the movement or of the sharp shudder which followed it.

"Those—are its things, aren't they, Susan?" she said.

"Yes," Susan answered, her sullen look of pain coming back to her face.

"I—don't know—how people bear it!" exclaimed Margery. It was an exclamation, and her hand went quickly up to her mouth almost as if to press it back.

"They don't bear it," said Susan, stonily. "They have to go through it—that's all. If you was standin' on the gallows with the rope round your neck and the trap-door under your feet, you wouldn't be bearin' it, but the trap-door would drop all the same, an' down you'd plunge—into the blackness."

It was on this morning, on her way through the streets, that Margery dropped in a dead faint upon the pavement, and Miss Amory Starkweather, passing in her carriage, picked her up and carried her home.

Susan Chapman never saw her again. Some months afterwards came the rumour that she had died of consumption in Italy.



CHAPTER XVII

When, in accordance with Baird's instructions, Susan Chapman took the note to Miss Starkweather, she walked through the tree-shaded streets, feeling as if she had suddenly found herself in a foreign country. To the inhabitants of Janway's Mills, certain parts of Willowfield stood for wealth, luxury, and decorous splendour. The Mills, which lived within itself, was easily impressed. Its—occasionally resentful—respect for Willowfield was enormous. It did not behold it as a simple provincial town, whose business establishments were primitive, and whose frame houses, even when surrounded by square gardens with flower-beds adorning them, were merely comfortable middle-class abodes of domesticity. It was awed by the Willowfield Times, it revered the button factory, and bitterly envied the carriages driven and the occasional festivities held by the families of the representatives of these monopolies. The carriages were sober and middle-aged, and so were the parties, but to Janway's Mills they illustrated wealth and gaiety. People drove about in the vehicles and wore fine clothes and ate cakes and ice-cream at the parties—neither of which things had ever been possible or ever would become possible to Janway's.

And Susan, who had been a Pariah and an outcast at the Mills, was walking through the best streets, carrying a note from the popular minister to the rich Miss Starkweather, who had an entire square white frame house and garden, which were her own property.

The girl felt a little sullen and a little frightened. She did not know what would happen to her; she did not know how she would be expected to carry herself in a house so representative of wealth and accustomedness to the good things of life. Perhaps if she had not been desperate, and also, if she had not known that Miss Starkweather had been fond of Margery, she would have evaded going to her.

"I wonder what she'll say to me," she thought. "They say she's queer."

She still felt uncertain and resentful when she stood upon the threshold and rang the bell. She presented a stolid countenance to the maid servant who opened the door and received her message. When she was at last taken to Miss Amory, she went with an unresponding bearing, and, being led into a cheerful room where the old woman sat, stood before her waiting, as if she had really nothing to do with the situation.

Miss Amory looked rather like some alert old hawk, less predatory by instinct than those of his species usually are.

"You are Susan Chapman, and come from Mr. Baird," she said.

Susan nodded.

"He says he met you at Mr. Latimer's."

"Yes. I went there to ask something. I couldn't bear not to know—no more than I did."

"About——?" asked Miss Amory.

"About Margery," her voice lowering unconsciously.

"How much did you know?" Miss Amory asked again.

"Nothin'," rather sullenly, "but that she was ill—an' went away an' died."

"In Italy, they say," put in Miss Amory—"lying on a sofa before an open window—on a lovely day, when the sun was setting."

Susan Chapman started a little, and her face changed. The unresponsiveness melted away. There was something like a glow of relief in her look. She became human and lost sight of Miss Amory's supposed grandeur.

"Was it like that?" she exclaimed. "Was it? I'm thankful to you for telling me. Somehow I couldn't ask properly when I was face to face with her brother. You can't talk to him. I never knew where—or how—it was. I wanted to find out if—if it was all right with her. I wanted to know she hadn't suffered."

"So did I," Miss Amory answered. "And that was what they told me."

She passed her withered hand across her face.

"I was fond of her," she said.

"I'd reason to be," returned Susan. "She was only a delicate little young thing—but she came an' stayed by me when I was in hell an' no one else would give me a drop of water to cool my tongue."

"I know something about that," said Miss Amory; "I have heard it talked of. Where's your child?"

Susan did not redden, but the hard look came back to her face for a moment.

"It didn't live but a few minutes," she answered.

"What are you doing for your living?"

A faint red showed itself on the girl's haggard cheeks, and she stared at her with indifferent blankness.

"I worked in the mill till my health broke down for a spell, an' I had to give up. I'm better now, but I've not got a cent to live on, an' my place was filled up right away."

"Where's the man?" Miss Amory demanded.

"I don't know. I've never heard a word of him since he slid off to Chicago."

"Humph!" said Miss Amory.

For a moment or so she sat silent, thinking. She held her chin in her hand and pinched it. Presently she looked up.

"Could you come and live with me for a month?" she enquired. "I believe we might try the experiment. I daresay you would rub me when I want rubbing, and go errands and help me up and down stairs and carry things for me. It just happens that my old Jane has been obliged to leave me because she's beginning to be as rheumatic as I am myself, and her daughter offers her a good home. Would you like to try? I don't promise to do more than make the experiment."

The girl flushed hot this time, as she looked down on the floor.

"You may guess whether I'm likely to say 'yes' or not," she said. "I ain't had a crust to-day. I believe I could learn to suit you. But I never expected anything as good as this to happen to me. Thank you, ma'am. May I—when must I come?"

"Take off your bonnet and go and have your dinner, and stay now," answered Miss Amory.

When John Baird called later in the day, Miss Amory was walking in the sun in her garden and Susan was with her, supporting her stiff steps. She had been fed, her dress had been changed for a neat print, and the dragged lines of her face seemed already to have relaxed. She no longer wore the look of a creature who is hungry and does not know how long her hunger may last and how much worse it may become.

"I am much obliged to you, Miss Amory," Baird said when he joined her, and he said it almost impetuously. To-day he was in the state of mind when even vicarious good deeds are a support and a consolation. To have been a means of doing a good turn even to this stray creature was a comfort.

Miss Amory removed her hand from Susan's arm and allowed Baird to place it on his own. The girl went away in obedience to a gesture.

"She will do," said Miss Amory, "and it is a home for her. She's not stupid. If she fulfils the promise of her first day I may end by interesting myself in developing her brains. She has brains. The gray matter is there, but it has never moved much so far. It will be interesting to set it astir. But it was not that I thought of when I took her."

"You took her out of the kindness of your heart," said Baird.

"I took her for that poor, dead child's sake," returned Miss Amory.

"For——" Baird began.

"For Margery's sake," put in Miss Amory. "Margery Latimer. When Susan was in trouble the child was a tender little angel to her. Lord! what a pure little heart it was!"

"As pure as young Eve's in the Garden of Eden—as pure as young Eve's," murmured Baird.

"Just that!" said Miss Amory, rather sharply. "How do you know it?" And she turned and looked at him. "You have heard her brother say a good deal of her."

"Yes, yes," Baird answered. "She seems to have been the life of him."

"Well, well!" with emotional abruptness. "I took this girl for her sake. Her short life was not wasted if another's is built upon it. That's one of my fantastic fancies, I suppose. Stop a minute."

The old woman paused a few moments on the garden walk and turned her face upward to look at the blue height and expanse of sky. There was a shade of desperate appeal or question on her uplifted, rugged countenance.

"When the world gets too much for me," she said, "and I lose my patience with the senselessness of the tragedy of it, I get a sort of courage from looking up like this—into the height and the still, clear blueness. It sends no answer back to me—that my human brain can understand—but it makes me feel that perhaps there is no earth at all. I get out of it and away."

"I know—I know—though I am not like you," Baird said, slowly.

Miss Amory came back to earth with a curious look in her eyes.

"Yes," she answered, "I should think that perhaps you are one of those who know. But one has to have been desperate before one turns to it as a resource. It's a last one—and the unmerciful powers only know why we should feel it a resource at all. As I said, it does not answer back. And we want answers—answers."

Then they went on walking.

"That poor thing has been a woman at least," said Miss Amory. "I have been a sort of feminine automaton. I have been respectable and she has not. All good women are not respectable and all respectable women are not good. That's a truism so absolute that it is a platitude, and yet there still exist people to whom it would appear a novel statement. That poor creature has loved and had her heart broken. She has suffered the whole gamut of things. She has been a wife without a name, a mother without a child. She is full of crude tragedy. And I have found out already that she is good—good."

"What is goodness?" asked Baird.

Miss Amory gave him another of her sharp looks.

"You are drawing me out," she said. "I'm not really worth it. Goodness is quite different from respectability. Respectability is a strict keeping of the laws men have made to oblige other men to do or not to do the things they want done or left undone. The large meaning of the law is punishment. No law, no punishment; no punishment, no law. And man made both for man. If you keep man's law you will be respectable, but you may not be good. Jesus Christ was not respectable—no one will deny that. Goodness, after all, means doing all kindness to all creatures, and, above all, doing no wrong to any. That's all. Are you good?"

"No," he answered, "I am not."

"You would probably find it more difficult to be so than I should," she responded. "And I find it hard enough—without being handicapped by beauty and the pleasure-loving temperament. You were started well on the road to the devil when you were born. Your very charms and virtues were ready to turn out vices in disguise. But when such things happen——" and she shrugged her lean shoulders. "As we have no one else to dare to blame, we can only blame ourselves. In a scheme so vague every man must be his own brake."

Baird drew a sharp breath. "If one only knew that early enough," he exclaimed.

Miss Amory laughed harshly.

"Yes," she said, "part of the vagueness of the scheme—if it is a scheme—is that it takes half a lifetime to find it out. Before that, we are always either telling ourselves that we are not going to do any harm, or that we are under the guidance of a merciful Providence."

"That we are not going to do any harm," Baird repeated, "that we are not going to do any harm. And suddenly it's done."

"And can't be undone," Miss Amory added. "That's it."

The girl, Susan Chapman, was watching them from a window as they walked and talked. She bit her lips anxiously as she stood behind the curtain. She was trying to imagine what they might be saying to each other. Suppose it was something which told against her. And why should it not be so? What good could be said? Janway's Mills had borne in upon her the complete sense of her outcast state. While professing a republican independence of New England spirit, the place figuratively touched its forehead to the earth before Miss Starkweather. She lived on an income inherited from people who had owned mills instead of working them; who employed—and discharged—hands. She would have been regarded as an authority on any subject, social or moral. And yet it was she who had spoken the first lenient word to a transgressor of the unpardonable type. Susan had been dumfounded at first, and then she had begun to be afraid that the leniency arose from some mistake Miss Amory would presently discover.

"Perhaps he's heard and he's telling her now," she said, breathlessly, as she looked into the garden. "Maybe she'll come in and order me out." She looked down at her clean dress, and a sob rose in her throat at the realisation of the mere physical comfort she had felt during the last hour or two—the comfort of being fed and clothed and enclosed within four walls. If she was to be cast back into outer darkness again it would be better to know at once.

When Baird had gone away and Miss Amory was sitting by her window, Susan appeared before her again with an ashen complexion and a set look. She stood a moment, hesitating, her hands clasping her elbows behind her back.

"You want to say something to me?" said Miss Amory.

"Yes," the girl answered. "Yes, I do—an' I don't know how. Are you sure, ma'am, are you sure you know quite how bad I have been?"

"No," said Miss Amory; "sit down and tell me, Susan."

She said it with an impartiality so serenely free from condemnation that Susan's obedient sitting down was almost entirely the result of not being able to stand up. She, so to speak, fell into a chair and leaned forward, covering her face with her hands.

"I don't believe you know," she whispered.

"By experience I know next to nothing," Miss Amory answered, "but my imagination and my reason tell me a great deal. You were not married and you had a child. You lost your health and your work——"

"I would have worked," said the girl from behind her hands, sobbingly, but without tears. "Oh, I would have worked till I dropped—I did work till I dropped. I kept fainting—Oh! I would have been glad and thankful and grateful——"

"Yes," said Miss Amory, "life got worse and worse—they all treated you as if you were a dog. Those common virtuous people are like the torturers of the Inquisition. You were hungry and cold—cold and hungry——"

"You don't know what it's like," Susan moaned. "You don't know. When you get sick and hollow and cramped, and stagger about in your bare room—and call out to yourself to ask what made you and where is it. And the wind's like ice—and you huddle in a heap——"

"And there are lights in the streets," said Miss Amory, "and it seems as if there must be something there to be given to you by somebody—somebody. And you go out."

Susan got up, panting, and stared at her.

"You do know," she cried, almost with passion. "Somehow you've found out what it's like. I wanted you to know. I don't want you—not to understand and then of a sudden to send me away. I'm so afraid of you sending me away."

"I shall not send you away for anything you have done in the past," said Miss Amory.

"I don't know what I should have done in the future, if you hadn't taken me in," Susan said. "Perhaps I should have thrown myself under a train. But, oh!" with starting dampness in her skin, which she wiped off with a sick gesture, "I did hate to let myself think of it. It wasn't the being killed—that's nothing—but feeling yourself crushed and torn and twisted—I used to stand and shake all over thinking of it. And I couldn't have gone on. I hated myself—I hated everything—most of all I hated the Thing that made me. What right had it? I hadn't done nothing to it before I was born. Seemed like it had made me just for the fun of pushing me under them wheels and seeing them tear and grind me. Oh! how I hated it!"

"So have I," said Miss Amory, her steady eyes looking more like a hawk's than ever.

Susan stared more than before. "I suppose I ought to have hated Jack Williams," she went on, her throat evidently filling, "but I never did. I loved him. Seemed like I was just his wife, that it did. I believe it always will. That's the way girls get into trouble. Some man that's got an affectionate way makes 'em believe they're as good as married. An' then they find out it's all a lie."

"Perhaps some day you may see Jack Williams again," said Miss Amory.

"He wouldn't look at me," answered Susan.

"Perhaps you wouldn't look at him," Miss Amory remarked, with speculative slowness.

"Yes, I would," said Susan, "yes I would. I couldn't trust him same as I did before—'cause he's proved he ain't to be trusted. But if he wanted me to marry him I couldn't hold out, Miss Starkweather."

"Couldn't you?" Miss Amory said, still speculative. "No—perhaps you couldn't."

The girl wiped her eyes and added, slowly, almost as if she was thinking aloud:

"I'm not one of the strong ones—I'm not one of the strong ones—no more than little Margery was."

She said the last words with a kind of unconscious consciousness. While she uttered them her mind had evidently turned back to other times—not her own, but little Margery's.

Miss Amory drew a deep breath. She took up her knitting. She asked a question.

"You knew her very well—Margery?"

Susan drew her chair closer and looked in the old face with uncertain eyes.

"Miss Starkweather," she said, "do you think that a girl's being—like me—would make her evil-minded? Would it make her suspicion things, and be afraid of them—when there wasn't nothin'? I should think that it would," quite wistfully.

"It might," answered Miss Amory, her knitting-needles flying; "but for God's sake don't call yourself evil-minded. You'd be evil-minded if you were glad to suspect—not if you were sorry and afraid."

"Glad!" with a groan. "Oh, Lord, I guess not. But I might be all wrong all the same, mightn't I?"

"Yes, you might."

"I loved her—oh, Lord, I did love her! I'd reason to," the girl went on, and her manner had the effect of frightened haste. "I've suffered awful sometimes—thinkin' in the night and prayin' there wasn't nothin'. She was such a delicate, innocent little thing. It would have killed her."

"What were you afraid of?"

"Oh, I don't know," Susan answered, hysterically. "I don't. I only knew she couldn't bear nothin' like—like lyin' awake nights gaspin' an' fightin' with awful fear. She couldn't—she couldn't."

"But there are girls—women, who have to bear it," said Miss Amory. "Good God, who have to!"

"Yes—yes—yes," cried Susan. She drew her hand across her brow as if suddenly it felt damp, and for a moment her eyes looked wild with a memory of some awful thing. "I told her so," she said.

Miss Amory Starkweather turned in her chair with something like a start.

"You told her so," she exclaimed.

Susan stared out of the window and her voice fell.

"I didn't go to," she answered. "It was like this. That last time she came to see me—to tell me how ill she was and how Lucien was going to take her away—I'd been lookin' at the little clothes I'd got ready for—it." The tears began to roll fast down her cheeks. "Oh, Miss Starkweather! they was lyin' on the bed—an' she saw 'em an' turned as white as a sheet."

"Ugh!" the sound broke from Miss Amory like a short, involuntary groan.

"She said she didn't know how people could bear it," Susan hurried on, "an' I said—just like you did—that they had to bear it."

She suddenly hid her face in her arms.

"You were thinking of yourself," said Miss Amory. She felt and looked a little sick.

"Yes," said Susan, "I was thinkin' of how it is when a girl's goin' to have a child an' can't get away from it—can't—can't. She's got to go through with it—an' no one can't save her. But I suppose it made her think of her death that was comin'—her death that I b'lieve she knowed she was struck for. When I'd said it she looked like some little hunted animal dogs was after—that had run till its breath was gone an' its eyes was startin' from its head. Her little chest went up an' down with pantin'. I didn't wonder when I heard after that she'd dropped in the street in a dead faint."

"Was that the day I picked her up as she lay on the pavement?" Miss Amory asked.

Susan nodded, her face still hidden.

Old Miss Starkweather put out her hand and laid it on the girl's shoulder.

"She has had time to forget," she said, rather as if she was out of breath—"forget and grow quiet. She is dust by now—peaceful dust. Let us—my good girl—let us remember that happy story of how she died."

"Yes," answered Susan, "in Italy—lying before the open window—with the sunset all rosy in the sky."

But her head rested on her folded arms upon her knee, and she sobbed a low, deep sob.



CHAPTER XVIII

Just before the breaking out of the Civil War, Delisleville had been provided with a sensation in a piece of singularly unexpected good fortune which befell one of its most prominent citizens. It was indeed good fortune, wearing somewhat the proportions of a fairy tale, and that such things could happen in Delisleville and to a citizen who possessed its entire approval was considered vaguely to the credit of the town.

One of the facts which had always been counted as an added dignity to the De Willoughbys had been their well-known possession of property in land. "Land" was always felt to be dignified, and somehow it seemed additionally so when it gained a luxuriously superfluous character by merely lying in huge, uncultivated tracts, and representing nothing but wide areas and taxes.

"Them big D'Willerbys of D'lisleville owns thousands of acres as never brings 'em a cent," Mr. Stamps had said to his friends at the Cross-roads at the time Big Tom had first appeared among them. It was Mr. Stamps who had astutely suggested that the stranger was possibly "kin" to the Delisleville family, and in his discreet pursuit of knowledge he had made divers discoveries.

"'Twarn't Jedge D'Willerby bought the land," he went on to explain, "'n' it seems like he would hev bin a fool to hev done it, bein' as 'tain't worked an' brings in nothin'. But ye never know how things may turn out. 'Twas the Jedge's gran'father, old Isham D'Willerby bought it fer a kinder joke. Some said he was blind drunk when he done it, but he warn't so drunk but what he got a cl'ar title, an' he got it mighty cheap too. Folks ses as he use ter laugh an' say he war goin' to find gold on it, but he never dug fer none—nor fer crops nuther, an' thar it lies to-day in the mountains, an' no one goin' nigh it."

In truth, Judge De Willoughby merely paid his taxes upon it from a sense of patriarchal pride.

"My ancestor bought it," he would say. "I will hand it to my sons. In England it would be an estate for an earldom, here it means merely tax-paying. Still, I shall not sell it."

Nobody, in fact, would have been inclined to buy it in those days. But there came a time when its value increased hour by hour in the public mind, until it was almost beyond computation.

A chance visitor from the outside world made an interesting discovery. On this wild tract of hill and forest was a vein of coal so valuable that, to the practical mind of the discoverer, the Judge's unconsciousness of its existence was amazing. He himself was a practical, driving, business schemer from New York. He knew the value of what he saw, and the availability of the material in consequence of a certain position in which the mines lay. Before he left Delisleville he had explained this with such a presenting of facts that the Judge had awakened to an enthusiasm as Southern as his previous indifference had been. He had no knowledge of business methods; he had practised his profession in a magnificent dilettante sort of way which had worn an imposing air and impressed his clients, and, as he was by inheritance a comparatively rich man, he had not been driven by necessity to alter his methods. The sudden prospect of becoming a multimillionaire excited him. He made Napoleonic plans, and was dignified and eloquent.

"Why should I form a company?" he said. "If I am willing to make the first ventures myself, the inevitable returns of profit will do the rest, and there will be no complications. The De Willoughby Mine will be the De Willoughby Mine alone. I prefer that it should be so."

The idea of being sole ruler in the scheme made him feel rather like a king, and he privately enjoyed the sensation. He turned into money all the property he could avail himself of; his library table was loaded with books on mining; he invested in tons of machinery, which were continually arriving from the North, or stopping on the way when it should have been arriving. He sent for engineers from various parts of the country and amazed them with the unprofessional boldness of his methods. He really indulged in a few months of dignified riot, of what he imagined to be a splendidly executive nature. The plans were completed, the machinery placed, the engineers and cohorts of workmen engaged in tremendous efforts, the Judge was beginning to reflect on the management of his future millions, when—the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter.

That was the beginning, and apparently the end. Suddenly the storm of war broke forth, and its tempest, surging through the land, swept all before it. The country was inundated with catastrophes, capitalists foundered, schemes were swamped, the armies surged to and fro. The De Willoughby land was marched and fought over; scores of hasty, shallow graves were dug in it and filled; buildings and machinery were destroyed as if a tornado had passed by. The Judge was a ruined man; his realisable property he had allowed to pass from his hands, his coal remained in the bowels of the earth, the huge income he was to have drawn from it had melted into nothingness.

Nothing could have altered the aspect of this tragedy; but there was a singular fact which added to its intensity and bitterness. In such a hot-bed of secession as was Delisleville, the fact in question was indeed not easily explainable, except upon the grounds either of a Quixotic patriotism or upon those of a general disposition to contradictoriness. A Southern man, the head of a Southern family, the Judge opposed the rebellion and openly sided with the Government. That he had been a man given to argument and contradiction, and always priding himself upon refusing to be led by the majority was not to be denied.

"He is fancying himself a Spartan hero, and looking forward to laurels and history," one of his neighbours remarked. "It is like De Willoughby after all. He would have been a Secessionist if he had lived in Boston."

"The Union General George Washington fought for and handed down to us I will protect," the Judge said loftily himself.

But there was no modifying the outburst of wonder and condemnation which overwhelmed him. To side with the Union—in an aristocratic Southern town—was to lose social caste and friends, to be held a renegade and an open, degraded traitor to home and country. At that period, to the Southerner the only country was the South—in the North reigned outer darkness. Had the Judge been a poor white, there would have been talk of tar and feathers. As a man who had been a leader among the aristocratic classes, he was ostracized. In the midst of his financial disasters he was treated as an outlaw. He had been left a widower a few years before, during the war his son De Courcy died of fever, Romaine fell in battle, and his sole surviving daughter lost her life through diphtheria contracted in a soldiers' hospital. The family had sunk into actual poverty; the shock of sorrows and disappointment broke the old man's spirit. On the day that peace was finally declared he died in his room in the old house which had once been so full of young life and laughter and spirit.

The only creature with him at the time was his grandson, young Rupert De Willoughby, who was De Courcy's son. The sun was rising, and its first beams shone in at the open window rosily. The old Judge lay rubbing his hands slowly together, perhaps because they were cold.

"Only you left, Rupert," he said, "and there were so many of us. If Tom—if Tom had not been such a failure—don't know whether he's alive—or dead. If Tom——"

His hands slowly ceased moving and his voice trailed off into silence. Ten minutes later all was over, and Rupert stood in the world entirely alone.

* * * * *

For the next two years the life the last De Willoughby lived in the old house, though distinctly unique, was not favourable to the development of youth. Having been prepared for the practice of the law, after the time-honoured De Willoughby custom, and having also for some months occupied a corner in the small, unbusiness-like, tree-shaded, brick building known as the Judge's "office," Rupert sat now at his grandfather's desk and earned a scant living by endeavouring to hold together the old man's long-diminished practice. The profession at the time offered nothing in such places as Delisleville, even to older and more experienced men. No one had any money to go to law with, few had any property worth going to law about.

Both armies having swept through it, Delisleville wore in those days an aspect differing greatly from its old air of hospitable well-being and inconsequent good spirits and good cheer. Its broad verandahed houses had seen hard usage, its pavements were worn and broken, and in many streets tufted with weeds; its fences were dilapidated, its rich families had lost their possessions, and those who had not been driven away by their necessities were gazing aghast at a future to which it seemed impossible to adjust their ease-loving, slave-attended, luxurious habits of the past. Houses built of wood, after the Southern fashion, do not well withstand neglect and ill-fortune. Porticos and pillars and trellis-work which had been picturesque and imposing when they had been well cared for, and gleamed white among creepers and trees, lost their charm drearily when paint peeled off, trees were cut down, and vines were dragged away and died. Over the whole of the once gay little place there had fallen an air of discouragement, desolation, and decay. Financial disaster had crippled the boldest even in centres much more energetic than small, unbusiness-like Southern towns; the country lay, as it were, prostrate to recover strength, and all was at a standstill.

Finding himself penniless, Rupert De Willoughby lived in a corner of the house he had been brought up in. Such furniture as had survived the havoc of war and the entire dilapidation of old age, he had gathered together in three or four rooms, which he occupied with the one servant good fortune brought to his door at a time when the forlornness of his changed position was continually accentuated by the untidy irregularity of his life and surroundings. He was only able to afford to engage the shiftless services of a slatternly negro girl, rendered insubordinate by her newly acquired freedom, and he had begun to feel that he should never again find himself encompassed by the decorous system of a well-managed household.

It was at this juncture that Uncle Matthew arrived and presented his curious petition, which was that he should be accepted as general servant, with wages or without them.

He had not belonged to Judge De Willoughby, but to a distant relative, and, as he was an obstinate and conservative old person, he actually felt that to be "a free nigger" was rather to drop in the social scale.

"Whar's a man stand, sah, if he ain't got no fambly?" he said to Rupert when he came to offer his services to him. "He stan' nowhar, that's war he stan'; I've got to own up to it, Marse Rupert, I'se a 'ristycrat bawn an' bred, an' I 'low to stay one, long's my head's hot. Ef my old mars's fambly hadn't er gone fo'th en' bin scattered to de fo' win's of de university, I'd a helt on, but when de las' of 'um went to dat Europe, dey couldn't 'ford to take me, an' I had ter stay. An' when I heerd as all yo' kin was gone an' you was gwine to live erlone like dis yere, I come to ax yer to take me to wait on yer—as a favier, Marse Rupert—as a favier. 'Tain't pay I wants, sah; it's a fambly name an' a fambly circle."

"It's not much of a circle, Uncle Matt," said Rupert, looking round at the bareness of the big room he sat in.

"'Tain't much fer you, suh," answered Uncle Matthew, "but it's a pow'fle deal fer me in dese yere days. Ef yer don't take me, fust thing I knows I'll be drivin' or waitin' on some Mr. Nobody from New York or Boston, an' seems like I shouldn't know how to stand it. 'Scuse me a-recommendin' myself, sah—I look ole, but I ain't as ole as I look; I'se l'arnt to cook, sah, from three womens what I was married to, an' I knows my place an' how to keep house like it orter be kep'. Will you try me a mont', Marse De Willoughby—will you try me a week?"

Rupert tried him and never regretted the venture. In fact, Uncle Matt's accomplishments were varied for practical reasons. He had been in his time first house servant, then coachman; he had married at twenty a woman of forty, who had been a sort of female mulatto Vatel. When she had died, having overheated herself and caught cold on the occasion of a series of great dinners given at a triumphant political crisis, he had taken for his second wife the woman whose ambition it had been to rival her in her culinary arts. His third marriage had been even more distinguished. His wife had been owned by some extravagantly rich Creoles in New Orleans, and had even lived with them during a year spent in France, thereby gaining unheard-of culinary accomplishments. Matthew had always declared that he loved her the best of the three. Those matrimonial ventures had been a liberal education to him. He had learned to cook almost as well as his first, and from his second and third he had inherited methods and recipes which were invaluable. He seemed to have learned to do everything. He dismissed the slatternly negro girl and took upon himself the duties of both man and woman servant. The house gradually wore a new aspect—dust disappeared, windows were bright, the scant furniture was arranged to the best possible advantage, the scant meals were marvels of perfect cookery and neat serving. Having prepared a repast, Uncle Matt donned an ancient but respectable coat and stood behind his young master's chair with dignity. The dramatic nature of his race was strongly appealed to by the situation in which he found himself. A negro of his kind is perfectly capable of building a romance out of much smaller materials. The amiable vanity which gave such exalted value to all the belongings of their masters in their days of slavery, and which so delighted in all picturesqueness of surrounding, is the best of foundations for romances. From generation to generation certain circumstances and qualities had conferred a sort of distinction upon their humbleness; to be owned by an aristocrat, to live in a great house, to wait upon young masters who were handsome and accomplished and young mistresses who were beautiful and surrounded by worshippers, to be indispensable to "de Jedge" or "de Cun'l," or to travel as attendant because some brilliant young son or lovely young daughter could find no one who would wait on them as "Uncle Matt" or "Aunt Prissy" could—these things made life to be desired and filled it with excitement and importance.

To the halcyon days in which such delights were possible Uncle Matt belonged. He was too old to look forward; he wanted his past again; and to find himself the sole faithful retainer in a once brilliant household, with the chance of making himself indispensable to the one remaining scion of an old name, assisted him to feel that he was a relic of departed grandeur.

His contrivances were numberless. In a corner of what he called the "back gyarden" he constructed an enclosure for chickens. He bought two or three young fowls, and by marvels of management founded a family with them. The family once founded, he made exchanges with friendly coloured matrons of the vicinity, with such results in breeding that "Uncle Matt's" chickens became celebrated fowls. He displayed the same gifts in the management of the garden. In a few months after his arrival, Rupert began to find himself sitting down before the kind of meal he had not expected to contemplate again.

"Uncle Matt," he said, "where do I get fried chicken and vegetables like these—and honey and fresh butter and cream? I don't pay for them."

"Yes, you do, sah. Yo' property pays for 'em. Dat 'ar gyarden, sah, is black with richness—jest black. It's a forchen for a pusson what kin contrive an' make fren's, an' trade, an' kin flourish a spade. Dar's fruit-trees an' grape-vines dar—an' room enuf to plant anything—an' richness enuf to make peas an' taters an' beets an' cabbages jest jump out o' de yarth. I've took de liberty of makin' a truck patch, an' I've got me a chicken coop, an' I've had mighty good luck with my aigs an' my truck—an' I've got things to trade with the women folks for what I ain't got. De ladies likes tradin', an' dey's mighty neighbourly about yeah, 'memberin' yo' fambly, sah."

Rupert leaned back in his chair and broke into a hearty, boyish laugh, which it was very good both to see and hear. He very seldom laughed.

"I wish I was a genius like you, Matt," he said. "What luck I'm in to have you. Raising chickens and vegetables, and negotiating with your lady friends for me! I feel like a caliph with a grand vizier. I never tasted such chicken or such waffles in my life!"

"I'm settin' some tukkey-eggs now—under de yaller hen," said Matt, with a slyly exultant grin. "She's a good mother, the yaller hen; an' de way dem fruit-trees is gwine ter be loaded is a sight. Aunt Mary Field, she's tradin' with me a'ready agin fruit puttin'-up time."

Rupert got up from his chair. He caught old Matt's dusky, yellow-palmed paw in his hand and shook it hard. His gloomy young face had changed its aspect, his eyes suddenly looked like his mother's—and Delia Vanuxem had been said to have the loveliest soft eyes in all the South.

"Matt," he said, "I couldn't do without you. It isn't only that," with a gesture towards the table, "you—it's almost as if you had come to save me."

"Ole nigger man like me, Marse Rupert," said Uncle Matt, "savin' of a fine young gentleman like what you is! How's I gwine ter do it?" But his wrinkled face looked tremulous with emotion. "Times is gwine ter change for you, they is, an' Matt's gwine ter stay by yer till dat come to pass. Marse Rupert," looking at him curiously, "I 'clar to Gawd you look like yo' young mammy did. Yo' ain't always, but jes' dish yer minnit yo' does—an' yer did jes' now when yer laf'."

"Do I look like her?" said Rupert. "I'm glad of it. I want to be like her. Say, Uncle Matt, whenever I look or speak or act like her, you tell me."

When in the course of neighbourly conversation Matt mentioned this to his friend Aunt Mary Fields, she put a new colour upon it.

"He worshipped his maw, an' she jest 'dored down on him," she said; "but 'tain't only he want look like her, he doan' want look like his paw. Ev'one know what Cun'l de Courcy was—an' dat chile jest 'spise him. He was allus a mons'ous proud chile, and when de Cun'l broke loose an' went on one o' his t'ars, it mos' 'stroyed dat boy wid de disgracefulness. Dar's chil'en as doan' keer or notice—but dat boy, it 'most 'stroyed him."

The big, empty-sounding house was kept orderly and spotless, the back garden exhibited such vegetables as no one else owned, the fruit-trees and grape-vines throve, in time the flower-beds began to bloom brilliantly, the rose-bushes and shrubs were trimmed, the paths swept, and people began to apply to Uncle Matt for slips and seeds. He himself became quite young again, so inspired was he by his importance and popularity. When he went into the town upon errands, people stopped to talk to him; the young business or professional men called him into their offices to have a chat with him. He was such a respectable relic of the times which had been "better days" to all of them, that there were those who were almost confidential with him. Uncle Matt would always understand their sentiments and doctrines, and he was always to be relied on for any small service. Such a cocktail or julep no one else could prepare, and there were numerous subtle accomplishments in the matter of mixing liquid refreshments which would have earned a reputation for any man.

There was no more familiar figure than his in the market or business streets of the hot, sunshine-flooded little town, which the passing armies had left so battered and deserted.

Uncle Matt knew all the stories in Delisleville. He knew how one house was falling to pieces for lack of repairs; he heard of the horses that had been sold or had died of old age and left their owners without a beast to draw their rickety buggies or carriages; he was deeply interested in the failing fortunes of what had once been the most important "store" in the town, and whose owner had been an aristocratic magnate, having no more undignified connection with the place than that of provider of capital.

As he walked up Main Street on his way to market, with his basket on his arm, he saw who had been able to "lay in new stock" and who had not. He saw the new sign-boards hung outside small houses which had been turned into offices. He knew what young scion of a respectable family had begun "doctoring" or "set up as a lawyer." Sometimes he even dropped in and made brief visits of respectful congratulation.

"But," he said privately to his young master, "de air ob de atmosphere, it's jest full of dem young lawyers an' doctors. Dar don't seem to be nothin' else for a gen'leman's sons to do but to kyore people or go to law for 'em. Of cose dey oughtn't ter hab ter work, gen'lemen oughtn'ter. Dey didn't usen to heb ter, but now dey is gotter. Lawdy, Marse Rupert, you'll hatter 'scuse me, but de young lawyers, an' de young doctors, dey is scattered about dish yer D'lisleville!"

There were certain new sign-boards which excited him to great interest. There was one he never passed without pausing to examine and reflect upon it.

When he came within range of it on his way up the street, his pace would slacken, and when he reached it he would stop at the edge of the pavement and stand with his basket on his arm, gazing at the lettering with an absorbed air of interest and curiosity. It read, "Milton January, Claim Agent." He could not read, but he had heard comments made upon the profession of the owner of this sign-board which had filled him with speculative thought. He shared the jealousy of strangers who came from "the North" to Delisleville and set up offices, which much more intelligent persons than himself burned with. He resented them as intruders, and felt that their well-dressed air and alert, business-like manner was an insult to departed fortunes.

"What they come fer?" he used to grumble. "Takin' away trade an' business when they ain't none left for de proper people nohow. How's we gwine ter live if all New York City an' Bos'n an' Philadelphy pours in?"

"They are not pouring in very fast, Uncle Matt," Rupert answered him once. "Perhaps it would be better for us if they did. They bring some money, at any rate. There are only one or two of them, and one is a claim agent."

"Dat's jest what I wants ter know," said Matt. "What's dey layin' claim to? What right dey got ter claim anythin'? Gawd knows dar ain't much ter claim."

Rupert laughed and gave him a friendly, boyish slap on the back.

"They are not claiming things from people, but for them. They look up claims against the Government and try to get indemnity for them. They prove claims to back pay, and for damages and losses, and try to make the Government refund."

Uncle Matt rubbed his head a minute, then he looked up eagerly.

"Cun'l De Willoughby, now," he said; "doan' you s'pose dar's some back pay owin' to him for de damage dat yaller fever done him wot he done cotch from de army?"

Rupert laughed a little bitterly.

"No," he said, "I'm afraid not."

"What dey gwine to refun', den?" said Matt. "Dat's what I'd like ter fin' out. Dis hyer idee of refun'in' please me mightily. I'd be pow'fle glad to come bang up agin' some refun'in' myself."

From that time his interest in Milton January, Claim Agent, increased week by week. He used to loiter about talking groups if he caught the sound of his name, in the hope of gathering information. He was quite shrewd enough to realise his own entire ignorance of many subjects, and he had the pride which prevented his being willing to commit himself.

"I ain't nothin' but a ole nigger," he used to say. "I ain't had no eddication like some er dese yere smarties what kin read an' cipher an' do de double shuffle in de copy-book. Matt ain't never rub his back 'gin no college wall. Bes' thing he knows is dat he doan' know nothin'. Dat's a pow'fle useful piece o' l'arnin' to help a man, black or white, from makin' a fool er hesself bigger dan what de good Lawd 'tended him fer ter be. Matt he gradyuated in dat 'ar knowledge an' got he stiffikit. When de good Lawd turn a man out a fool, he got ter be a fool, but he needn' ter be a bigger fool den what he gotter."

So he listened in the market, where he went every morning to bargain for his bit of beefsteak, or fish, or butter, and where the men and women who kept the stalls knew him as well as they knew each other. They all liked him and welcomed him as he approached in his clean old clothes, his market basket on his arm, his hat set rather knowingly upon his grizzled wool. He was, in fact, rather a flirtatious old party, and was counted a great wit, and was full of a shrewd humour as well as of grandiloquent compliment.

"I has a jocalder way er talkin', I ain't gwine ter deny," he would say when complimented upon his popularity with the fair sex, "an' dey ain't nothin' de ladies likes mo' dan a man what's jocalder. Dey loves jokin' an' dey loves to laff. It's de way er de sect. A man what cayn't be jocalder with 'em, he hain't no show."

"What dis hyer claim agentin' I's hearin' so much talk about?" he enquired of a group one morning. "What I wants is ter get inter de innards of de t'ing, an' den I'se gwine to claim sump'n fer myse'f. If dar's claimin' gwine on, I'se a gen'leman what's gwine to be on de camp-meetin' groun', an' fo'most 'mong de shouters."

"What did ye lose by the war, Uncle Matt?" said a countryman, who was leaning against his market waggon of "produce" and chewing tobacco. "If ye kin hunt up suthin' ye lost, ye kin put in a claim fer the vally of it, an' mebbe get Government to give ye indemnity. Mebbe ye kin an' mebbe ye cayn't. They ain't keen to do it, but mebbe ye could work it through a smart agent like January. They say he's as smart as they make 'em."

It was a broiling July morning; only the people who were obliged to leave their houses for some special reason were to be seen in the streets; the market waggons which had come in from the country laden with vegetables and chickens and butter were drawn up under the shadow of the market house, that their forlorn horses or mules might escape the glaring hot sun. The liveliest business hour had passed, and about the waggons a group of market men and women and two or three loiterers were idling in the shade, waiting for chance-belated customers. There was a general drawing near when Uncle Matt began his conversation. They always wanted to hear what he had to say, and always responded with loud, sympathetic guffaws to his "jocalder" remarks.

"He's sech a case, Uncle Matt is," the women would say, "I never seen sich a case."

When the countryman spoke, Uncle Matt put on an expression of dignified thoughtfulness. It was an expression his audience were entirely familiar with and invariably greeted with delight.

"Endurin' of de war," he said, "I los' severial things. Fust thing I memberize of losin' was a pa'r of boots. Dar was a riggiment passin' at de time, an' de membiers of dat riggiment had been footin' it long enough to have wo' out a good deal er shoe-leather. They was thusty an' hungry, an' come to de halt near my cabin to require if dar warn't no vittles lyin' roun' loose for de good er de country. When dey was gone, my new boots was gone, what I'd jest brung home from de cobbler."

His audience broke into a shout of enjoyment.

"Dat 'ar incerdent stirred up my paketriotit feelin's consider'ble at de moment. I couldn't seem to see it in de light what p'raps I oughter seen it in. I rared roun' a good deal, an' fer a moment er two, I didn't seem tar mind which side beat de oder. Jest dat 'casion. I doan' say de sentiment continnered on, but jest dat 'casion seemed ter me like dar was a Yank somewhars es I wouldn't hev ben agin seein' takin' a whuppin' from some'un, Secesh or no Secesh."

"What else did ye lose, Unc' Matt?" someone said when the laugh died down.

"Well, I lose a wife—kinder cook dat dar ain't no 'demnity kin make up fer when de Lawd's removed 'em. An' 'pears to me right dar, dat if I wusn't a chu'ch member, I shed be led on ter say dat, considerin' what a skaseness er good cooks dar is, seems like de good Lawd's almost wasteful an' stravagant, de way he lets 'em die off. Three uv 'em he 'moved from me to a better worl'. Not as I'm a man what'd wanter be sackerligious; but 'pears to me dar was mo' wuk fur 'em to do in dis hyer dark worl' er sin dan in de realms er glory. I may be wrong, but dat's how it seem to a pore nigger like me."

"The Government won't pay for yer wife, Matt," said the owner of the market waggon.

"Dat dey won't, en dat dey cayn't," said Matt. "Dat las' woman's gumbo soup warn't a thing to be 'demnified fer, dat it warn't. But what I'm a aimin' at is to fin' out what dey will pay fer, en how much. Dar was one mawnin' I sot at my do' reflectin' on de Gawsp'l, an' de Yanks come jest a tarin' down de road, licketty switch, licketty switch, yellin' like de debil let loose, en firin' of dere pistols, an' I gotter 'fess I los' a heap a courage dat time—an' I los' a heap o' breath runnin' 'way from 'em en outer sight. Now I know de Gov'ment not gwine ter pay me fer losin' dem things, but what is dey gwine pay for losin'?"

"Property, they say—crops 'n' houses, 'n' barns, 'n' truck wuth money."

Uncle Matt removed his hat, and looked into the crown of it as if for instruction before he wiped his forehead and put it on again.

"Aye-yi! Dey is, is dey?" he said. "Property—en houses, en barns, en truck wuth money? Dey'll hev a plenty to pay, ef dey begins dat game, won't dey? Dey'll hev ter dig down inter de Gov'ment breeches pocket pretty deep, dat dey will. Doan' see how de Pres'dent gwine ter do it out'n what dey 'lows him, less'n dey 'lows him mighty big pocket money."

"'Tain't the President, Matt," said one of the crowd. "It's the Nation."

"Oh, it's de Nation!" said Matt. "De Nation. Well, Mr. Nation gwine fin' he got plenty ter do—early en late."

This was not the last time he led the talk in the direction of Government claims, and in the course of his marketings and droppings into various stores and young lawyers' offices, he gathered a good deal of information. Claims upon the Government had not been so far exploited in those days as they were a little later, and knowledge of such business and its processes was not as easily obtainable by unbusiness-like persons.

One morning, as he stood at the street corner nearest the Claim Agent's office, a little man came out of the place, and by chance stopped to cool himself for a few moments under the shade of the very maple tree Uncle Matt had chosen.

He was a very small man, wearing very large pantaloons, and he had a little countenance whose expression was a curious combination of rustic vacancy and incongruous slyness. He was evidently from the country, and Uncle Matt's respectable, in fact, rather aristocratic air, apparently attracted his attention.

"'Scuse me, sah," said Matt, "'scuse me addressin' of you, but dem ar Claim Agents——?"

"Hev ye got a claim?" said the little man in words that were slow, but with an air that was sharp. "I mean, has anyone ye work fur got one?"

"Well, sah," answered Matt, "I ain't sartain, but——"

"Ye'd better make sartain," said the little man. "Bein' es the thing's started the way it hes, anyone es might hev a claim an' lets it lie, is a derned fool. I come from over the mountain. My name's Stamps, and I've got one."

Uncle Matt regarded him with interest—not exactly with respect, but with interest.

Stamps took off his battered broad-brimmed hat, wiped his moist forehead and expectorated, leaning against the tree.

"Thar's people in this town as is derned fools," he remarked, sententiously. "Thar's people in most every town in the Union as is derned fools. Most everybody's got a claim to suthin', if they'd only got the common horse sense ter look it up. Why, look at that yoke o' oxen o' mine—the finest yoke o' steers in Hamlin County. Would hev took fust ticket at any Agricultural Fair in the United States. I ain't goin' to sacceryfist them steers to no Stars an' Stripes as ever floated. The Guv'ment's got to pay me the wuth of 'em down to the last cent."

He gave Matt a sharp look with a hint of inquiry in it, as if he was asking either his hearer or himself a question, and was not entirely certain of the answer.

"Now thar's D'Willerby," he went on. "Big Tom—Tom D'Willerby lost enough, the Lord knows. Fust one army, 'n' then another layin' holt on his stock as it come over the road from one place an' another, a-eatin' of it up 'n' a-wearin' his goods made up into shirts 'n' the like-'n' him left a'most cleaned out o' everythin'. Why, Tom D'Willerby——"

"'Scuse me, sah," interrupted Matt, "but did you say De Willoughby?"

"I said D'Willerby," answered Mr. Stamps. "That's what he's called at the Cross-roads."

There he stopped and stared at Matt a moment.

"My young master's name's De Willoughby, sah," Matt said; "'n' de names soun's mighty simulious when dey's spoke quick. My young Marse, Rupert De Willoughby, he de gran'son er Jedge De Willoughby, an' de son an' heir er Cun'l De Courcy De Willoughby what died er yaller fever at Nashville."

"Well, I'm doggoned," the little man remarked, "I'd orter thought er thet. This yere's Delisleville, 'n' I reckerlect hearin' when fust he come to Hamlin thet he was some kin to some big bugs down ter D'lisleville, 'n' his father was a Jedge—doggoned ef I didn't!"



CHAPTER XIX

Rupert De Willoughby was lying upon the grass in the garden under the shade of a tree. The "office" had been stifling hot, and there had been even less to suggest any hope of possible professional business than the blankness of most days held. There never was any business, but at rare intervals someone dropped in and asked him a question or so, his answers to which, by the exercise of imagination, might be regarded as coming under the head of "advice." His clients had no money, however—nobody had any money; and his affairs were assuming a rather desperate aspect.

He had come home through the hot streets with his straw hat pushed back, the moist rings of his black hair lying on a forehead lined with a rather dark frown. He went into the garden and threw himself on the grass in the shade. He could be physically at ease there, at least. The old garden had always been a pleasure to him, and on a hot summer day it was full of sweet scents and sounds he was fond of. At this time there were tangles of honeysuckle and bushes heavy with mock-orange; an arbour near him was covered by a multiflora rose, weighted with masses of its small, delicate blossoms; within a few feet of it a bed of mignonette grew, and the sun-warmed breathing of all these fragrant things was a luxurious accompaniment to the booming of the bees, blundering and buzzing in and out of their flowers, and the summer languid notes of the stray birds which lit on the branches and called to each other among the thick leaves.

At twenty-three a man may be very young. Rupert was both young and old. His silent resentment of the shadow which he felt had always rested upon him, had become a morbid thing. It had led him to seclude himself from the gay little Delisleville world and cut himself off from young friendships. After his mother—who had understood his temperament and his resentment—had died, nobody cared very much for him. The youth of Delisleville was picturesque, pleasure-loving, and inconsequent. It had little parties at which it danced; it had little clubs which were vaguely musical or literary; and it had an ingenuous belief in the talents and graces displayed at these gatherings. The feminine members of these societies were sometimes wonderfully lovely. They were very young, and had soft eyes and soft Southern voices, and were the owners of the tiniest arched feet and the slenderest little, supple waists in the world. Until they were married—which usually happened very early—they were always being made love to and knew that this was what God had made them for—that they should dance a great deal, that they should have many flowers and bonbons laid at their small feet, that beautiful youths with sentimental tenor voices should serenade them with guitars on moonlight nights, which last charming thing led them to congratulate themselves on having been born in the South, as such romantic incidents were not a feature of life in New York and Boston. The masculine members were usually lithe and slim, and often of graceful height; they frequently possessed their share of good looks, danced and rode well, and could sing love songs. As it was the portion of their fair companions to be made love to, it was theirs to make love. They often wrote verses, and they also were given to arched insteps and eyes with very perceptible fringes. For some singular reason, it seems that Southern blood tends to express itself in fine eyes and lashes.

But with this simply emotional and happy youth young De Willoughby had not amalgamated. Once he had gone to a dance, and his father the Colonel had appeared upon the scene as a spectator in a state of exaggeratedly graceful intoxication. He was in the condition when he was extremely gallant and paid flowery compliments to each pair of bright eyes he chanced to find himself near.

When he first caught sight of him, Rupert was waltzing with a lovely little creature who was a Vanuxem and was not unlike the Delia Tom De Willoughby had fallen hopelessly in love with. When he saw his father a flash of scarlet shot over the boy's face, and, passing, left him looking very black and white. His brow drew down into its frown, and he began to dance with less spirit. When the waltz was at an end, he led his partner to her seat and stood a moment silently before her, glancing under his black lashes at the Colonel, who had begun to quote Thomas Moore and was declaiming "The Young May Moon" to a pretty creature with a rather alarmed look in her uplifted eyes. It was the first dance at which she had appeared since she had left school.

Suddenly Rupert turned to his partner. He made her a bow; he was a graceful young fellow.

"Thank you, Miss Vanuxem. Thank you for the dance. Good-night. I am going home."

"Are you?" exclaimed little Miss Vanuxem. "But it is so early, Mr. De Willoughby."

"I have stayed just ten minutes too long now," said Rupert. "Thank you again, Miss Vanuxem. Good-night."

He walked across the room to Colonel De Willoughby.

"I am going home," he said, in a low, fierce voice; "you had better come with me."

"No sush thing," answered the Colonel, gaily. "On'y just come. Don't go to roosh with shickens. Just quoting Tom Moore to Miss Baxter.

Bes' of all ways to lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."

The little beauty, who had turned with relieved delight to take the arm of a new partner, looked at her poetic admirer apologetically.

"Mr. Gaines has come for me, Colonel De Willoughby," she said; "I am engaged to him for this dance." And she slipped away clinging almost tenderly to the arm of her enraptured escort, who felt himself suddenly transformed into something like a hero.