"It sounds as though it might be more of a pleasure than a painful duty."

"So it would. You'd take to her, I know," the young man went on eagerly. Mrs. Lenox watched him in somewhat irritated amusement. "She hasn't your brains, of course, Madeline, but she has such charm, such simplicity and freshness, that you can't help liking her. And she grubs away at perfectly uncongenial work, and lives with this fusty old mother in a fusty little lodging-house. It makes me sick to think of such daily crucifixion. I've no business to say it, I know; but when you spoke about a week at the lake, I couldn't help thinking what such a thing would mean to her. She'd think herself in Paradise."

"I suppose, Dick, that this is your adroit and tactful way of suggesting that I should ask her," Mrs. Lenox said, laughing.

And Madeline, who, if Dick had proposed that Mrs. Lenox should turn her very charming summer home into an orphan asylum, would have considered that the proposition, as coming from him, was entitled to consideration, put in:

"I think it would be a lovely thing to do, Vera."

"And we should probably let ourselves in for a frightful bore."

"And you might entertain an angel unawares," said Dick.

Mrs. Lenox knit her brows and meditated. She didn't quite like Dick's championship of this unknown girl, nor did she trust to his judgment; but, like a wise woman, she wanted to know what was the thing that had attracted him, and was big enough in heart to be willing to do a good turn wherever she could.

"This is the oracle of the Pythia," she said at last. "We will not commit ourselves to anything at the behest of Richard Percival. On my way to the station, now, in fact, Madeline and I will go to see this rose among cabbages. We will introduce ourselves as your friends, Dick. If we think you are a mere deluded male thing, there the matter ends. If we, too, are carried away by enthusiasm, we will invite her on the spur of the moment, and Mr. Lenox, who, like most married men, is a connoisseur in pretty girls, can talk to her. Will this suit you, Dick?"

"Excellently," said Dick, "I know the result."

"Then you'll come next Saturday? Madeline is coming day after to-morrow and I'll write to Mr. Norris. Heaven send these days of sun continue. Now if we are to pay this call, and I am to catch my train, we must be off."

Miss Quincy, having quarreled with her mother over her extravagance in buying a feather boa with the proceeds of her last small check, was seated by the window, industriously concocting a new hat. The Swedish "girl", whose unfortunate fate it was to minister to the wants of Mrs. Olberg's lodgers, gave a kind of defiant pound on the door, opened it and thrust in a disheveled blond head, followed by a hand puckered from the dish-water.

"Haar's cards, Miss Quincy," she said, "Dar's twa ladies down staars."

She dropped the cards on the floor and disappeared. Lena, in great curiosity, picked them up and read aloud:

"'Mrs. Francis Lenox; Miss Elton.'"

"For the land's sake! Who air they?" asked her mother.

"Two of the biggest swells in town."

"Well, what on earth do they want here? We ain't very swell."

"Perhaps they want me to report some party or something," said Lena.

She was losing no time in giving her hair one or two becoming jerks and going through a series of wriggles meant to impart grace and style to her costume.

"Perhaps they want to give you a million dollars," said Mrs. Quincy sarcastically.

Lena, with heart burning with mingled shame at her own shabby surroundings, curiosity at their errand, and awe for the mighty names, entered the little parlor which gave the impression of never having been cleaned since it was born with its cheap worn plush furniture, its crayon portraits and its two vases of gaudy blue and gold. She faced the two ladies seated on the impossible chairs. Lena was almost as startling an apparition in that room as was Ram Juna's rose in the dusty phial—whether a miracle or a clever trick. She looked so untouched by any vulgarity in her surroundings, so fresh and true, so instinct with virgin dignity, that the eyes that met her own were filled with the tribute of surprise; and she exulted in some hidden corner of her soul.

In the half-hour that they spent together she measured her new acquaintances carefully.

"And these are women of the world!" she said to herself. "Why, they're boobies. I could do them up any time."

For Lena did not know that women of this type are the most protected creatures on the face of the earth. The knowledge of good is given them, but not the knowledge of evil.

So she told them all about herself, which was what they seemed to want to hear, and when they went away Madeline said:

"I wonder if there are many such born to blush unseen. What an exquisite little tragedy she is!"

And Mrs. Lenox answered: "U—u—m! Well, I've asked her, haven't I? I think the microbe of Dick's impulsiveness must have got into me."

Lena stood back in the shadow of the room to watch her departing guests. Then she ran up stairs with light steps, ruffling her plumes like a cocky little lady-wren as she went back to the dreariness where Mrs. Quincy sat rocking her inevitable creaking chair.

"Well!" asked her mother after a pause, a pause just long enough, the daughter knew, to fill her with irritable curiosity.

"Well," Lena answered smartly, "and what do you think? They came to call, if you please, because Mr. Percival asked them to; and they were sweet as honey. And Mrs. Lenox asked me to spend a whole week at her country place."

"For the land sake!"

"I guess," Lena went on with complacence, "Mr. Percival must have said something pretty nice."

Her mother stared at her speechless, and it was such an unusual thing for Mrs. Quincy to be struck dumb that Lena was correspondingly elated as she rattled on.

"Such dresses! I'd give anything to have such clothes and wear them with that kind of an every-day, don't-care air. My, but Mrs. Lenox is a stunner! But the Lenoxes are just rolling in money; and they say Mr. Lenox hadn't a red cent when she married him and gave him his start. It's lucky I have another check coming from the Star. I'll need more things than ever it will buy to go out there. I must begin to get ready right away."

The mention of expenditure brought Mrs. Quincy back to her normal state of mind, and she resumed her rocking. Lena's means and extremes in shopping were her standard grievance.

"I might know that 'ud be the next thing. Of course you'll be spending every penny you can rake and scrape on clothes, so's to look fine for your new fine friends. It's no matter about me. I can go without a decent rag to my back, so long as you've got feathers and flummery."

"Well, I earned the money. I don't see why I shouldn't spend it. I'm not robbing you," said Lena sulkily.

"You might contribute a mite to your own board."

"I'll save you my board for a week," snapped the girl.

Mrs. Quincy changed her tack. "And leave me shut up in town," she resumed. "I should think you'd think twice, Lena, before you went off gallivantin' and left your poor old mother here alone. Nobody seems to think I need any pleasure."

"I'll write and ask Mrs. Lenox if she won't take you instead of me."

"Take me! I should think not! I wouldn't be hired to leave my own place and go off like a charity case among a lot of rich people who looked down on me because I was poor. I've got too much self-respect to jump at an invitation, like a pickerel at a frog. But there! You never think twice about things."

"Suppose I did refuse. You'd fly out at me for not making the most of my chances," said poor Lena, on the verge of tears.

Mrs. Quincy was temporarily silenced by the truth of this reply, and Lena pursued her advantage.

"Come now, mother, do you want me to get out of it?"

"Oh, I suppose you'll have to go, or I won't have no peace to my life," Mrs. Quincy grudgingly responded.

"Yes, you shall. If you say so, I'll give it up now and never say another word about it."

"And act injured to death," said her mother. "No, you go!"

"After you've done everything you can to spoil it for me," answered Lena, not half realizing how well she spoke the truth, and how both by inheritance and by precept her mother had trailed the serpent over her life. To Lena, fortune and misfortune were still things of outward import, and almost synonymous with possession and non-possession. Yet, in spite of Mrs. Quincy's dour looks, Lena found herself singing as she moved swiftly about the room. Spontaneous joy was a rare thing with her. The first peep into the delectable world was entrancing.



CHAPTER X

BITTER-SWEET

It was all charming, if a little strange—the friendliness of Miss Elton when Lena met her at the station, the smart trap and groom that met them at the end of their short journey, the very way in which Miss Elton took possession of those awe-inspiring objects, and the respectful curiosity of the loungers at the country station. As she stepped into the carriage, Lena caught a glimpse of a cart-horse with so many ribs as to suggest that the female of his species had yet to be created. He looked so like her mother, that he gave her a spasm of anguish which she tried to forget, as they were whirled down the road with its fringe of straight-limbed trees. Never had the world looked more lovely. Her spirits were lifted up.

Mrs. Lenox met them at the door with hospitable effusiveness, but Lena's crucifixion began from that moment.

"The man will carry your bag up for you," said Mrs. Lenox.

As Olaf obediently stepped forward, Lena flushed and thought: "They both noticed that it was only imitation leather."

Mrs. Lenox walked up stairs with them, chattering gaily with Madeline, and Lena followed in embarrassed silence at the charming freshness and daintiness of everything about her.

"I've put you and Miss Elton in adjoining rooms," said Mrs. Lenox, smiling kindly at her, "so that you needn't feel remote and lonely on your first visit here."

The man put down the bag and disappeared, and a trim maid came forward to help Lena off with her coat which, with a sudden pang, she wished were lined with satin instead of sateen.

"Sall Ay unpack you bag?" said the little maid politely.

"No, thank you. I prefer to do it myself," said Lena desperately. It was more than she could endure to have a strange girl spying out the nakedness of the land. Yet when the little maid said, "Vary well, ma'am," and walked into the next room, Lena wondered if she had made a mistake. She heard Miss Elton's cheerful address of the appalling personage with the puffed up bit of hair and the saucy cap.

"How do you do, Sophie?"

"Good day, mees. As thar anything Ay can do for you?"

"I fancy my dress would be better for a good brushing after the dusty train, and the gown I want is in the top tray of the little trunk, Sophie."

The door closed and Lena wondered in terror what of her small store of finery she ought to put on, and when she ought to go down stairs. She solved the first question to the best of her ability and sat down on the edge of a very clean beflowered chair in despair about the other, when there came voices in the hall, and Madeline tapped on her door, and called:

"Don't you want to come out and see the baby?"

Now Lena detested babies as sticky and order-destroying vermin, but in relief she said: "A baby? Oh, how lovely!"

"Come," said Mrs. Lenox. "The proper study of womanhood is baby." Lena went out to find a very small person in a very tottering condition, steered up and down the hall by another be-capped maid who was holding tight to his rear petticoats, while Mrs. Lenox trotted by his side, pulling a woolly lamb that baa'd with enchanting precision, and allowing her skirts to be worried by a small puppy, whose business in life was to bite anything hard that lay on the floor or that wiggled. Mrs. Lenox and Miss Elton sat down on the floor to towsle and to be towsled amid laughter and hair-pulling and frantic yelps from the puppy, while Lena looked on and said: "Isn't he cunning?" and wondered whether she ought to sit on the floor or not. She wondered if this were indeed the millionaire Mrs. Lenox of whom she read with awe from the "In the swing" column as being present at such and such "society functions", thus and thus attired.

Somehow Mrs. Lenox, seated on the floor, with her hair over one eye, disconcerted Lena more than any amount of grandeur would have done. She felt as one might who should catch the Venus of Melos cutting capers. Then the redoubtable lady jumped up, tucked in a few hair-pins, gave a final shake to her small son and said:

"I dressed little Frank myself this afternoon. Don't you think I did a good job? Dressing a baby combines all the pleasures of the chase with the requirements of the exact sciences, Miss Quincy. Now let's go down and have some tea before big Frank gets home. I think we've time for a little friendly chat."

This time Lena followed with greater sense of security. She knew her dress was pretty and becoming, though inexpensive; and as for conversation, that to Lena's mind meant clothes and society, with which she felt a journalistic familiarity.

"Perhaps you prefer cream in your tea?" said Mrs. Lenox, with hand poised over the little table.

"No, thank you, I like lemon," answered Lena, who had never tasted it before and now thought it very nasty indeed. Then she wondered why she had told such a small useless lie.

But it was comfortable to be in a big lovely room with a pile of logs blazing in a great fireplace, and soft lamps shedding a glow rather than making spots of light. She wished she had, like Madeline, picked out a very easy chair instead of the stiff one she had selected, but she felt too shy to move until Mrs. Lenox suggested it, and then she was embarrassed because she was embarrassed. She wondered if she should ever be able to do things like these women, without thinking of what she was doing.

Madeline was idly turning the pages of a magazine and now she held it up.

"Look at these illustrations. Aren't they stunning?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Lenox. "I'm growing tired of that kind of thing. It isn't art; it's a fad. The trouble with most of this modern work is that it is too smart and fashionable. The clothes are more important than the people."

"Quite a contrast to ancient art, where the people were everything and the clothes nothing," Madeline retorted. "After all, I rather like the modern way. The old Greeks were not a bit more real people. They were nothing but types."

"And very decapitated and de-legged types," said Mrs. Lenox with a laugh. "And dirty, too—like the Sleeping Beauty. Do you know, it gives me the shivers to think of the Sleeping Beauty, lying there for ages, with dust and cobwebs accumulating on her. I'm sure I hope the prince gave her a thorough dusting before he kissed her."

"You are horribly realistic, Vera—a person with no imagination."

"I think I have just shown a truly vivid imagination."

"It is the business of imagination to build up a world of loveliness and order."

"I don't agree with you. I think it is the business of imagination to project things as they really are. I don't want to slip out from under reality and see only beauty. Beware, Madeline, or you will degenerate into a mere optimist."

"Isn't it funny that if your opponent can call you an optimist, he feels that he has delivered a knock-down blow to all your arguments?" Mrs. Lenox suddenly pulled herself together and turned toward Lena, who sat silently drinking her tea and taking no part in the conversation.

"Did you tell me that your mother is an invalid, Miss Quincy?"

"Not exactly; but she can't go about much. It seems to play her out to walk."

"It must be very hard on her to stay in the house all the time. I wonder if I might take her to drive with me once in a while?" A scarlet flush passed over Lena's face at the very idea of her mother's querulous vulgarity being displayed to this woman, and Mrs. Lenox could not help seeing her embarrassment.

A little wave of pity swept over the older woman. It must be a cruel fate to be ashamed of one's surroundings. Mrs. Lenox herself was one of those serious-minded persons who regard their opportunities as responsibilities. She waged constant warfare with the dominion of externals, and believed with all her heart that the life was more than raiment; but a momentary doubt assailed her as to whether, after all, it might not be easier to conquer things when one owned them, rather than when one had to do without them. It has generally been Dives who is represented as enslaved by the goods of this world. Perhaps Lazarus, if his heart is absorbed in sordid longing for what others have and he has not, stands just as poor a chance of the kingdom of Heaven.

What could she do to make Miss Quincy feel at ease? The girl certainly had brains and character. Dick had told them of her brave bearing of burdens. This stiff back and this silence were but the tribute of shyness to new surroundings. So ran Mrs. Lenox's swift thoughts and she set herself to make Lena talk about the things with which she was familiar, to link her past to this present.

Evidently the same thought was flitting through Madeline's brain, for before Mrs. Lenox spoke she began:

"Do you know, Miss Quincy, I have felt a little envy of you ever since Dick first told us about you."

"Envy! Of me?" Lena exclaimed, moved to genuine surprise.

"Yes," Madeline went on, leaning forward, eager to explain herself. "You see, I seem to have had a good deal of training, which looks as though it should prepare me to do something, and then—then I don't do anything. It makes me feel flat and unprofitable. I'd like to feel like you every night—as though I'd really accomplished a thing or two."

"Isn't it like Madeline to try to make the girl feel the dignity of drudgery!" Mrs. Lenox said to herself.

"The stuck-up thing!" thought Lena; "rubbing it into me that she does not have to work for her living."

She was tempted to make a sharp answer, but remembered her diplomacy and held it in.

"Work isn't always so pleasant when you're in it," she said.

"Everything is apt to look rough around the edges until you hold it off and get a view of it as a whole," Mrs. Lenox put in. "Even love—sometimes. But I think that, next to love, work is about the best thing in life."

"Oh, that depends," Madeline cried. "When I read papers at clubs, people talk about my 'work', but nobody thinks that it is worth while. I'd like to earn a dollar, just as a guaranty that some one thought the thing I did was worth it."

"Gracious!" Lena exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you really feel that way about earning money?"

"Don't you?" Madeline asked in return; and each looked at the other uncomprehendingly.

"No, I don't," Lena burst out sullenly, but forgetting to be shy. "I feel degraded by every dirty five-dollar bill I get by being a slavey. People make you feel that way. You get it rubbed into you every day."

"No, no," Mrs Lenox cried, remorseful now that their talk had drifted into such intimate personalities. "I am sure, Miss Quincy, nobody feels that way about a woman that works, except, perhaps, people whose opinion you can well afford to despise." This was a shaft that struck so near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. "I am sure I think a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine," Mrs. Lenox went on.

Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted to make a friend of this girl, because Dick had asked her to, and here, at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them.

Mrs. Lenox darted a look at her and sprang suddenly to her feet.

"Oh, here's Frank," she exclaimed with an air of relief. "Come in, boy, and have some tea and fire. It was good of you to come so bright and early."

"Earlier than bright, I'm afraid," he said.

Lena looked with interest toward the door. Frank Lenox was great in St. Etienne, first because he was the son-in-law of old Nicholas Windsor, a potentate of the first local magnitude, and second, because he was pushing to still greater success the enterprises that the elder man had begun. So people talked about him in the street-cars by his first name. Lena felt that it was a privilege to look at him, big, clean, with that mingling of alertness with power which is the characteristic of the American business man. It was an experience of absorbing interest to see the half underhand caress he gave his wife in passing, and to find herself actually shaking hands with him. He seemed imposing and friendly and yet quite like other people, as he looked around for a capacious chair and his wife handed him a cup of tea. She was conscious that he looked at her with great interest. She recognized the expression in masculine eyes and it soothed her ruffled spirit. It was the constant affirmation of her beauty, a beauty which had in it something dream-like that made men's eyes dream. After all, she could always get along with men.

"If you'd know what brought me home before my time, it was not your charms, my dear, but a mad desire to get away from Harris, who cornered me and opened up the negro question. I saw nothing for it but to take to the woods."

"It makes my traditional abolition blood boil to see how public opinion seems to be settling down and dallying with heresy and injustice again," Madeline exclaimed. She looked flushed and vigorous, and Lena stared at her and wondered how she could care for such things. Was it pure affectation?

"Oh, you're young, my dear," said Mrs. Lenox laughingly. "You must hold all your opinions violently. And you haven't been South. Things can't help looking different down there."

"Vera!" cried Miss Elton so explosively that Lena sat up straighter than ever, "you're not really a renegade yourself, are you?" and she spoke as though her life depended on the answer.

"Certainly not," Mrs. Lenox answered. "But I'm growing tolerant toward the poor old world as it is. I'm willing to let it grow slowly instead of insisting that it shall all be immediately as good and wise as I am. I'm learning to respect other people's point of view and to suspect that my mind is not such an ingenious mechanism as I once supposed it to be."

"Moreover, since she has married, she has contracted a habit of taking the opposite point of view," said her husband.

"Oh, that's one of the jokes that has successfully withstood the ravages of time," said Mrs. Lenox scornfully.

"Very well, then, I'll say that you are getting on toward middle life and have had your enthusiasms corrupted by a worldly-wise father and husband. But I dare say that Miss Quincy, being young, is quite as explosive as you are, Madeline. So we shall be two against two."

He looked with a challenge toward the girl, and perhaps Lena might have managed the expected saucy answer if she had not suddenly remembered that her shoes were shabby and she had meant to keep them hidden under her skirts. This memory destroyed her new-found equilibrium, so she blurted out a weak, "I really don't know anything about it," and then blushed hotly at her own awkwardness.

"It's a stupid subject, anyway," said Mr. Lenox. "I fled from town to avoid it. Let's not talk about negroes."

"Tell us what has happened in the great world," said Mrs. Lenox, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and chin in hands.

"Another Jap victory," he said. "And I'll take a second one of those little cakes please, if Miss Quincy will leave one for me. It cuts me to the heart to see how the young girls of our generation stuff on little cakes. If they'd only take example by these same Japanese, who develop strategy and patriotism on rice, cherry blossoms and gymnastics, there'd be some hopes for us as a people."

He glanced again at Lena in a very amiable manner, as though he expected her to be saucy in return, but she blushed with mystification and mortification. She had felt doubtful as to whether she ought to take another of the little cakes, but they were very good, and she was young enough to love goodies, without many chances at anything so delectable as these particular bits. And now to be detected and made fun of! She began to question if she should be able to get along with these men, after all.

"Thank you," he went on after a pause. "And now that I'm comforted with cake, another cup of tea, Vera; and then, if you would complete my happiness, just give me a posy out of that bouquet for my buttonhole."

His wife rose, pulled a flower from a vase and pinned it to his coat.

"Here's mignonette! That's for dividends," she said, and she put her fingers in his hair and gave his head a little shake.

"Don't infringe on my head,—it's patented," he said. "Now go and sit down, and I will tell you something really exciting as well as instructive. I know about it because I have the privilege of helping the good work with a few dollars. Professor Gregory has dug up two or three hundred old manuscripts somewhere near Thebes, and he cables that they belong to the first century after Christ, that he expects them to illuminate most of the dark recesses of the time, and that I am privileged to share the glory by making an ample contribution. Doesn't that stir your young blood? I never hear of these things without a passionate desire to go to some respectably aged land and dig and dig and dig. It's a choice between doing so and making things in this very new land for some other fellow to dig up six thousand years from now. Which would you choose, Miss Quincy?"

Lena was extraordinarily pretty, and he had a theory that pretty girls were made to be talked to. Lena thought so too, yet all she said was, "I should think the digging would be very dirty work, though."

He glanced at her swiftly, and, though there was nothing unfriendly in the look, she felt an uncomfortable shiver. She fell into a miserable silence which she hardly broke when the others addressed her with a deliberate question or made some manifest effort to include her in topics introduced for her benefit. These attempts were only too apparent to her and rasped her soul the more. These people had such a perplexing way of saying whatever came into their heads. They were serious and frivolous at unexpected places. They were not at all "elegant"; they were natural, but their naturalness was not of Lena's kind. Mr. Lenox rose and smiled at his wife.

"I think I must go and have a look at my latest son," he said. "He is a very interesting person. At present he seems to be composed of two simple but diverse elements, a stomach and a sense of humor." At the door he paused again and said, "Have you seen our new coat of arms, Madeline?—two kids rambunctious?"

He went away and sounds of manifest hilarity floated down the stairs. And then dinner was announced, and he looked so good-tempered when he returned and gave Lena his arm that her spirits were again lifted up. She had never before been escorted to a meal as though it were an affair of ceremony.

"I met an old fellow to-day," her host began with persistent attempt to draw her out, "that told me that for two years he had dined on bread and milk. And then I felt that I was a favorite of fortune to be able fearlessly to storm the dining-room. Happy the appendix that has no history."

Lena giggled helplessly. Was it amusement that she saw in Mr. Lenox's eyes as he unfolded his napkin and surveyed her?

"It's an awesome thing, isn't it, to be living in a world darkened on one side by the servant question and on the other by the appendix, like Scylla and Charybdis?"

She found herself sitting down to face the mysteries of a meal whose type was different from any hitherto met in her brief experience of life. Her internal summing up was, "Of course I can't make any impression on Mr. Lenox. He likes the other kind of woman."

She looked at Mrs. Lenox, a woman of restraint and dark hair and straight lines, and contrasted her with herself, a thing of curves and sunshine colors. She did not know that a man never cares for a type of woman, but only for woman in the concrete. Poor little Lena! When the evening was over and she found herself at last in her too-splendid bedroom, she put arms and head down on the dressing-table and sobbed. These people were simple where she was complicated and complicated where she was simple. It was all uncomfortable and different. She thought of Jim Nolan's unfrilled conversation, of his clumsy, rather inane compliments, of his primitive amoeba-like type of humor. She saw the whole course of her life of mean shifts and wranglings with her mother; and though its moral niggardliness was unappreciated, its physical meagerness sickened her in contrast to the ease and beauty of these newer scenes. She must climb out of that life, somehow, by hook or crook; if this were the alternative, she must grow to its likeness, no matter how the birth-pangs hurt. She would face it. She would even rejoice in the opportunity to study these women and mold herself to their outward form of bien aise. She would—she would. Faint and far-away voices came to her, and she wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Lenox were discussing her and laughing, as she would do in their place, at her gaucheries. The meaner you are yourself, the easier it is to believe in the meanness of others. It was the most godlike of men who taught the godliness of all men. Lena could not imagine that these people could either like or respect her unless she were molded after their pattern and had as much as they had.

And Miss Elton! She hated Miss Elton for that irritating calmness, for that easy appropriation of the good things of life. She hated with a hate that tingled her spine and shook her small body. The tragedy of littleness made her grit her teeth as she thought of the unconscious girl now going to bed in the next room.

"I'll get even with her somehow," was Miss Lena's resolve. "Just let me get the hang of things a little, and I'll show her!" Miss Quincy was conscious that though she as yet lacked knowledge of their world, she had the advantage of the inheritance of guile.

But things! things! things! Lena thought a little of the irony of it—that all her life she had pined to be set in luxury, and yet now and here the very rugs and chairs and soft lights, the pictures of unrecognized subjects, the unfamiliar delicacies before her at the table, all seemed to loom up and crush her into insignificance by their importance and expensiveness. They were her masters still.

But it was not Lena's way to waste her time on abstractions. While she sat and watched her fire crumble away into ashes, she was chiefly occupied with the concrete, and there entered into her soul and took possession of its empty chambers and began to mold her to her own purposes the demon of social ambition, which is not the desire to do or to be, but rather the longing to appear to be and to seem to do—to take the chaff and leave the wheat.

Mastered by this powerful spirit, Lena actually did make great strides in the next few days. She learned to lounge quite comfortably, to pretend with verisimilitude, even to chatter a little, helped chiefly by a certain persistent light-weight on the part of Mr. Lenox; but the life was hard and the rewards meager. All the time she suspected Miss Elton and Mrs. Lenox of despising her, because she had so much less than they. Their kindliness was but an added insult.



CHAPTER XI

POLITICS AND PLAY

It was with joy that Lena stood, on Saturday night, with Mrs. Lenox and Miss Elton on the veranda, and hailed the advent of a large red automobile, which disgorged, besides Mr. Lenox, two dress-suit cases and two young men. Mr. Percival had liked her in her natural state and with him she would not need to "put on style". He was to her the shadow of a great rock in a desperately thirsty land. The only kind of pretense that he demanded was that she should be a dear innocent little girl, and that role came easily. She smiled and blushed and saw that there was a difference in his eyes when he greeted her from the look he bent on the other two ladies. It was balm to her spirit to think that this man, who admired her, was himself admired by the people whom she suspected of despising her; and that they did admire him was evident. They were hardly seated at dinner before Mrs. Lenox began:

"Dick, I have just been reading your last night's speech at the Municipal Club and I'm quite effervescing with it. I want to put you up on a pedestal and call the attention of Mr. Frank Lenox to you. He is one of the innumerable excellent gentlemen, over the length and breadth of the land, who are so busy running everything else that they let city politics go to the place that I'm not allowed to mention. It does my heart good to see you taking it up in earnest."

"It was a good speech, all right. I've read it, too," said Mr. Lenox. "And I'm all the wretch my wife calls me. I wish I'd heard you in your frenzy, Percival, though I have less faith in speeches and principles than she has. Reform is only a seed, you know, and most seeds never come to maturity or bear fruit. So most people justly doubt the reformer."

"Do you think we're thin sound-waves who do nothing but vibrate?" said Dick.

"Not at all; but I mean there are no such things in the world as abstractions. There are only men and women. Thoughts don't seethe; men and women seethe. Principles don't reform or corrupt; men and women do the reforming and corrupting. If you want to do things, don't begin by making the air resound with denunciations of wickedness; but make people believe in you and despise the other fellow. When they like you they'll begin to think about your ideas."

"I don't know any better way to make people believe in me than to stand up for what I think to be right," said Dick sharply.

"Stand up all you like," Lenox answered. "But the trouble with most good people is that they are contented to stand up. To arrive anywhere you've got to get right down and scrap."

"Oh, I'm only trying my muscle a bit," Dick answered laughingly. "I do not intend to do much generalizing except in the way of advertisement. I'm planning to put a spoke in the wheels of a few particular wrongs."

"That's what I hope. It's easier to fulminate than to fight."

"Then you'll be glad to know that Dick has already been answerable for galvanizing the Municipal Club into new life," Ellery put in. "It has been, as you know, a delightfully scholarly affair, any of whose members were quite capable of writing a text-book on civics; but Dick has roped in a lot of new men and stirred up the old ones."

"To what end?"

"Well, for two things; we have appointed committees to keep close tab on all of the proceedings of the council—to attend every meeting—and others to work up the ward organizations so that we shall be prepared to work intelligently and together by the next election. We want to get some clean business man, who is well known, to stand for mayor. There's a chance for you, Lenox."

Lenox laughed. "You've caught me there, haven't you? I am condemned for being still in the stage where I am content to mention things with indignation. However, if you have really gone so far, I'm more than willing to trail after you. I'll at least back you with a few facts, such as every business man knows, and I'm good for a substantial contribution toward any campaign you may undertake. And what I do there are others who will do, too."

"I'll not forget your promise," said Dick.

As usual, when men talk public affairs, the women had been content to listen, but Madeline's temperament was too strong for her restraint.

"It's all very well for you to put your hand in your pocket, Mr. Lenox," she cried, "but I don't want to hear you trying to undermine Dick's idealism. If he does not have the comfort of some purpose higher than the daily fight, how can he endure it? Don't persuade him to run through life on all fours and never look at the stars."

Mr. Lenox looked at her warmly.

"Thank the Lord for you women," he said. "You do not forget that there are stars and sky above the city smoke. If it were not for you and your kind, I'm afraid most of the world would be tied to the ground like serfs."

"Oh, I fancy nature has liberated a few of you, and I am glad to believe that Dick is among the free," she said.

She sat beside Dick, but she turned from him and spoke to Mr. Lenox. When Percival, softened by her words and the tone of belief in which they were spoken, looked up, he saw, not her eyes, but, across the table, those of Lena, big and sympathetic. As he gazed into them he saw all of Madeline's confidence in him, all of Madeline's ideals, but the more spiritual, the more feminine, because they were unspoken. Lena's eyes were eloquent even if she was silent; internally she was really resenting Madeline's tone, which seemed to her to assume that Dick was somehow Miss Elton's particular property. "Perhaps you needn't be so sure, missy," she thought.



After dinner, when the three men found their way to the drawing-room, Mrs. Lenox had started Madeline on a career of song. She was already in the midst of a curious weird Roumanian thing, and Norris made straight for the piano. Lena, ethereal in pale blue, was sympathetically listening to perfection. She had lost her look of incongruity with her surroundings. The dreamy eyes and the transparent skin found their setting in her filmy gown and the rich soft light. Dick drew in his breath. He seemed never to get used to her. Naturally he found a seat near her. She was his protegee.

"Don't you sing, Miss Quincy?" was his inevitable query.

And she replied with inward anguish, "Not at all."

"But I'm sure you do. You look like incarnate song," he persisted. "You're playing modest."

Lena cast down her eyes and said, "I am a very truthful little girl."

"Have you had a good time here?"

Then she looked up with kindling face. "Oh, so good! You can't know how I thank you, Mr. Percival. I know I owe it to you. I feel as though I were breathing the air I belong in, at last. It's so different from—but you know all about my life," said Lena brokenly. "And Mrs. Lenox is so sweet and kind, I just love her!"

"And Miss Elton?"

Lena stiffened and made no reply for an instant.

"Miss Elton is quite as clever as you men, isn't she?" Lena asked, in quite another tone of voice.

"Infinitely more so," said Dick cordially.

"Do you like it?" she asked in a breathless way.

"Why, yes, in Madeline," he answered. "She isn't a bit priggish, you know, but just naturally interested in everything good. Why? Don't you and she get on?"

Lena gave an uneasy little twist as though she did not enjoy the question, and she sighed.

"Why, frankly, I don't wholly. It's my own stupid little fault, of course. I'm not clever. She's very charming; but she gets a little tiresome to me."

"Does she?" said Dick ponderingly.

"It's very hateful of me to say such things about your particular friend," said Lena contritely. "Besides, I don't mean—what do I mean? I never thought it out. But it's so easy to tell you everything, Mr. Percival. And I think it's rather nice for a girl to be more silly and inconsequential part of the time." She laughed in a gurgling little fashion.

"I believe it is," said Dick speculatively, as he looked at her. "But Madeline's awfully jolly, you know. I've had more good times with her than with any other girl I know. No nonsense about her."

"That's it,—no nonsense," said Lena, and this time her laugh was not so pleasant; and Dick glanced across at Madeline with a kind of resentment. "It isn't like Madeline to go back on a fellow that way," he said to himself. "Of course she's had all kinds of advantages over this poor little thing; but it's small of her not to forget them. I trusted her to make things sweet; and for the first time she has disappointed me." He looked at Madeline with a distinct feeling of irritation as she rose from the piano. Mr. Lenox came and absorbed Lena, whom he was teaching to answer him saucily. Lena enjoyed this process, and it had inspired her to a really clever device, namely, to say vulgar little things in a whimsical way, as though she knew better all the time but wanted to be humorous. A good many other people have had the same brilliant idea, but it was none the less original to Lena, and it saved a lot of trouble and pretense. Norris and Miss Elton were hobnobbing and laughing at the other end of the room, and Dick followed them.

"Have you been out of town, Dick?" Madeline asked as he came up. "I tried to get you over the telephone a day or two ago, and they told me you were away."

"Yes." He laughed exultantly as he sat down. "I ran down to the penitentiary at Easton, just to make sure that I wasn't mistaken in a fact or two."

"What now?" asked Norris.

"I've been told that Barry—the lord of St. Etienne, Madeline—is at last tired of his humble but powerful place, and intends to show himself the master that he really is by running himself for our next mayor. Now even this docile city would hardly exalt a man whom it knew to be a criminal with a record of two years in the pen,—under another name, of course."

"Is it possible that Barry—"

"I've verified my facts. There is only one man in the city besides myself that knows this, and he's Barry's closest friend. There'll be a jolly old sensation in the bunch, when I spring my mine."

"If nobody knows it, how did you happen to find out?" asked Madeline impulsively.

There was just a moment's silence, and in that instant Norris had a flash of memory. He seemed to see Dick eying a letter addressed to William Barry, Esquire. Even while he remembered, he hated himself for daring to suspect that Dick would be capable of anything really shabby or dishonorable. Yet he did suspect—nay, more—he was sure; and the pause, the look of innocent inquiry on Madeline's face grew intolerable. If Dick would say nothing, he, Norris, must.

"We newspaper men," he rushed in gaily, "get hold of a vast amount of information that people flatter themselves is secret."

Percival looked at him and grinned. The girl turned slowly from her amused survey of Dick to study Ellery's face, which showed his discomfort in its flush. If a girl so gentle could feel scorn, Ellery would have thought he detected a touch of it. Certainly there was a hint of grieved surprise as she spoke, with her eyes still fixed on Norris.

"I'm very sorry, Dick," she said humbly. "I didn't mean to be prying. I've grown so used to asking you about everything. Mr. Norris ought to get a better mask."

She laughed lightly, but Ellery's face grew hotter. He wondered if she suspected him of some underhand trickery, and Dick realized it, yet kept amused silence. For an instant he hated Dick, and felt a wild impulse to defend himself; but second thoughts came quickly. She loved Dick and was therefore slow to impute evil to him. Dick loved her, and if he had for once played the petty knave, it was the place of a friend to protect her against that knowledge. That had been the instinctive reason for Norris' words, and he was not going back on them now. Yet Ellery's brain whirled to think how swiftly and by what simple means he might have toppled her slowly-ripening friendship into the mire. Ellery's imagination piled superlatives on every act and expression of his lady. If she looked light disapproval, it was worse than another's scorn. And Dick—for whom he had thrown away the thing he most valued in the world—Dick exclaimed gaily:

"Don't be suspicious, Madeline. Are all secrets disgraceful? Can't you trust your old friends?"

"Of course I'm not suspicious," she answered indignantly. "I only mean to beg your pardon, Dick, and I assure you again that I'm not curious, even. I asked this question as I have asked a thousand others, and that would have been the end of it——except for Mr. Norris' face."

She smiled as she turned away, and Dick lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "What difference does it make, anyway? What difference!" Dick didn't care whether she despised Ellery or not—he didn't care enough to speak an honorable word of explanation.

Mrs. Lenox came up crying, "Come, my triple alliance, Frank has carried Miss Quincy off to the billiard-room to give her a lesson. Let us go, too, to see that they do not get into mischief."

Dick hurried away to usurp Mr. Lenox's place, Madeline tucked her arm through that of Mrs. Lenox, and Norris was left to follow in outer darkness.

When bedtime came, Norris detained Percival.

"Come out for a smoke and a turn," he said. "The night is frosty, and you'll sleep all the better for a sniff of fresh air."

"What are you so glum about?" he asked, as Dick tramped in silence.

He was moody and enraged himself, but too proud to let his anger be seen.

"Not mad, most noble Norris, only thinking."

"Unfold your thoughts."

"I was thinking about Madeline," answered Dick, and Norris' heart thumped, for he too was thinking about Madeline. "I wonder if the kind of training that she and all girls of her class get is the thing, after all. I'm not talking about knowledge, you understand. I'm not such a cad as to grudge a girl the best there is in the world. But there's something else. It's the electric feminine, I suppose, that makes them the powers behind every throne. Fate is always represented in petticoats, you know. It sometimes seems as though the better-trained girls had all that side of them kept out of sight and polished into nothingness. Why are they taught to ignore the biggest power that's in them? Why, even that untrained little Miss Quincy is vivid with some sex-fascination that the more fortunate girls do not often have."

"Oh, she is only a colored light. The sunlight has all other colors latent in itself. How do you dare to make any comparison between Miss Quincy and your lovely Miss Elton?"

"Great Scott! Don't say 'my Miss Elton'!" Dick exclaimed. "Madeline doesn't belong to me." And he added politely, "Worse luck! She and I have always been like brother and sister. That's all there is to it."

"Are you sure?" demanded Ellery, with hot thrusts of mingled anguish and exultation stabbing through his bosom.

"Sure!" said Dick equably. "Why, even if I loved her, my dear fellow, I should know, from her unruffled serenity, that there was no hope for me. But Madeline isn't a very emotional creature, Ellery. She has too much brains for that,—a girl to cheer but not inebriate."

"I don't want a girl to make me drunk," ejaculated Norris.

"Well, I do," rejoined Dick.

"And though Miss Elton's emotions do not lie on the surface, I'll warrant they are there," Ellery went on as though letting off pent-up steam. "They are like her voice—like all her motions—neither loud nor faint, but exquisitely modulated. She seems to me like the embodiment of innocence,—not the innocence of ignorance, but the untaintedness of a mind that goes through the world selecting the best, as the bee takes honey and leaves the rest. There's no subject, so far as I can see, on which she is afraid to think; but I can not imagine that any subject would leave a deposit of mire in her mind."

"Gee whizz!" scoffed Dick. "How fluent your year of journalism has made you! What a great thing it is to be a serious-minded young man with eye-glasses, engaged, while yet in youth, in molding public opinion through the mighty agent of the press! And Madeline is another of the same kind."

"I wish I were of her kind," said Ellery stiffly. "You may poke fun at me as much as you like, Dick, but it's beneath you to jeer at her."

"You old duffer, aren't you two the best friends I have in the world? I like the clear and frosty mountain peaks."

"How did you find out about Barry?" Ellery asked abruptly.

"I do not have to tell you any more than Madeline." Seeing the grim look on Norris' face, Dick went on, "Let's go in and to bed. We seem to rub each other the wrong way to-night. If we don't separate soon we shall be having a French duel."



CHAPTER XII

AN ENGAGEMENT

The gates of the delectable world, it seemed to Lena, opened very slowly, and the mild fragrance and warmth that dribbled out to her through their narrow crack intensified her outer dreariness. Once in a while Mrs. Lenox or Miss Elton did her some little kindness. Occasionally Mr. Percival came to see her, but her shame of her mother and her home made these visits a doubtful pleasure. The sordid monotony of her work oppressed her every morning and depressed her every night. The little money that she earned fell like a snow-flake into the yawning furnace of her desires. Bitter is the fate of her to whom the goods of this world are the final good, and to whom those goods are denied.

There came a night when a certain great lady gave a dance, and Lena was deputed by the feminine head of the staff of the Star to report these doings of society. At first the chance looked to her delightful. She was to have a peep into the world of charm which was her dream and her ambition. She walked through the wide empty rooms with their soft lights and masses of flowers. She surveyed the dining-room, a wilderness of candles, orchids and maiden-hairs. She felt her feet sink luxuriously into the rugs, oh, so different from the threadbare ingrain carpet at home! She peeped into the ball-room, smilax-draped and glowing as if eager to welcome the guests to come. Through it all she carried a prim air, making businesslike notes on her little pad; but beneath her very demure exterior raged a storm of rebellion that these things should be and not be for her. The world was one huge sour grape; and yet she must smile as though it tasted sweet. There were blurs in her eyes as she stumbled up the back stairs, whither her way was pointed, that she might stand in a corner of the dressing-room where the now fast-arriving ladies were laying off their wraps. She swallowed a lump in her throat and winked hard in the attempt to forget or ignore the careless looks thrown at her by these ladies, as the maids removed the long cloaks made more for splendor than for warmth, or drew up the gloves on bare arms less lovely than her own. Many of the women looked twice at her, and she thought, and resented the fact, that they were surprised to see so much beauty. She could not be impersonal like the other reporters,—sensible girls, taking all this as a part of the day's work, and whispering names to one another, which Lena, too, must catch and treasure for her reportorial harvest. She must glance with swift inclusiveness at the more striking gowns, that later she may serve them up in the technical slapdash of the social column.

An hour of it left her faint and sick, not with cynical scorn of the spectacle, but with longing and self-pity. The crowd in the dressing-room was thinning now, but, whether she had finished her duty or not, she must escape. She could endure it no longer. Again she made her way down the narrow non-angelic stairs and out at a little side door. The night air was sweet and cold. She paused for a moment under the light of the porte-cochere to watch the string of carriages and the swirl of silk and laces that passed through the opening door, to listen to gusts of music that came to an abrupt end as the outside door shut on her.

Suddenly a figure loomed beside her, and she look up to see Dick Percival, straight and big, with the electric light gleaming on his white shirt-front, where his overcoat fell back. There was an unpleasant sternness in his deeply-shadowed eyes.

"Miss Quincy!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here!"

"I was sent to report it," said Lena weakly. "I'm going home now."

"Going home alone? Nearly midnight?"

"What else can I do? It's what the other girls—reporters, I mean—have to do."

"I shall walk home with you," said Dick sharply, and he drew her aside into the shadow, as though ashamed of being seen, and piloted her in silence to the sidewalk. Lena gave a little sob as he drew her arm through his, and still they walked on until the lights of the great house grew dim in the distance and only the quiet of the city streets by night enveloped them.

"Ought you not to go back now? You'll lose all the pleasure," said Lena timidly.

"Are you doing much of this kind of thing?" Dick demanded.

"This is the first time."

"I hope it will be the last," he answered glumly.

"So do I—I don't like it," whispered Lena.

"I—I can't endure it—Lena!" Lena started as she heard her name. "Lena, come over here into the park for just a moment. I want to talk to you."

"I can't. It's awfully cold, and—" said Lena, but she followed his lead as she remonstrated.

"And you have on a wretched little thin coat. Why aren't you decently dressed?"

"I haven't anything." Lena spoke under her breath. Dick stamped his foot as a substitute for a curse, whipped off his heavy great-coat, wrapped her in it, and pushed her down on to a bench.

"Lena," he said, standing squarely in front of her, "I know I've no right to hope for anything—no right to speak, even, when you know me so little; but, by Heaven, I can't endure to see you grinding out your life in this way, when there's even a chance that you will let me prevent it. You flower of a girl, you! Oh, Lena, I love you—I love you!"

He caught a small white hand that held together the heavy coat, and kissed it in a kind of frenzy, while Lena, rigid with desire to be quite sure what this signified, peered stolidly at him from over the big collar. She was too wise in her generation to leap to conclusions about the ultimate meaning of Dick's passion. She would not unbottle any emotion until she knew.

"Lena, if you could see how I love you, you'd trust me, I think, even with yourself. If you will be my wife—"

Something in Lena seemed to break, and she gave a gasp of relief and gratitude that was almost prayer and approached love. Then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, as Dick put both arms around her and drew her head to his shoulder.

"Lena, can you—do you love me a little?" he whispered, as if in awe.

"Oh, Mr. Percival," said Lena, "I do! How could I help it? But I could not dream of your loving poor little insignificant me."

"And how could I help it?" he said, mocking her. "Little, you may be, but this part is bigger than the whole world. You belong to me now, and I won't have you depreciate yourself."

"Oh, Mr. Percival, is it true?"

"Suppose you say 'Dick', and thank God that it is."

"Dick, Dick, Dick—it is," said Lena very softly, and she frankly put her arms around his neck, and her soft lips to his cold cheek, so that he lost himself in an ecstasy of delight and wonder.

So they sat in the doubtful shadow of a leafless maple, on a hard park bench, on a chilly November night, and though Dick was half frozen they were both more than happy. And they talked, in lovers' fashion, over the great fact, and how it all happened.

The mellow chimes of the city hall began to strike twelve—a most persistent hour, and Lena started into consciousness.

"Dick, I must go home," she said. "None of those girls, the nice girls, Miss Elton or any one like that, would do such an improper thing, would they?"

"I should think not," said Dick. "I wouldn't ask them to."

"And I wouldn't allow them," laughed Lena. "Now come, like a dear boy, and walk home with me."

"There are so many more things that I want to say," remonstrated Dick. "Stop a moment under this light and let me see your eyes, Lena. You'll have to look up. I want to talk plain business to you. First, you'll give up this reporting folly, won't you?"

"To-morrow," said Lena joyously.



"What an admirably obedient wife you are going to make! But I'm glad you hate it. If ever you feel a mad desire to take it up again, we'll go into the library together and write up Godey's Lady's Book. I want your life to be sweet and sheltered and filled with good things now."

"Oh, Dick, to think of that kind of a life coming to me!"

"It ought to have come to you long ago. It was bound to come, because it belongs to you. But things being as they are, you must give yourself into my keeping as soon as possible, sweetheart. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married at once, or nearly so, is there, dear?"

Here Lena hesitated, a little in doubt whether she ought to show maiden reluctance, and her lover went on with his argument.

"You are so alone, dear. Don't let any foolish hesitation prolong this bad time of yours."

"What about my mother?" demanded Lena, with a sudden descent to the region of hard facts.

"Do you want her to live with us?" Dick asked with a gulp.

"No, I don't!" Lena answered so sharply that Dick started in surprise, and she gathered herself together.

"It would take a long time for me to explain things to you," she went on in gentler accents. "But, Dick, mother and I are not very happy together. I'll tell you all about it some time. Perhaps she would be just as contented to live somewhere else."

"Very well," said Dick with a sense of relief. "We must make her comfortable, of course." In reality nobody else's comfort made a rap's difference just then. "I dare say we can find some jolly little apartment and somebody to take care of her."

"Hire somebody for her to find fault with," said Lena, with a return of acid. "What about your mother?"

"Oh, I couldn't let mother live anywhere but in the dear old home. It's too big and lonely for her by herself, so we must share it with her. And no other place would ever have the flavor of home, either to her or to me."

Lena stopped short in her progress.

"Does the house belong to you or to her?"

"Technically to me, I believe—not that it makes the slightest difference, dear."

"Then I should be mistress of it, not she?"

"I'm sure she'd be only too glad to turn the housekeeping cares over to your pretty little hands," said Dick, smiling, but a little uneasily. "She's a good deal of an invalid, you know. But there's plenty of time to think of all these details. I suppose you've had to worry about the little things until it's become a habit," he added in a kind of apology to himself.

"I've been a bond-slave so long," said Lena, "that I'd like to feel perfectly free and mistress of everything around me." She straightened her back and squared her soft shoulders.

"So you shall be!" answered Dick happily. "Even of your husband."

"Oh, that, of course," said Lena with an enchanting pout. "Now here we are, and it's very late. You must go. Good night."

"Good night," said Dick. "I suppose I must not keep you. To think I have the unbelievable good fortune to kiss you good night, sweetheart."

Mrs. Quincy turned over in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around at this hour of night. It ain't decent. But there!"

"I guess I know my business," Lena snapped.

She turned out the gas to undress in the dark rather than encourage her mother's conversation. She needed to think. An awful problem had just presented itself. How was she to get a trousseau?

It was in another mood that Dick Percival walked home. Whenever anything very great and wonderful happens to us, we are apt to bow our heads and cry, "What am I, that this should be given to me?" Doubtless he is the noblest man who most often feels this exultant humility. This was Dick's hour on the mountain. The depth of his own tenderness, the deliciousness of his passion swept over him like a revelation, as he asked himself in wonder how it could be that this love had sprung up at once, like Aphrodite from the waves, where no one could have suspected such a marvel. He himself had been without realization of how his passing interest had deepened its roots until now they fed on every part of him. Love had startled him like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky, but it was evident that it was no light that flashed out and then disappeared. It had come to stay.

Then came self-reproach. He remembered with hot cheeks that he had actually joked with Ellery about her in early days, and let himself be bantered in return—cad that he was, incapable of appreciating at first sight the woman he was to love. He had thought her an exquisite trifle, almost too illusive to be taken seriously. Now that very illusiveness was the thing that gripped him closest, like poetry and music and all the finer elements of life, the most impossible to explain, the most supreme in their dominion. Beauty meant all this. He found himself repeating, "Beauty is truth. Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." And Lena was beautiful. How beautiful! He trembled in flesh and spirit at the vision of her face turned up to him out of the black November darkness, at the memory of the fine texture of her cheeks and lips.

He did not stop to ask himself whether he and Keats were agreed in their definition of beauty. Moreover, poor Keats never had the delight of anything so pink and golden and blue-eyed as Lena Quincy.



CHAPTER XIII

AN AWAKENING

A little scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother, seemed to be in continual need of her.

She found that lady lying in her favorite chair in the library—the chair that had been her refuge in the days of her early widowhood, that had comfortably housed her when books carried her away from her own world of sorrows and problems into the world of illusions, the chair in which she had dreamed of the great things that were to come into a younger life, not her own, and yet deeply her own,—her son's.

Now she lay back in it with clasped hands, thinner than usual and with eyes sadder. Madeline came in like a young Hebe, glowing with health and vigor, and infinitely tender toward fragility.

"You are ill, dear mother Percival," cried the girl, dropping to her knees and slipping an arm behind her friend's back in an unconscious attitude of protection.

Mrs. Percival's fingers followed the soft curve that the girl's hair made around her forehead.

"No, dear," she said slowly, "but I had something to tell you. I wanted to speak to you myself, before any one else had the chance."

"Please tell me quickly."

"So many of my dearest hopes have come to nothing!" Mrs. Percival went on, with a little bitterness that Madeline thought unlike her. "Each blow, as it falls, seems the hardest to bear. I've tried to accept whatever happens, graciously. It isn't always easy, Madeline, dear."

"Yes?" said Madeline.

"Dick—"

"Is anything the matter with Dick?" Madeline rose with a little cry.

"Dick does not think so," his mother answered. "My child, you have seen something of this little Miss Quincy?"

Madeline's eyes dropped for the tenth of a second and a heaviness took possession of her body; then she lifted her head bravely.

"Yes," she answered, "I know Miss Quincy—quite the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."

"Very beautiful," echoed Mrs. Percival. "So I too thought, the only time I ever saw her. Well, Madeline, what I have to tell you is that Dick is to marry her."

The girl saw that the older woman's hands were trembling, and she laid her own warm young palms over the cold old ones.

"I hope Dick will be very happy," she said softly. "I—I'm not a bit surprised. We ought to have seen that it was coming. And Dick loves her!"

And she laid her cheek against Mrs. Percival's, but the other pushed her away and stared into the eyes so near her own.

"And you can take it so quietly?" she asked. "Forgive me, dear, if for once I break down the barriers of reserve. I love you so much, let me be frank. Surely you know what I hoped, what I thought."

"You thought Dick and I loved each other," Madeline said bravely.

"I hoped so. Heaven knows I hoped so."

"We are too good friends for that, dear Mrs. Percival. One needs a little something unexplored and unexpected in a lover; don't you think so? Dick and I knew each other in kilts and pig-tails."

"Well, it seems I am as much of an old fool as Dick is a young one," Mrs. Percival said bitterly. "I'm good for nothing but to lie here and comfort myself with dreams."

"You're an old dear, and Dick is a young one," Madeline tried to laugh. "And Miss Quincy is exquisite—charming."

"An old fool," repeated Mrs. Percival. "Now listen, sweetheart! If Dick marries this girl, I have no intention of forgetting that he is my son, and that she is his wife. I shall do all I can to help her to be worthy of him; but before that happens, I am going to have the satisfaction of speaking to just one person in the world—you—exactly what I think about it. From what Mrs. Lenox told me, after her visit in the country, and from what I saw myself, I think she is a vulgar little image overlaid with tinsel."

"Oh, don't!" Madeline cried. "You and I do not really know her, but we can trust Dick. He's too fine himself to be attracted by anything but fineness. She must have character to have made the fight she has with fate."

"Attracted by character! Pins and figs! My son is just like all the others, I am finding. He's attracted by pink flesh. And as for heart and soul—all the women that Dick has known well have been women of refinement. He takes their purity and nobility for granted, as a part of womanhood. He thinks he's marrying you and me. His reason has nothing to do with it."

For the moment Madeline had no answer, and Mrs. Percival went on:

"It's foolish to care what people say about your tragedies. Oh, you needn't shake your head. This is a tragedy, Madeline. And I do care about the world. I hate to think of the whispering and gossiping because my son—my son—has fallen a victim to a cheap adventuress."

"Nonsense," Madeline broke out. "Miss Quincy isn't an outcast, just because she has had the world's cold shoulder. And people aren't so silly as to let such external things prejudice them."

"Don't mistake me, dearie. I'm not taking exception to the girl because she works. We're all—those of us that are good for much—the mothers and wives and daughters of men who work, and we share in their labor. I could admire and love a real worker, but this butterfly creature affects me like a parasite—a woman who wants to get and not to give. It's just because I feel that she isn't a real worker that I am afraid of her."

"And that, even if it is true, may be only the result of sordid surroundings." Madeline's heart misgave her, for she had learned to respect Mrs. Percival's judgments. "She'll blossom out and add womanliness to beauty in such an atmosphere as you and Dick will give her."

"Spontaneous generation will not do everything. You must have the germ of a heart before you can develop the whole thing. Do you think you can really change a girl who has lived for twenty years in the wrong attitude?"

"You are judging cruelly," Madeline cried. "Of course every one has the germs of good."

"And did it ever occur to you that the kind of love that Dick will give his wife may be too good—so far above a coarse-grained woman that it will not touch her comprehension? A lower grade of man might bring her out better."

"It's impossible to think of so exquisite a creature being coarse-grained," Madeline exclaimed. "I, for one, am going to believe in her, and in a year, with you and Dick and mother and Mrs. Lenox and myself all backing her, you'll be proud of her loveliness and tact. I shall be only Cinderella's ugly sister. But you must not ever quite forget me, Mrs. Percival." And Madeline laughed most cheerfully.

Mrs. Percival smiled in return. "Well, I have had my explosion. It's extraordinary what a relief it is, once in a while. I'm not often so guilty, am I, Madeline? After all, I've told you my fears rather than my convictions. The situation does not seem so bad, now that I have said even more than I think. Hereafter I shall find it easy to hold my tongue."

"And you will try to like her?" Madeline asked anxiously.

"Of course, my dear. I shall try harder than any one else. I am going in state to pay her a motherly call this very afternoon, feeling all the time like a plated volcano." Mrs. Percival leaned back with a small moue, then sat up again. "There's my boy's latch-key in the lock now," she said.

Dick halted at the door when he saw the two and knew that they must have been talking of him. He had something of an air of defiance thickly overlaid with innocence; but Madeline went to meet him with hands outstretched.

"Dick," she exclaimed, "I congratulate you with all my heart. She's the prettiest creature in the world."

Dick, manlike, regarded this as the highest possible tribute to his beloved and glowed in return. His defiance dropped like a shell and he shook Madeline's hands with enthusiasm.

"You're a trump," he said. "I shall not forget how good you have been to her; and I hope you two will always be friends."

"I should think so! I should like to see your trying to prevent us, Dick," said Madeline saucily. "And your mother is going to love her, too, when—"

"When we are married," Dick answered with silly masculine self-consciousness.

"And that is to be soon!"

"As soon as I can manage it. I can't bear to have Lena living as she does now; and there's no reason why we shouldn't cut it short."

"No reason at all. I don't wonder you feel so. Good-by, both of you."

Dick saw her to the door and Madeline walked out with her usual deliberate serenity.

She found her way home with bottled-up emotions, as a hurt child holds in the cry until he gets to the spot where mother's breast waits for the inarticulate sobs. Everything she had done and said seemed to have been the act of some far-away self, that had hardly any connection with the real Madeline. The earth danced around her and she was incapable of real thought. And yet the well-trained, automatic body that was her outer shell conducted itself with reason. It even stopped in the living-room to kiss her mother; it apparently skimmed a new copy of Life; it convoyed her slowly up stairs to her own room, where it shut and locked her door. But here her real self resumed control, as she threw herself into an easy chair by the window and stared out at the desolation of December where dead leaves went whirling in elfin eddying clouds.

For a few moments she let the solar system rock and reel around her, and watched everything she had thought stable go up in smoke. Then upon the world, swirling and pounding meaninglessly, there came an intense quiet. She knew that the outer world was as serene as ever; but a great throbbing pain within showed her that it was only her own little atom of self that was revolutionized. Nature was not upset. There was still order for her to hold fast to. For the first time she began to analyze herself and her emotions.

She could not say that she had planned her future, but it had seemed so natural and inevitable that she had accepted it without planning, almost without thought. Dick and she had belonged to each other ever since they could remember. At ten they had been outspoken lovers, and ever since there had been that intimate comradeship that seemed to her to imply the unspoken relation, behind, above, below. All this she had taken for granted, like mother-love and her own dawning womanhood. And now Dick, the chief corner-stone of her edifice, was torn away, and the whole airy structure toppled and dissolved.

"I've been assuming all this," she said to herself, "and marriage isn't a thing to take for granted. Shouldn't I have resented it if Dick had appropriated me as though I belonged to him and had lost my freedom of choice? I've been unfair to him. And now—if I should never marry—there are surely plenty of good things left in the world. But are there?"

Madeline had always been characterized by those who knew her as lovely and placid. And why not? What else should life draw out of a girl of normal nature, surrounded by protecting love, given the good things of life as by right, shielded from the knowledge of evil, never facing a problem more exciting than those of Euclid. But now something began to stir in the unknown depths of her nature. For the first time in her life she had had a blow. There rose before her a vision of endless maidenhood. She saw herself as she had seen other women—uninteresting women, she had thought them. Now they seemed to her like tragedies—women whose lives did not count, either to themselves or to the world, middle-aged, somber, unrelated. To be childless, to eat and dress and wear the semblance of womanhood, even to play a little part in society, and yet to be but half a woman! To be no link in the generations! This was unendurable. The first demand of every soul is for life, and yet life is life only when it is part of the future. To live oneself one must live in others. All the mother hidden in the depths of her rose and cried out against any destiny that shut her out from the great stream of humanity.

"I shall be a side-eddy in the current. I shall grow stagnant and slimy and lead nowhere. And the rushing waters will go leaping and laughing past."

She got up and moved restlessly up and down the room. She looked again out of the window at the sober end of the winter day. In the tree branches that clattered outside, her eyes fell on an empty nest.

"And am I to be such a thing?" she said. "Surely all the world must bow down in pity for the solitary woman." Some half-forgotten lines came back to her:

"Mine ear is full of the rocking of cradles. For a single cradle, saith Nature, I would give every one of my graves."

By her little practice piano her eyes fell on the pages of Schubert's unfinished symphony.

"Unfinished!" she said. "And yet even there is the phrase that comes and comes again, sweeter and more full of meaning in every renewed variety. So I must have love to play through my life, or else it will be nothing but a medley. It must be my music's theme; even if the symphony is unfinished. Are there women who can do without it, who can take a life alone and make it sweet and satisfying? Not I, oh God, not I! I'm no exceptional creature. I'm just a plain woman. And if life doesn't give me wifehood and motherhood, it gives me nothing. I wonder if all women feel this way. This pretty little Lena,—is she bursting with primal need of giving and taking? At any rate she has put something in Dick's face that was never there before—that I'd give my soul to see in a man's face when he looks at me."

Hitherto the world had ambled along in an amiable way; and now it suddenly turned and delivered a blow in the face. Every one is destined to receive such blows, some get little else. But the test comes in the way they are received. You may use belladonna as a poison, or you may use it to help the blind to see. So when pain comes, you may take it to your bosom and suckle it till it becomes a fine healthy child, too heavy for you to carry; or cast out the changeling and leave it on the doorstep to die. It matters little how much anguish skulks about the outside of life, so long as it finds no lodgment in the sacred shrines of the heart. Madeline met her first grief and fought it off; and, even while she thought it had given her a mortal wound, came the revelation of the powerlessness of the poor thing. She put her arms down on the window-sill to cry deliberately, but something dried her tears.

"I couldn't put that look in Dick's face, but could he put it in mine? Was this taking of things for granted the best love of which I am capable? I've found out to-day that there are all kinds of things in me that I have never dreamed of before, and passion is one of them, and rebellion. Great heavens! I might have married him and been serene and never found things out."

She seemed to be looking at a new Madeline; and while she stared, startled, this self grew greater and stronger.

"This is not the end of life; it is the beginning," she whispered. "I've been looking down the wrong road. Dick has no such power over me as to consign me to misery everlasting. I am mistress of my own fate. I have not handed it over to him. Happiness is not a thing to get. It is a state of mind to live in. It is my own affair, not that of others." She rested her chin in her hands and fell into a girl's day-dream, in which the nightmare was forgotten.

Twilight fell at last, and faint sounds came up to her to remind her that down stairs there were well-beloved people who did not know and should never know of her little vigil. Her father must be coming home. It was time for her to put on her armor and go down. Armor is one of the necessities of life. If we can't wear it in steel plates on the outside, we must mask the face with impenetrability and the manner with pretense. Never let the heart be vulnerable. Yet, try as we may, something of our weakness is laid bare. Hereafter Miss Elton might be serene, but would never again be placid.

But now she was quite herself.

Down stairs her father read the paper and her mother sat near the big table, hem-stitching. For them everything was settled, and settled satisfactorily. They knew whom they were going to marry, and whether love was to be a success, and where they were going to live, and what they were going to do. Henceforth, for them the game meant only pleasantly plodding onward along paths already marked out. Just a wholesome common marriage, planted with the seed of love and watered with small self-sacrifices. How could they possibly remember the restlessness of youth, to whom all these things are hidden in the mists of the future, and who is longing for everything and sure of nothing?

Madeline sat down at the piano and her hands fell inevitably into phrasing the "unfinished symphony." She became aware that her mother laid down the stitching and Mr. Elton's evening paper ceased to crackle. As she stopped her father stood behind her. He bent and kissed the little parting in her hair.

"Your music grows sweeter and richer day by day, little girl," he said. "I suppose as more comes into your life you have more to give. I'm glad that you give it out to us old folks at home."

Madeline wheeled about and sprang to her feet.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "if you have finished with your stupid old paper, I'll give you a real piece of news. It's a 'scoop' too, for no reporter has got hold of it yet. Dick Percival is engaged to little Miss Quincy."

Both father and mother stared at her in silence. She stood a little behind the chandelier, where the light shone full on her face, and in neither mouth nor eyes could they see the trace of shadow. On the contrary, there was a radiant loveliness about her that astonished those that loved her best.

Then Mr. Norris was announced.

Now when Miss Elton had her first peep into her soul, and so stirred up the possibilities in her nature, she also awoke to new insight into what was going on behind other people's eyes. The day when she could look a young man squarely in the face and say to him whatever she thought had passed. The period of unconscious girlhood, much prolonged in her case, came to an end. Since, in this world, shadow goes with sunshine, so demons tag after angels; and with the dawn of her sweeter womanhood, Madeline developed a new spirit of contrariety and coquetry that astonished no one so much as herself.

When Mr. Norris came in, his apologetic glance told her at once that she had hardly spoken to him since she had turned up her straight little high-bred nose and informed him and Dick that she despised their underhand ways; told her, also, what had not dawned on her before, that here was an abject creature, and that it was the province of womanhood to batter and buffet him who is down, perhaps in secret fear of that day when outraged manhood will rise and claim a tyranny of its own.

So she put out her hand with that stiffness that holds at arm's length and said:

"Oh, how dy' do, Mr. Norris," just as though they had never sailed together in dual solitude, and she allowed her lip to curl in evidence of her disapproval of the much warmer greeting of her elders.

She sat down and eyed and tapped a small bronze slipper, while she ignored the reproachful glances of her mother at her rank desertion of conversational duties. Her father hardly noticed it. He himself so liked young men that he frequently forgot that his daughter and not himself might be the object of their quest. So he plunged cheerfully into an animated discussion of the new tide in civic politics, while Norris dully and conscientiously tried to bear up his end.

Ellery's eyes, however, as well as the thoughts behind those superficial thoughts that guided his words, were absorbed in the other side of the room, where Miss Elton canvassed with her mother the merits of various embroidery silks. She was lovelier than ever. He had thought her perfect before, but to-night she had added a sheen to perfection and made herself entrancing, both reposeful and vivid. He wondered if she had heard of Dick's engagement and if her color covered a pale heart.

Suddenly she flung up her head impatiently, and came behind her father's chair to clap a small hand over his mouth in the middle of a sentence of which Norris had entirely lost track.

"Father, father," she cried, "do you think Mr. Norris wants to come here and maunder over stupid politics all the evening, after he has been writing stupid editorials about them all day? They are stupid—I've read some of them." She smiled at the young man. "Wouldn't you both infinitely rather hear me sing?"

Mr. Elton kissed the offending hand before he put it gently down.

"I know I should."

Norris sprang up.

"May I turn your music?" he asked eagerly, but she shook her head as she moved away.

"There isn't going to be any music to turn."

She began to sing the same little Roumanian song that he remembered on their last evening in the Lenox house, and his spirits, lifted for a moment by her smile, went down again.

"Into the mist I gazed and fear came on me, Then said the mist, 'I weep for the lost sun.'"

She sang passionately and he could have cried aloud. It was true then that she was grieving for Dick.

"The music is uncanny, isn't it?" she said, as she ended and found him near her. "How does it make you feel?"

"If I should find an image for my feelings just at present, you would scorn me for my base material thoughts."

"Find it," she commanded.

"I think I feel like a mince-pie—a maddening jumble of things delicious and indigestible."

She laughed and grew friendly. This, he thought, is, after all, her permanent mood; but before he could take advantage of it another caller, Mr. Early, appeared; and again she basely deserted Norris to the mercies of her father and mother, and devoted herself to the evident beatification of the apostle of the new in art.



CHAPTER XIV

THE RETURN OF RAM JUNA

One gloomy evening in January Mr. Early sat alone. He had so many tentacles spread out through the world of men and women that solitude was unusual to him. Indeed it had often occurred to him, as an example of the fallacy of ancient sayings, that there was nothing in that old epigram about the loneliness of the great. The higher he had risen in the scale of greatness the more insistently and persistently had the world invaded his life, until even his appreciation of solitude had atrophied.

This particular day had been a hard one. The problems of glass and rugs were unusually complicated, and the interruptions to continuous thought more numerous than usual. Moreover, without warning, like a meteor of magnificent proportions, Swami Ram Juna, with many paraphernalia of travel, had suddenly reappeared to ask for that once-proffered hospitality. Not without state and courtesy could such a being be welcomed; and courtesy takes time.

Finally, to discuss the matter of the outer cover for the next issue of The Aspirant, a henchman invaded his privacy. Sebastian looked over a pile of designs, and chose a flat but lurid young woman, in a sphinx-like attitude against a background of purple trees. Then came the more difficult question of an aphorism to be printed on the table against which the lurid young woman leaned. It was the habit of The Aspirant to convey, even on its outside, wisdom to the world, and the thinking up of smart young aphorisms is not always an easy task. Mr. Early at length evolved: "It has been said of old: 'Know thyself.' I say unto thee, 'Forget thyself. Know thy brother.'"

"That sounds fairly well," said Mr. Early wearily, and he dismissed the henchman and settled himself in a particularly benevolent arm-chair, in front of a cheerfully-roaring fire. The place was a remote room, decorated not for public inspection but for comfort. Mr. Early was tired. A certain new question had been waiting in the antechambers of his mind, and to-night he determined to give it leisurely attention; for of late it had several times been borne in him that he was getting along in years and that if he did not intend to die a bachelor, it behooved him to move swiftly. The thought had been quickened into livelier vitality when, at a dinner a few nights before, he had watched the face and studied the figure of Miss Madeline Elton.

She was certainly a rare creature. There was a verve, a magnetic quality to her, that he hardly remembered before. Her beauty, her nobility, her purity he felt to be the artistic attributes of womanhood. No, he not only admired them, they charmed him.

"Yes," said Mr. Early. "By Jove, if she'd lift her little finger at me I believe I'd make a fool of myself over her! And why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I let myself go? I've got everything else now. A woman of her bigness likes a man who can do things and who controls other men. By Heaven, I believe we were made for each other!"

Mr. Early grew so excited by the strength of his new passion that he sprang to his feet and walked up and down to luxuriate in the idea.

Proportionately great was his annoyance when a knock invaded his self-communion, and his man's face appeared at the door to tell him that Mr. Murdock would like to speak with him. While he was yet opening his mouth to anathematize Mr. Murdock, that gentleman entered, familiar and cheerful.

The man who came in was, in his way, a force almost as great and as worthy of regard as Mr. Sebastian Early himself—in fact no less a personage than the power behind the throne of that uncrowned king, William Barry. Though he did not sit on Olympian heights and play with the thunderbolts of jobs and contracts, as Barry did, yet he had an occasional way of interfering in the game, just as in Greek legend Fate loomed large behind the back of Zeus.

Mr. James Murdock was a business genius who dipped into politics, not for office nor yet for glory, but only for gain. Originally a partner of Mr. Early's, when, just as some one else invented a better hook-and-eye, their business was sold out, Murdock let his many-sidedness run riot in a dozen directions. While Mr. Early's abilities led him to "get all there was in it" out of the public on its imaginative side, Murdock worked out his fortune in more practical necessities. St. Etienne was a western city, full of growth and therefore full of needs. There were miles and miles of asphalt to be laid; there were wooden sidewalks crying out to be replaced by stone; there were lighting and watering and park-making; and it was astonishing in how many companies, doing these things, Mr. Murdock had a share, and how frequently his companies secured the contracts for doing them. When rival contractors attempted these public works, there were apt to be strikes and complications which seldom occurred when Murdock had the job. Then all went smoothly and merrily. And this shows how friendship rules the world. For Murdock was the friend of Barry; and Barry was the friend of the strike-ordering walking-delegates. If these three elements, representing the city fathers, the contractors and the laborers, were all satisfied with the way the city's work was being done, who remained to cavil? Certainly not the citizens. St. Etienne's wheels moved almost without friction.

But Murdock went further than this. His was a fine instinct for organization. He used Barry like a fat pawn, moved down to the king row, until the boss alderman was able to look abroad on his noble army of small officeholders and contractors, who could be trusted, not only to vote as directed (for to vote is a simple and ineffectual thing), but also to bring up their hundreds and thousands of well-trained dogs to vote, and, if need be, to vote again, and then to see that the votes were properly counted.

It was to Murdock's far-reaching mind that Barry was indebted for the regulation of interests by which almost every man who served the city, and particularly those who served it badly and expensively, was tied to Barry by ties closer than those of brotherly love. Whether official, contractor or working-man, they owed job or contract to the influence that Barry seemed to exercise in the councils of the city. It was by Murdock's advice that the better residence district was well-policed, well-lighted, well-paved and generally contented with things as they were. By Murdock's suggestion the city's interests were zealously guarded in the discussions of the council.

When a committee of the Municipal Club visited that august body to listen to a debate on a certain paving contract, they could not help being impressed by the large knowledge of materials and methods displayed by their representatives, and the unanimity with which they agreed that a particular bid was, if not the cheapest, the most deeply satisfying of those offered. What they could not know was the ingenuity with which Murdock saved both the brain and the time of the council by arranging its debate beforehand. But the committee did mention, among themselves, the incongruity between the actual condition of St. Etienne's streets and the wisdom of the Solons.

But, though Murdock's was the brain to originate and systematize schemes of plunder for which Barry alone had been incapable, once in a while the "boss" grew restive under dominion, in spite of the knowledge that, if he should once break with the master mind, he would soon make some fatal mistake and another would become the whole show. So, if the reign of King Barry was for long temperate and orderly, it was because Murdock impressed upon him that royal arrogance breeds discontent and finally revolt, and that by big rake-offs, on the quiet, enough could be gained to satisfy the ambition of a well-regulated man; and that while plundering was done with decency, the reform-talk of the Municipal Clubites would prove no more useful nor ornamental than a Christmas card.