"Hottest night of the season so far, I think," responded Anderson.

"I'm about beat out with it," said Eastman, lighting his cigar with no difficulty in the dead atmosphere. He threw himself sprawling on the step at Anderson's feet, without any invitation. "Whew!" he sighed.

"It 'll be hotter than hades in the City to-morrow," he remarked, after a moment's silence.

Anderson muttered an assent. He was considering as nervously as a woman whether he should say anything to this boy. While he was hesitating, young Eastman himself led up to it.

"Saw you in the drug store just now," he remarked.

"Yes; you were with—"

"Bessy Van Dorn—yes. Pretty girl?" Eastman spoke with the insufferable air of patronizing criticism of extreme masculine youth towards the opposite sex.

"Very," replied Anderson, dryly.

The young fellow gave a furious puff at his cigar. The smoke came full in Anderson's face. "Passed here the other evening with two other young ladies while you were sitting here," young Eastman remarked, in a curious tone. It was full of pain, but it had a reckless, devil-may-care defiance in it also.

"Yes," said Anderson, "I think you did. About a week ago, wasn't it?"

"Week ago yesterday. Well, I suppose you've heard the news. It's all over town."

"You mean—"

"She's engaged."

Anderson felt bewildered. "Yes?" he replied, questioningly.

"She's engaged," the young fellow repeated, with a sobbing sigh, which he ended in a laugh. "They all do it, sir."

Anderson was too puzzled to say anything.

"Suppose you've heard about the man?" said Eastman, in a nonchalant voice. He inhaled the smoke from his cigar with an air of abstract enjoyment.

Anderson unassumedly stared at him. "Why, I thought it was—"

"Who?" asked the young fellow, eagerly.

Anderson hesitated.

"Who did you think it was?" Eastman persisted. He had a pitiful wistfulness in his face upturned to the older man. It became quite evident that he had a desire to hear himself named as the accepted suitor.

"Why, I thought that you were the man!" Anderson answered.

"Everybody thought so, I guess," the young fellow said, with an absurd and childlike pride in the semblance in the midst of his grief over the reality. "But—" He hesitated, and Anderson waited, looking above at the play of lightning in the sky and smoking. "She's gone and got engaged to a man old enough to be her father. Lord! I guess he's older than her father—old enough to be her grandfather!" cried the young fellow, with a burst of grief and rage and shame. "Yes, sir, old enough to be her grandfather," he repeated. His voice shook. His cigar had gone out. He struck a match and the head flew off. He swore softly and struck another. Sometimes a match refusing to ignite changes mourning to wrath and rebellion. The third match broke short in two and the burning head flew down on the sidewalk. "Wish I had hold of the man that made 'em," young Eastman said, viciously; and in the same breath: "What can the girl be thinking of, that she flings herself away like that? Hang it all, is a woman a devil or a fool?"

Anderson removed his cigar long enough to ask a question, then replaced it. "Who is the man?" he inquired, in a slow, odd voice.

"Oh, he is an old army officer, a major—Major Arms, I believe his name is. He's somebody they've known a long time. He lives in Kentucky, I believe, in the same place where the Carrolls used to live and where she went to school. Oh, it's a good match. They're just tickled to death over it. Her sister feels rather bad, I guess, but, Lord! she'd do the same thing herself, if she got the chance. They're all alike." The boy said the last with a cynical bitterness beyond his years. He sneered effectively. He crossed one leg over the other and puffed his relighted cigar. The last match had ignited. Anderson said nothing. He was accommodating his ideas to the change of situation. Presently young Eastman spoke again. "Well," he said, in a tone of wretched conceit, "girls are as thick as flowers, after all, and a lot alike. Bessy Van Dorn is a beauty, isn't she?"

"I don't think she's much like the other," said Anderson, shortly.

"She's full as pretty."

Anderson made no reply.

"I don't believe Bessy would go and marry a man old enough to be her grandfather," said the boy, with a burst of piteous challenge. Then suddenly he tossed his cigar into the street and flung up his hands to his head with a despairing gesture. "Oh, my God!" he groaned.

"Be a man," Anderson said, in a kind voice.

"I am a man, ain't I? What do you suppose I care about it? I don't want to marry and settle down yet, anyway. I like to fool with the girls, but as for anything else— I am a—man. If you think I am broken up over this, if anybody thinks I am— Lord—" The young fellow rose and squared his shoulders. He looked down at Anderson. "There's one thing I want to say," he added. "I don't want you to think—I don't want to give the impression that she—that she has been flirting, or anything like that. She hasn't. Of course she might have been a little franker, I will admit that, for I have been there a good deal, but I don't suppose she thought it was anything serious, and it wasn't. She was right. But she did not flirt. Those girls are not that sort. Great Scott! I should like to see a man venture on any little familiarities with them—holding hands, or a kiss, or anything. They respect themselves, those girls do. They have been brought up better than the Banbridge girls. Oh no, she hasn't treated me badly or anything, and of course I don't care a damn about her getting married, only I'll be hanged if I like, on general principles, to see a pretty young girl throwing herself away on a man old enough to be her father. It's wrong—it's indecent, you know." Again the boy's voice seemed bursting with wrath and grief and shame.

Anderson rose, went into the house, and was out again in a few seconds. He had a cigar-box in his hand. "Try one of these," he said. "It's a brand new to me, and I think it fine. I think you'll agree with me."

"Thanks," said Eastman, with a sound in his voice like a heart-broken child's. He almost sobbed, but he took the cigar gratefully. "Well, I must be going," he said. "Mother 'll wonder where I am. It was too deuced hot to go to bed, so I've been strolling around. But I've got to turn in sometime. These nights are too hot to sleep, anyhow."

"Yes, they are pretty tough," said Anderson. "Wish we could have a shower."

"So do I. Say, this cigar is a dandy."

"I thought you'd like it. Of course it isn't a cigar that everybody would like. It requires some taste, perhaps a cultivated taste."

"Yes, that's so," replied the boy, with a pleased air. "I guess it does. I shouldn't say every man would appreciate this."

"Have another," said Anderson, and he pressed a couple into the hot young hand, which was greedily reached out for a little solace for its owner's wounded heart and self-love.

"Thanks. I suppose I have quite a good taste for a good cigar. I don't believe it would be very easy to palm off a cheap grade on me. Good-night, Mr. Anderson."

"Good-night," said Anderson, and was conscious of pity and amusement as the boy went away and his footsteps died out of hearing. As for himself, he was in much the same case as before, only the time had evidently arrived for him to dismiss his dreams and the lady of them. He did not think so hardly of her for being willing to marry the older man as the disappointed young man did. He considered himself as comparatively old, and he had a feeling of sympathy for the other old fellow who doubtless loved her. He was prepared to think that she had done a wiser thing than to engage herself to young Eastman, especially if the man was rich enough to take care of her. The position would be good, too. He thought generously of that consideration, although it touched him in his tenderest spot of vanity. "She will do well to marry an ex-army officer," he thought. "She will have the entree to any society." Presently he arose and went up-stairs to bed. He passed roughly by the nook where he had so often fancied her sitting, and closed, as it were, the door of his fancy against her with a bang. He set a lamp on a table at the head of his bed and read his political economy until dawn. It was, in fact, too hot for any nervous person to sleep. Now and then his thoughts wandered, the incessant drone of the night insects outside seemed to distract his attention from his book like some persistent clamor of nature recalling him to his leading-strings in which she had held him from the first. But resolutely he turned again to his book. At dawn he fell asleep, and woke an hour later to another steaming day.



Chapter XV

"I think we shall have thunder-showers to-day," Mrs. Anderson remarked, as she poured the coffee at the breakfast-table. Even this old gentlewoman, carefully attired in her dainty white lawn wrapper, had that slightly dissipated, bewildered, and rancorous air that extreme heat is apt to impart to the finest-grained of us. Her fair old face had a glossy flush, her white hair, which usually puffed with a soft wave over her temples, was stringy. She allowed her wrapper to remain open at the neck, exposing her old throat, and dispensed with her usual swathing of lace. She confessed that she had not been able to sleep at all; still she kept her trust in Providence, and would scarcely admit to discomfort. "I am sure there will be showers, and cool the air," she said, with her sweet optimism. As she spoke she fanned herself with the great palm-leaf fan with a green bow on the stem, which she was never without during this weather. "It is certainly very warm so early in the season. One must feel it a little, but it is always so delightful after a shower that it compensates."

"You are showing a lovely Christian spirit, mother," Anderson returned, smiling at her with fond amusement, "but don't be hypocritical."

"My son, what do you mean?"

"Mother, dear, you don't really like this weather. You only pretend to because man did not make it."

"Randolph!"

"Only think how you would growl if the mayor and aldermen, or even the president, made this weather!"

"My son, they did not," Mrs. Anderson responded, solemnly.

"No, and that settles it, I suppose. If they did, you would say at once they ought to be forced to resign from their offices. Now, mother, be resigned all you like, but don't be pleased, for you can't cheat the Providence that made this beastly heat, and must know perfectly well how beastly it is, better than you or I do, and won't think any more of us for any pretence in the matter."

"You shock me, dear. And, besides, I did not say that I liked it. I said I liked the weather after a shower. You look pale this morning, dear, and you don't talk quite like yourself. I do wish you would take an umbrella when you go to the office to-day. It is so very warm." Mrs. Anderson had a chronic fear of sunstroke.

When Randolph went away without his umbrella, as he usually did, being, dearly as he loved his mother, impervious to some of her feminine demands, she watched him, standing in the doorway and shaking her head with a dubious air.

That noon she was quite contented, for he did actually carry his umbrella. The sky in the northwest was threatening, although the sun still shone fiercely in the south. She herself sat on the doorstep in the shade, and fairly panted like a corpulent old dog. Her mouth was open and her tongue even lolled a little. She was, in reality, suffering frightfully. She had both flesh and nerves, and, given these two adverse conditions to endurance, and the mercury ninety in the shade, there is torture although the spirit is strong.

Although the sky was threatening all the afternoon, it was not until four o'clock that the northwest sky grew distinctly ominous and the rumble of the thunder was audible. Then Mrs. Anderson called her maid, and they proceeded to close tightly all the windows against the rising wind.

"It is very dangerous indeed to have a draught in the house in a thunder-shower," Mrs. Anderson always said while closing them.

Then she hurriedly divested herself of the white lawn wrapper which she had worn all day, and put on her black summer silk gown, with a wrap and a bonnet and an umbrella at hand. Mrs. Anderson was not afraid of a thunder-shower in the ordinary sense, but her imagination never failed her. Therefore she was always dressed, in case the worst should happen and she be forced to flee from a stricken house. She also had her small and portable treasures ready at hand. Then she sat down in the middle of the sitting-room well out of range of the chimney, and prayed for her own and her son's safety, and incidentally for the safety of the maid, who was in the adjoining room with the door open, and for the house and her son's store. She always did thus in a thunder-shower, but she never told any one this innocent childish secret of an innocent old soul.

She thought with a sort of undercurrent of faithlessness of the great draught in her son's store if the large front doors and the office door were both open, as there was a strong probability of their being. She thought uneasily that her son might be that very moment in that draught, as indeed he was. He stood in the strong current of fresh storm-air, with its pungent odors, more like revelations than odors, of things which had been in abeyance for some time past in the drought. The smell of the wet green things was like a paean of joy. It was a call of renewed life out of concealed places of fainting and hiding. There were scents of flowers and fruits, and another strange odor, like the smell of battle, from all the ferment on the earth which had precipitated the storm. It was quite a severe thunder-shower. The rain had held off for a fierce prelude, then it came in solid cataracts. Then it was that Charlotte Carroll rushed into the store. She was dripping, beaten like a flower, by the force of the liquid flail of the storm. She had pulled off the rose-wreathed hat which was dear to her heart, and she had it under her dress skirt, which she held up over her lace-trimmed petticoat modestly, with as little revelation as might be. Her dark head glistened with the rain.

Anderson stepped forward quickly. "Pray come into the office, Miss Carroll," he said.

But she remained standing in front of the door, having removed her hat furtively from its shelter. "No, thank you," said she, "I would rather stay here. I like to watch it."

Anderson fetched a chair from his office, but she thanked him and said that she preferred standing.

"I thought I had time to get to Madame Griggs's on the other side of the street," said she, "but all at once it came down."

Anderson felt her ungraciousness, but she herself did not seem to realize it at all. Presently she gave a little sidewise smile at him, and comprehended in the smile the old clerk and the boy who hovered near.

"It is a fine shower," said she, with a kind of confidential glee. As she spoke she looked out at the snarl of rain shot with lances of electric fire, and there was a curious elation, almost like intoxication, in her expression. She was in a fine spiritual excitement.

"Yes," said Anderson. "We needed rain."

Just then the world seemed swimming in blue light and there was a terrific crash. Anderson, who never thought of any personal fear in a tempest, looked rather apprehensively at the girl. He recalled his mother's fear of draughts.

"Perhaps you had better move back a little; that was quite near," he said. Somehow the little fears and precautions which he scorned for himself seemed to apply quite reasonably to this little, tender, pretty creature with the lightning playing around her and the thunder breaking over her defenceless head.

Charlotte laughed. "Oh, I am not afraid," said she. Then she added, quite innocently, with more of personal appeal than she had ever used towards him, "Are you?"

"No," said Anderson.

"I like it," said she, staring out at the swaying, brandishing maples, and the street which ran like a river, with now and then a boiling pool.

"I am afraid you are wet," said Anderson.

"Yes," said she, "but that is nothing. My dress won't hurt. It is just white lawn, you know. All that would be hurt is my hat, and that is hardly damp. I took it off." She held it up carefully on one hand, and gazed solicitously at it. "It is my best hat," said she, simply. "No, I don't think it is hurt at all." She looked sharply towards the counter. "The counter is clean, isn't it?" said she. "I might lay my hat there. I don't want to put it on until my hair gets dry."

The old clerk smiled covertly, the boy grinned at her in a fascinated way. Anderson regarded her with worshipful amazement. This little, artless revelation of the innermost vanity of a woman's heart touched him. It was to him inconceivable that she should so care for the welfare of that flower-bedecked oval of straw, and yet he thought it adorable of her to care. He stared at the hat as if it had been a halo, then he turned and looked anxiously at the counter.

"Get a sheet of clean paper," he ordered the boy, and frowned at him for his grin.

The boy obeyed solemnly.

"I think that will not soil your hat," Anderson said, when the preparations were complete.

"Oh, thank you," she said, and handed him the hat.

Anderson touched it gingerly as if it were alive, and placed it upside down on the clean sheet of paper.

"The other way up, please," said she, and Anderson changed it in alarm.

"I hope I have not injured it," he said.

She was laughing openly at him. "No," she replied, "but you put it right on the roses. Men don't know how to handle girls' hats, do they?"

"No; I fear they don't," replied Anderson.

He remained leaning against the counter near the door; the old clerk lounged against the next one, on the end of which Sam Riggs was perched. Charlotte remained standing in the doorway, leaning slightly against the post, and they all watched the storm, which was fast reaching its height. The flashes of lightning were more frequent, the crashes of thunder followed fast, sound overlapping sight. The rain became a flood. The girl watched, with the intense, self-forgetful delight of a child, the plash of the great blobs of rain on the macadamized road outside. They came to look to her exactly like little figures chasing one another in an unintermittent race of annihilation. She smiled, watching them. Anderson, looking from the rain to her, saw the smile, and thought with a little pang that she was probably thinking of her own happiness when she smiled to herself like that. He kept his eyes fixed upon her for a moment, her glistening dark head, her smooth cheek, her smiling mouth, her shoulders faintly pink through her thin white gown, which, being wet, clung to them. Charlotte's shoulders were thin, but the hollowing curve from the throat to the arm was ravishing. Anderson's face hardened a little. He looked away again at the rain.

All at once Charlotte glanced up from the dancing flight of the rain-drops on the road, and laughed. "Why," she cried, "there is Ina! There is my sister!"

Anderson looked, and in a second-story window opposite was a girl's head in a violet-trimmed hat. She was smiling and nodding. Charlotte waved her hand to her.

"I'll be over as soon as it holds up a little," she cried out. "Did you get wet?"

The girl in the window hollowed a slim hand over an ear.

"Did you get caught in the shower? Did you get wet?" called Charlotte.

The girl in the window shook her head gayly.

"She didn't," Charlotte said, with an absurd but charming confidence to Anderson; "but, anyway, she didn't have on her very best hat."

"I am very glad," Anderson replied, politely. He read a sign fastened beneath the window which framed the girl's head—"Madame Estelle Griggs, Modiste." He reflected that she was the Banbridge dressmaker, and that Charlotte was probably having her trousseau made there, which was a deduction that only a masculine mind of vivid imagination could have evolved.

Charlotte was gazing eagerly across at her sister. "It does not rain nearly so hard now," said she. "I think I might venture." She looked irresolutely at her hat on the counter.

"I can let you have an umbrella," said Anderson.

"Thank you," said Charlotte, "but my hair is still so wet, and my hat is lined with pink chiffon, you know."

"Yes," said Anderson, respectfully. He did not know what pink chiffon was, but he understood that water would injure it.

"If I might leave my hat here," said Charlotte, "until I come back—"

"Certainly," replied Anderson.

"Then I think I can go now. No, thank you; I won't take the umbrella. I am about as wet as I can be now, and, besides, I like to feel the rain on my shoulders."

With a careful but wary gathering up of her white skirts, with chary disclosures of lace and embroidery and little skipping shoes, she was gone in a snowy whirl through the mist across the street. She seemed to fly over the puddles. The girl's head disappeared from the opposite window and Anderson heard quite distinctly the outburst of laughter and explanation.

"You had better get a sheet of tissue-paper and put it over that," he said to Sam Riggs, and he pointed at Charlotte's hat on the counter. Then he went back to his office and wrote some letters. He resolved that he would not see Charlotte when she returned for her hat.

Presently the sun shone into the office, and a new light seemed to come from the rain-drenched branches outside the window. Anderson continued to write, feeling all the time unhappiness heavy in his heart. He also had a sense of injury which was foreign to him. He was distinctly aware that he had an unfair allotment of the good things of life. Yet there was a question dinning through his consciousness: "Why should I have so little?" Then the world-old query considering personal responsibility for misery swept over him. "What have I done?" he asked himself, and answered himself, with a fierce challenge of truth, that he had done nothing. Then the habit of his life of patience, which was at the same time a habit of bravery, asserted itself. He wrote his letters carefully and closed his ears to the questions.

It was about half an hour later, and he was thinking about going home, when Sam Riggs came to the office door and informed him that Mrs. Griggs wanted to see him.

Mrs. Griggs was Madame nowhere except on her sign and in the mouths of a few genteel patrons who considered that Madame had a more fashionable sound than Mrs.

"Ask her to come in here," Anderson said, and directly the dressmaker appeared. She was a tiny, thin, nervous creature with restless, veinous little hands, and a long, thin neck upon which her small frizzled head vibrated constantly like the head of a bird. Anderson knew her very well. Back in his childhood they had been schoolmates. He remembered distinctly little Stella Mixter. She had been a sharp, meagre, but rather pretty little girl, with light curls, and was always dressed in blue. She wore blue now, for that matter—blue muslin, ornate with lace and ribbons. She had had a sad and hard life, but her spirit still asserted itself. Her husband had deserted her; she had lost her one child; she worked like a galley-slave, but she still frizzed her hair carefully, and never neglected her own costume even in her greatest rush of business, and that in a dressmaker showed deathless ambition and self-respect.

Anderson greeted her and offered her a chair. She seated herself with a conscious elegance, and disposed gracefully around her thin knees her blue muslin flounces. There was a slight coquetry in her manner, although she was evidently anxious about something. She looked around and spoke in a low voice.

"I want to ask you something," she said, in a whisper.

"Certainly," said Anderson.

"You used to be a lawyer, and I don't suppose you have forgotten all your law, if you are in the grocery business now." There was about the woman the very naivete of commonplacedness and offence.

Anderson smiled. "I trust not, Mrs. Griggs," he replied.

"Well"—she lowered her voice still more—"I wanted to ask you— I've got a big job of work for—that Carroll girl that's going to be married, and I've heard something that made me kind of uneasy. What I want to know is, do you s'pose I'm likely to get my pay?"

"I know nothing whatever about the family's financial standing," Anderson replied, after a slight pause. He spoke constrainedly, and did not look at his questioner.

"You don't know whether I'm likely to get my pay or not?"

Anderson looked at her then, the little, nervous, overworked, almost desperate creature, fighting like a little animal in her bay of life against the odds which would drive her from it, and he felt in a horrible perplexity. He felt also profane. Why could not he be left out of this? he inquired, with concealed emphasis. Finally he said that he would rather not advise in a case about which he knew so little.

"I'm willing to pay," said the dressmaker, with her artless vulgarity.

"It is not that," Anderson said, quickly, with some asperity.

"I don't know," said the dressmaker, innocently deepening the offence, "but what you didn't feel as if you could give law-advice for nothin', even if you had quit the law. I s'pose it cost you a good deal to learn the law, and I know you didn't git your money back." She spoke with the kindest sympathy.

"That has nothing to do with it," Anderson repeated, with an inflection of irritated patience. "I cannot give any advice because I know nothing whatever about the matter."

"Can't you find out?"

"That belongs to the business which I have given up."

"Well, I s'pose it does," admitted Madame Griggs, with a sigh. "I wouldn't have bothered you if I hadn't been at my wit's end."

"I am willing to do anything in my power—" began Anderson, with a softened glance at the absurdly pathetic little figure, "but—"

"Then you think I had better not trust them?"

"No; I said—"

"You think I had better send her word I've changed my mind, and can't do her work?"

Anderson winced. "No; I did not say so," he replied, vehemently. "I merely said that you must settle—"

"Then you think I had better keep on with it?"

"If you think best," said Anderson, emphatically. "Really, Mrs. Griggs, I cannot settle this matter for you. You often trust people in your business. You must decide yourself."

The dressmaker arose. "Well, I guess it's all right," said she. "She's a lovely girl, and so are they all. Her mother seems sort of childish, but she's real sweet-spoken. I guess it's all right, but I'd heard some things, and I thought I would ask you what you thought. I thought it wouldn't do any harm. Now I feel a good deal easier about it. Good-afternoon. What a tempest we've had!"

"Yes," said Anderson. "Good-afternoon." He was conscious of a mental giddiness as he regarded her.

"We needed it, and I do think it has cooled the air a little. I'm very much obliged. I don't suppose there is any use in my offering to pay you, now you're in the grocery business?"

"Certainly not. I have done nothing to admit of any question of payment," replied Anderson, curtly.

"Well, I s'pose you throw it in along with the butter and eggs," said Madame Griggs, with a return of her slight coquetry. "By-the-way, I wish you'd send over five pounds of that best butter. Good-afternoon."

"Good-afternoon."

The dressmaker turned in the doorway and looked back. "I'm so glad to have my mind settled about it," she said, with a pathos which overcame her absurdity and vulgarity. "I do work awful hard, and it doesn't seem as if I could lose my money." She appeared suddenly tragic in her cheap muslin and her frizzes. She looked old and her features sharpened out rigidly.

Anderson, looking after her, felt both bewilderment and compunction. He thought for a moment of going after her and saying something further; then he heard a flutter and a quick sweet voice, and he knew that Charlotte had come for her hat. He heard her say: "Where? Oh, I see; all covered up so nicely. Thank you. I did not come before, because the trees were dripping. Thank you." Then there was a silence.

Anderson got his hat and went out through the store. The old clerk was fussing over some packages on the counter.

"That young lady came for her hat," he remarked.

"Did she?"

"Yes. She's a pretty-spoken girl. Her sister's goin' to git married before long, I hear."

Anderson stopped and stared at him. "No; this is the one."

"No; her sister. I had it straight."

Anderson went out. Everything was wonderful outside. The world was purified of dust and tarnish as a soul of sin. The worn prosaicness of nature was adorned as with jewels. Everything glittered; a thousand rainbows seemed to hang on the drenched trees. New blossoms looked out like new eyes of rapture; every leaf had a high-light of joy. Anderson drew a long breath. The air was alive with the breath of the sea from which the fresh wind blew. He walked home with a quick step like a boy. He was smiling, and fast to his breast, like a beloved child, he clasped his dream again.



Chapter XVI

There had been considerable discussion among the ladies of the Carroll family with regard to the necessary finery for Ina's bridal.

"It is all very well to talk about Ina's being married in four weeks," said Anna Carroll to her sister-in-law, one afternoon directly after the affair had been settled. "If a girl gets married, she has to have new clothes, of course—a trousseau."

"Why, yes, of course! How could she be married if she didn't have a trousseau? I had a very pretty trousseau, and so would you if you had been married, Anna, dear."

Anna laughed, a trifle bitterly. "Good Lord," said she, "if I had to think of a trousseau for myself, I should be a maniac! The trousseau would at any time have seemed a much more difficult matter than the bridegroom."

"Yes, I know you have had a great many very good chances," assented Mrs. Carroll, "and it would have seemed most of the time much easier to have just managed the husband part of it than the new clothes, because one doesn't have to pay cash or have good credit for a husband, and one does for clothes."

"Well," said Anna Carroll, "that is the trouble about Ina. It was easy enough for her to get the husband. Major Arms has always had his eye on her ever since she was in short dresses; but what isn't at all easy is the new clothes."

"I don't see why, dear."

"Well, how is it to be managed, if you will be so good as to inform me, Amy?"

"How? Why, just go to the dressmaker's and order them, of course."

"What dressmaker's, dear?"

"Well, I think that last New York dressmaker is the best. She really has imagination like a French dressmaker. She doesn't copy; she creates. She is really quite an artist."

"Madame Potoffsky, you mean?"

"Yes, dear. The dressmaker whose husband they say was a descendant of the Polish patriot. They say she herself is descended from a Russian princess who eloped with the Polish patriot, and I can believe it. There is something very unusual about her. She always makes me a little bit nervous, because one does get to associating Russians, especially those that run away with patriots, with bombs and things of that kind, but she is a wonderful dressmaker. I certainly think it would be wise to patronize her for Ina's trousseau, Anna."

Anna laughed, and rather bitterly, again. "Well, dear, I have my doubts about our ability to patronize her," she said, "and, granting that we could, you might in reality encounter the bomb as penalty."

"Anna, dear, what—"

"Amy, don't you know that Madame Potoffsky simply will not give us any further credit?"

"Oh, Anna, do you think so?"

"I know. Amy, only think of the things we owe her for now—my linen, my pongee, my canvas, your two foulards, Ina's muslin, Charlotte's etamine! It is impossible."

"Oh, dear! Do we owe her for all those?"

"We do."

"Well, then, I fear you are right, Anna," Mrs. Carroll said, ruefully.

The two women continued to look at each other. Mrs. Carroll had a curious round-eyed face of consternation, like a baby; Anna looked, on the contrary, older than usual. Her features seemed quite sharpened out by thought.

"What do you think we can do, Anna?" asked Mrs. Carroll, at length. "Do you suppose if we told Madame Potoffsky just how it was, how dear Ina was going to be married, and how interested we all were in having her look nice and have pretty things that she would—"

"No, I don't think so," Anna said, shortly. "What does Madame Potoffsky care about Ina and her getting married, except for what she makes out of it?"

"But, Anna, she is very rich. Everybody says so. She has a beautiful house, and a country-house, and keeps a carriage to go to her shop in."

"Well, what of that?"

"I thought the Russians believed that rich people ought to do things for people who were not rich, or else be blown up with bombs."

"Don't be silly, Amy, darling."

"I am quite in earnest, Anna, I really thought so."

"Well, you thought wrong then, dear. There is no reason in the world why a dressmaker, if she is as rich as a Vanderbilt, should make Ina's wedding-clothes for nothing, and she won't."

"Well, I suppose you are right, Anna, but what is to be done? How about Miss Sargent? She was very good."

"Miss Sargent, Amy dear!"

"Do we own her much, Anna?"

"Owe her much? We owe her everything!"

"Madame Rogers?"

"Madame Rogers! The last time I asked her to do anything she insulted me. She told me to my face she did not work for dead-beats."

"She was a very vulgar woman, Anna. I don't think I would patronize her under any circumstances."

"No, I would not either, dear. But that finishes the New York dressmakers."

"How about the Hillfield one?"

"Amy!"

"Well, I suppose you are right; but what—"

"We shall have to go to a dressmaker in Banbridge. We have never had any work done here, and there can be no difficulty about it."

"But, Anna, how can we have her married with a trousseau made in Banbridge?"

"It is either that or no trousseau at all."

Mrs. Carroll seldom wept, but she actually shed a few tears over the prospect of a shabbily made trousseau for Ina. "And she will go in the best society in Kentucky, too," she said, pitifully. "They'll attribute it all to the lack of taste in the North," Anna said.

Ina herself made no objection whatever to employing the Banbridge dressmaker; in fact, she seemed to have little interest in her clothes at first. After a while she became rather feverishly excited over them.

"I have always wondered why girls cared so much about their wedding-clothes," she told her sister after two weeks, when the preparations were well under way, "but now I know."

"Why?" asked Charlotte. The two were coming home from the dressmaker's, where Ina had been trying on gowns for an hour. It was late in the afternoon and nearly time for Captain Carroll's train.

"Why?" repeated Charlotte, when Ina did not answer at once.

"In order to keep from thinking so much about the marriage itself," said Ina, tersely. She did not look at her sister, but kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead of her.

Charlotte, however, almost stopped. "Ina," said she, in a distressed tone—"Ina, dear, you don't feel like that?"

"Why not?" inquired Ina, defiantly.

"Oh, Ina, you ought not to get married if you feel like that!"

"Why not? All girls feel like that when they are going to be married. They must."

"Oh, Ina, I know they don't!"

"How do you know? You were never going to get married."

That argument was rather too much for Charlotte, but she continued to gaze at her sister with a shocked and doubtful air as they walked along the shady sidewalk towards home. "I am almost sure it isn't right for a girl to feel so, anyhow," she said, persistently.

"Yes, it is, too," Ina said, laughing easily. "Charlotte, honey, I really think my things are going to do very well. I really think so. That tan canvas is a beauty, and so is the red foulard. She is really a very good dressmaker."

"I think so too, dear," Charlotte agreed. "I like the wedding-gown, too."

"Yes, so do I; it is very pretty, though that does not so much matter."

"Why, Ina Carroll!"

Ina laughed mischievously. "Now I have shocked you, dear. Of course it matters in one way, but I shall never wear it again after the ceremony; and you know I don't care much about the Banbridge people, and they will be the only ones to see me in it, and only that once."

"But, Ina, he—your—Major Arms."

Ina laughed again. "Oh, well, he thinks me perfectly beautiful anyway," said she, in the tone of one to whom love was as dross because of the superabundance of it.

"Ina," said Charlotte, with a solemn and timidly reflective air, "I don't believe you think half as much of him as you would if he didn't think so much of you."

"Yes, I do think just as much," said Ina, "but things always seem worth rather more when they are in a showcase and marked more than one can ever pay." Then she started, and exclaimed: "Good gracious, there he is now!" She flushed all over her face and neck; then she turned pale and cast a half-wild look around her as if she wanted to run somewhere.

Indeed, at that moment the Carroll carriage drew up beside them, and on the back seat sat Captain Carroll and a very handsome man apparently about his own age, although at first glance he looked older because of snow-white hair and mustache. He was as tall as Carroll, and thinner, and less punctiliously attired, although he wore his somewhat slouching clothes with a certain careless assurance of being the master of them which Carroll, with all his elegance, did not excel.

"Here we are!" called Carroll. He was smiling, although he had a slightly worried look. The other man's black eyes were fixed with a sort of tender hunger on Ina, who hung back a little as she and Charlotte approached the carriage. It was actually Charlotte who shook hands first with Major Arms, although she tried to give her sister precedence.

Ina blushed a good deal, and smiled rather tremulously when her turn came and her little hand was enveloped in the man's eager one.

"I—didn't know—I didn't—" she stammered.

"No, you didn't, did ye, honey?" said the major, in the broadest of Southern drawls. "No, ye didn't. The old fellow thought he'd surprise ye, honey." The man's face and voice were as frankly expressive of delighted love as a boy's. "Arthur," said he, "over with ye to the front seat and let me have my sweetheart in here with me. I want my arms around her. Not another minute can I wait. Over with ye, boy!"

Carroll threw open the carriage door and sprang out. "Jump in, Ina," he said, and placed a hand under his daughter's arm. She gave a smiling and not altogether unhappy, but still piteous, look at him, and hung back slightly. "Jump in, dear," he said, again; and Ina was in the carriage, and there was a sweep of a long gray-clad arm around her and the sound of kisses.

"Now, Charlotte," said Carroll, "get in the front seat. I will walk the rest of the way."

"No, papa," Charlotte replied, "I will walk with you. I would rather." So the carriage rolled on, and Charlotte and Carroll followed on foot.

"Did you expect him, papa?" asked Charlotte.

"No, honey. The first thing I knew he came up to me on the ferry. He came on this morning; he has been in New York all day. I guess he wanted to buy something for Ina."

"Her ring?" asked Charlotte, in a slightly awed tone.

"Very likely."

"Papa, is Major Arms rich?" asked Charlotte.

"Quite, I think, dear. I don't know how much he has in reality, but he has his pay from the government—he is on the retired list—and he owns considerable property. He has enough and to spare, there is no doubt about that."

"So if Ina has things and people trouble her for payment she can pay them," remarked Charlotte, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Carroll, shortly. He quickened his pace, and Charlotte made a little run to get into step again.

"That will be very nice," said she. "Do you think he will be good to her, papa?"

"Sure as I am of anything in this world, dear."

"It would be dreadful if he wasn't. Whatever else Ina or any of us haven't had, we've always had that. We've always lived with folks that loved us and were good to us. That would kill Ina and me quickest of anything, papa."

"He will be good to her, dear," said Carroll, pleasantly. He looked down at Charlotte and laughed. "It's all right, baby," he said. "She's got one man in a thousand—one worth a thousand of your old dad."

"No, she hasn't," said Charlotte, with indignation. She caught her father's arm and clung to it lovingly. "There is nobody in the world so good as you," said she, with fervor. "I wouldn't leave you for any man in the world, papa."

"You wait," Carroll said, laughing.

"Papa, you don't wish I were going to be married too? You don't want me to go away like Ina?" Charlotte demanded, with a sudden grieved catch in her voice.

"I never want you to go, darling," Carroll replied, and he looked down with adoration at the little face whose whole meaning seemed one of innocent love for and belief in him. He realized the same terror at the mere fancy of losing this artless and unquestioning devotion as one might feel at the fancy of losing his only prop from the edge of a precipice. The man really had for an instant a glimpse of a sheer descent in his own nature which might be ever before his sickened vision if this one little faith and ignorance were removed. In a curious fashion a man sometimes holds an innocent love between himself and himself, and Carroll so held Charlotte's.

"I will never leave you for any other man. I don't care who he is," Charlotte reiterated, and this time her father let her assertion go unchallenged. He pressed the little, clinging hand on his arm closer.

Charlotte looked at him as she might have looked at a king as he walked along in his stately fashion. She was unutterably proud of him.

The carriage had reached the house some time before they arrived. The man was just driving round to the stable when they came up to the front door. The guest and Ina were nowhere to be seen, but on the porch stood Mrs. Carroll and Anna. They were both laughing, but Anna looked worried in spite of her laugh.

"What do you think, Arthur," whispered Mrs. Carroll, with a cautious glance towards a chamber window. "Here he has come, the son-in-law, and there is no meat again for dinner." Mrs. Carroll burst into a peal of laughter.

"I don't see much to laugh at," said Anna, but she laughed a little.

Carroll made a step to the side of the porch and called to the coachman. "Martin," he called, "don't take the horse out. Come back here. We must send for something," he declared, a little brusquely for him.

"It is all very well to send, Arthur," said Mrs. Carroll, "but the butcher won't let us have it if we do send."

"It is no use, Arthur," Anna Carroll said. "We cannot get a thing for this man's dinner, and not only to-day, but to-morrow and while he stays, unless we pay cash."

Carroll turned to the coachman, who had just come alongside. "Martin," he said, "you will have to drive to New Sanderson before dinner. We cannot get the meat which Mrs. Carroll wishes, and you will have to drive over there. Go to that large market on Main Street and tell them that I want the best cut of porterhouse with the tenderloin that he has. Tell him it is for Captain Carroll of Banbridge. And I want you to get also a roast of lamb for to-morrow."

"Yes, sir," said the coachman. He gathered up the lines, but sat looking hesitatingly at his employer.

"What are you waiting for?" asked Carroll. "Drive as fast as you can. We are late as it is."

"Shall I pay, sir?" asked the man, timidly, in a low voice.

Carroll took out his pocket-book, then replaced it. "No, not to-night," he said, easily. "Tell him it is for Captain Carroll of Banbridge."

The man still looked doubtful and a trifle alarmed, but he touched his hat and drove out of the grounds. Carroll turned and saw his wife and sister staring at him.

"Oh, Arthur, dear, do you think the butcher will let him have it?" whispered Mrs. Carroll.

"Yes, honey," said Carroll.

"If he shouldn't—"

"Don't worry; he will."

"It is one of your coups, isn't it, Arthur?" said Anna, sarcastically, but rather admiringly. She and Mrs. Carroll both laughed.

"We have never bought any meat in New Sanderson, so maybe Martin can get it," Mrs. Carroll said, as she seated herself in one of the large willow-rockers on the porch.

Dinner was very late that night at the Carrolls'. Even with a fast horse, driving to New Sanderson and back consumed some time, but Martin finally returned triumphant. When he drove into the yard it was dusk and the family and the guest were all seated on the porch. There was a steady babble of talk and laughter on the part of the ladies, who were nervously intent on concealing, or at least softening, the fact that dinner was so late that Major Arms might well be excused for judging that there was to be no dinner at all.

Once, Ina had whispered to Charlotte, when the conversation among the others swelled high: "What is the matter? Do you know?"

"Hush! Poor papa had to send to New Sanderson for meat," whispered Charlotte.

Ina made a face of consternation; Charlotte looked sadly troubled.

"I'm afraid he is awfully hungry," whispered Ina. "I pity him."

"I pity papa," whispered Charlotte. She kept glancing at her father with loving sympathy and understanding as the time went on. His face was quite undisturbed, but Charlotte saw beneath the calm. When at last she heard the carriage-wheels her heart leaped and she turned pale. Then she dared not look at her father. Suppose Martin should not have been successful. The eyes of all the family except Carroll himself, who was talking about the tariff and politely supporting the government against a hot-headed rebellion on the part of the ex-army officer, were on him. Not an inflection in his voice changed when Martin drove past the porch, but the others, even Eddy, who was seated at his sister's feet on the porch-step, eyed the arrival with undisguised eagerness. A brown-paper parcel was distinctly visible on the seat beside Martin.

"Thank God!" Mrs. Carroll whispered, under her breath to her sister. "He's got it."

Eddy gave vent to a small whoop of delight which he immediately suppressed with a scared glance at his father. However, he could not refrain from sniffing audibly with rapture when the first fragrance of the broiling beefsteak spread through the house to the porch. Mrs. Carroll giggled, and so did Ina, but Charlotte looked severely at her brother.

"After all, though, the excessive tax on articles purchased by travellers abroad and brought to this country serves as a legitimate balance-wheel," said Carroll, coolly. One would not have thought that he was in the least conscious of what was going on around him. "It is mostly the very wealthy who go abroad and purchase articles of foreign manufacture," he added, gently, "and it serves to even up things a little for those who cannot go. It marks a notch higher on the equality of possessions."

"Equality of fiddlesticks!" said the other man. "What the devil do the masses of the poor in this country care about the foreign works of art, anyhow? They don't want 'em. And what is going to compensate this country for not possessing works of art which it will never produce here, and which would tend to the liberal education of its citizens?"

"Not many of its citizens in the broader sense would ever see those works of art when they were here and shrined in the drawing-rooms of the millionaires," said Carroll, smiling; "and as far as that goes, the millionaires have them, anyhow. They are not stopped by the tariff."

"Yes, they are, too, more than you think," declared the major; "and not the millionaires alone are defrauded. Suppose I go over now, as I may do"—he cast a glance at Ina—"as I may do, I say. Now there are things over there that I want in my home—things that are not to be had for love nor money in this country. Nothing of the sort is or ever will be manufactured here. I am doing nothing whatever to injure home industries if I bring them over. On the contrary, I am benefiting the country by bringing to it articles which are, in a way, an education which may serve as a stimulus to the growth of art here. I enable those who can never go abroad, and to whom they will be otherwise forever unknown, an opportunity to become acquainted with them. But I have to leave them over there because I cannot afford to pay this government for the privilege of spending my own money and gratifying my own taste."

Anna Carroll, to cover her absorption in the beefsteak and the dinner, joined in the conversation with feminine daring of conclusion. "I suppose," said she, with a kind of soft sarcasm, "that the government would not need to charge so much for its citizens' privilege of buying little foreign vases and mosaics and breastpins and little Paris frills if it did not conduct so many humanitarian wars."

"The humanitarian wars are all right, all right," said the major, hastily; "so far as that goes, all right."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Carroll, "that it would cost so much to bring home gowns from Paris that no one can do it unless they have a great deal of money. I understand that it costs more than it did."

"Yes," replied the major, "and this government can't see or won't see that even in the matter of women's clothes it would pay in the end to bring over every frill and tuck free of duty until our dressmakers here had caught on to their tricks. Then we could pay them back in their own coin. But, no; and the consequence is that we shall be dependent on France for our best clothes for generations more."

"It does seem such a pity," said Mrs. Carroll. "It would be so nice to have Ina's things made in Paris if it didn't cost anything to get them over here—wouldn't it?"

"I would just as soon have my dresses made in Banbridge," said Ina. "Madame Griggs is as good as a French dressmaker."

"She is fine," said Charlotte.

Ina blushed as the major looked at her with a look that penetrated the dusk. Very soon Marie appeared in the doorway, and they went into dinner.

"How lucky it is that Anderson does not object to trusting us and we can have canned soup and pease," whispered Mrs. Carroll to Anna.

It was a very good dinner at last, and the guest was evidently hungry, for he did justice to it. There were no apologies for the delay. Carroll did not believe in apologies for such things. There was a salad from their own garden, and a dessert of apple-pudding from an early apple-tree in the grounds. The coffee was good, too. There was no lack of anything which could be purchased at the grocery.

"That grocer must be a very decent sort of man as grocers go," Mrs. Carroll was fond of remarking in those days. "I really don't know what we should do if it were not for him."

After dinner was over it was nearly nine o'clock; Carroll and Major Arms walked up and down the road before the house, smoking, leaving the ladies on the porch. The ex-army officer had something which he wished to discuss with his prospective father-in-law. He opened upon the subject when they had gone a piece down the flagged sidewalk and turned towards the house.

"What kind of arrangements have the ladies planned with regard to"—he hesitated and stammered a bit boyishly, for this was his first matrimonial venture, and he felt embarrassed, veteran in other respects as he was—"to the—ceremony?" he finished up. Ceremony did not have the personal sound that marriage did.

Carroll looked at him, smiling. "It is quite a venture for you, old fellow, isn't it?" he said, laughingly, and yet his voice sounded exceedingly kind and touched.

"Not with that child, Arthur," replied the other man, simply.

"Well, Ina is a good girl," assented Carroll. "Both of them are good girls. She will make you a good wife."

"Nobody knows how sure I am of it, and nobody knows how I have looked forward to this for years," said the other, fervently.

"I could not wish anything better for my girl," said Carroll, gently and soberly.

"What about the matter of the—ceremony?" asked Arms, returning to the first subject.

"I think they have decided that they would prefer the wedding in the church, and a little reception at the house afterwards. Of course we are comparatively strangers in Banbridge, but there are people one can always ask to a function of the sort, and I think Ina—"

"Arthur, there is something I would like to propose."

"What, old fellow?"

Major Arms hesitated. Carroll waited, smoking as he sauntered along. The other man held his cigar, which had gone out, in his mouth; evidently he was nervous about his proposition. Finally he blurted it out with the sharpness of a pistol-shot. "Arthur, I want to defray the expenses of the wedding," he said.

Carroll removed his cigar. "See you damned first," said he, coolly, but with emphasis, and then replaced it.

Major Arms turned furiously towards him, but he restrained himself. "Why?" he said, with forced calm.

"Because if I cannot pay my daughter's bridal expenses she never marries you nor any other man," said Carroll.

Then the Major blazed out. He stopped short and moved before Carroll on the sidewalk. "If," said he—"if—you think I marry your daughter if her father goes in debt for the wedding expenses, you are mistaken."

Carroll said nothing. He stood as if stunned. The other went on with a burst of furious truth: "See here, Arthur Carroll," said he, "I like you, and you know how I feel about your girl. She is the one thing I have wanted for my happiness all my life, and I know I can take care of her and make her happy; and I like you in spite of—in spite of your outs. I'm ashamed of myself for liking you, but I do; but you needn't think I don't see you, that I don't know you, because I do. I knew when you went to the dogs after you failed in your mine, just as well as you did yourself. You went to the dogs, and you've been at the dogs' ever since; you're there now, and you've dragged your family with you so far as they're the sort to be dragged. They aren't, altogether, lucky for them; the girls especially aren't, at least not so far. Lord knows when it would come to them. But I'm going to take Ina away from the dogs, out of sound of a yelp even of 'em; and, as for me, I'll be hanged if you get me there! I know you for just what you are. I know you've prowled and preyed like a coyote ever since you were preyed on yourself. I know you, but I love Ina. But I tell you one thing, Arthur Carroll, now you can take your choice. Either you let me pay the wedding expenses or you give up the wedding."

"Ina," began Carroll, in a curious, helpless fashion, "she has set her heart on the wedding—her—dress and everything."

"I can't help that," said Arms, sternly. "This is of more importance even than her pleasure. Take your choice. Let me pay or let us be married in the quietest manner possible."

"I consent to the latter," Carroll said, still in that beaten tone.

He seemed to shrink in stature, standing before the other man's uprear of imperious will.

"All right," said Major Arms.

The two walked on in silence for a moment. Arms relit his cigar. Suddenly Carroll spoke.

"No, I will not, either," he said, abruptly.

"Will not what?"

"I will not consent to the quiet wedding. Ina shall not be disappointed. This means too much to a girl. Good God! it is the one occasion of a woman's life, and women are children always. It is cruelty to children."

"Then I pay," Arms said.

"No, I pay," said Carroll.

"You pay?"

"I pay," Carroll repeated, doggedly.

"How?"

"Never mind how. I tell you I give you my word of honor I pay every dollar of those expenses the day after the wedding."

"You will rob Peter to pay Paul, then," declared Major Arms, incredulously and wrathfully.

Carroll laughed in a hard fashion. "I would kill Peter, besides robbing him, if it was necessary," he said.

"If you think I'll have that way out of it—"

"I tell you I will pay those expenses, every dollar, the next day, and Ina shall have her little festival. What more do you want?" demanded Carroll. "See here, Arms, you will take care of the girl better than I can. I am at the dogs fast enough, and the dogs' is not a desirable locality in which to see one's family. You can take care of Ina, and God knows I want you to have her, but have her you shall not unless you can show some lingering confidence in her father. Even at the dogs' a man may have a little pride left. Either we have the wedding as it is planned, and you trust me to settle the bills for it, or you can give up my daughter."

Arms stood silent, looking at Carroll. "Very well," he said, finally.

"All right, then," said Carroll.

Arms remained staring at Carroll with a curious, puzzled expression.

"Good God! Arthur, how do you ever stand it living this sort of life?" he cried, suddenly.

"I have to stand it," replied Carroll. "As well ask a shot fired from a cannon how it likes being hurled through the air. I was fired into this."

"You ought to have had some power of resistance, some will of your own."

"There are forces for every living man for which he has no power of resistance. Mine hit me."

"If ever there was a damned, smooth-tongued scoundrel—" said Arms, retrospectively.

"Where is he?" Carroll asked, and his voice sounded strange.

"There."

"How is he?"

"Prospering like the wicked in the psalms. There was one respect in which you showed will and self-control, Arthur—that you didn't shoot him!"

"I was a fool," said Carroll.

"He wasn't worth hanging for," said the major, shortly.

"I'd hang five times over if I could get even with him," said Carroll.

"I don't wonder you feel so."

"Feel so! You asked me just now how I stood this sort of life. I believe my hate for that man keeps me up like a stimulant. I believe it keeps me up when I see other poor devils that I—"

Suddenly Arms reached out his hand and grasped Carroll's. "Good God! old fellow, I'm sorry for you!" he said. "You are too good for the dogs."

"Yes, I know I am," said Carroll, calmly.

The two men returned to the house and sat on the porch with the ladies. About half-past ten Anna Carroll said good-night, then Mrs. Carroll. Then Charlotte rose, and Ina also followed her up-stairs.

"Ina," cried Charlotte, in a sort of angry embarrassment, when they had reached her chamber, "you've got to go back; indeed you have."

"I suppose I ought." Ina was blushing furiously, her lip quivered. She was twisting a ring on her engagement-finger.

"You have even kept the stone side in, so nobody could see that beautiful ring he brought you. You are mean—mean!" said Charlotte.

"You just imagine that," said Ina, feebly. As she spoke she held up her hand, and a great diamond flashed rose and green and white.

"No, I don't imagine it. I have not seen it once like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You must go straight back down-stairs. People when they are engaged always sit up alone together. You are not doing right coming up here with me."

"What are you scolding me for? Who said I was not going back?" returned Ina, with resentful shame.

"You know you were not."

"I was."

"Well, good-night, honey," said Charlotte, in a softer tone.

"Good-night."

Charlotte kissed her sister, and saw her leave the room and go down to her lover with a curious mixture of pity and awe and wrath and wistful affection. It almost seemed to her that Ina was happy, although afraid and ashamed to be, and it made her seem like a stranger to the maiden ignorance of her own heart.



Chapter XVII

There was a good deal of talk in Banbridge when Ina Carroll's wedding-invitations were out. There were not many issued. When it came to making out the list, the number of persons who, from what the family considered as a reasonable point of view, were possible, was exceedingly small.

"Of course we cannot ask such and such a one," Mrs. Carroll would say, and the others would acquiesce simply, with no thought of the possibility of anything else.

"There's that young man who goes on the train every morning with papa," said Charlotte. "His name is Veazie—Francis Veazie. He has called here. They live on Elm Street. His father is that nice-looking old gentleman who walks past here every day, on his way to the mail, a little lame."

"Charlotte, dear," said Ina, "don't you remember that somebody told us that that young man was a floor-walker in one of the department stores?"

"Oh, sure enough," said Charlotte, "I do remember, dear."

"There are really very few indeed in a place like Banbridge whom it is possible to invite to a wedding," said Mrs. Carroll.

Banbridge itself shared her opinion. Those who were bidden to the wedding acquiesced in their selectedness and worthiness; those who were not bidden, with a very few exceptions of unduly aspiring souls, acquiesced calmly in their own ineligibility. Banbridge, for a village in the heart of a republic, had a curious rigidity of establishment and content as to its social conditions. For the most part those who were not invited would have been embarrassed and even suspicious at receiving invitations. But they talked. In that they showed their inalienable republican freedom. They moved along as unquestioningly as European peasants, in their grooves, but their tongues soared. In speech, as is the way with an American, they held nothing sacred, not even the institutions which they propped, not even themselves. They might remain unquestioningly, even preferredly, outside the doors of superiority, but out there they raised a clamor of self-assertion. Their tongues wagged with prodigious activity utterly unleashed. In the days before Ina Carroll's wedding all Banbridge seethed and boiled like a pot with gossip, and gossip full of malice and sneer, and a good deal of righteous indignation. Anderson heard much of it. Neither he nor his mother was asked to the wedding. The Carrolls had not even considered the possibility of such a thing. Mrs. Anderson spoke of it one evening at tea.

"I hear they are going to have quite a wedding at those new people's," said she; "a wedding in the church, and reception afterwards at the house. Miss Josie Eggleston and Agnes and Mrs. Monroe were in here this afternoon, and they were speaking about it. They said the young lady was having her trousseau made at Mrs. Griggs's, and everybody thought it rather singular. They are going to the wedding and reception. They inquired if we were going, and I said that we had not been invited, that we had not called. I have been intending to call ever since they came, but now, of course, it is out of the question until after the wedding." Mrs. Anderson spoke with a slight regret. A mild curiosity was a marked trait of hers. "I suppose we could go to the church even if we had no invitation; I suppose many will do that," she said, a little wistfully, after a pause.

"Do you think it wise, without an invitation?" asked Anderson, rather amusedly.

"Why, I don't know, really, dear, that it could do any harm—that is, lower one's dignity at all. Of course it is not as if we had called. If we had called and then received no invitation, the slight would have been marked. But of course we were not invited simply because we had not called—"

"Still, I think I should rather not go, under the circumstances, mother," Anderson said, quietly.

"Well, perhaps you are right, dear," said his mother. "It seems to me that you may be a trifle too punctilious; still, it is best to err on the safe side, and, after all, these are new people; we know very little about them, after all." Nothing was further from Mrs. Anderson than the surmise that, even had she called, no invitation would have come from these unknown new people to the village grocer and his mother. Mrs. Anderson, even with her secret and persistent dissent to her son's giving up his profession and adopting trade, never dreamed of any possible loss of social prestige. She considered herself and her son established in their family traditions beyond possibility of shaking by such minor matters. Anderson did not enlighten her.

"Mrs. Monroe said that she had heard that the Carrolls were owing a good deal," said she, presently. "She said she heard that Blumenfeldt said he must have cash for the flowers for the decorations. They have ordered a great many palms and things. She said she heard that Captain Carroll told him that the money would be forthcoming, and scared him out of his wits, he was so high and mighty, and the florist just gave right in and said he should have all he wanted. She said Mr. Monroe was in there and heard it. I hope Mrs. Griggs will get her pay. They don't owe you, I hope, dear?"

"Don't worry about me, mother?" Randolph replied, smiling. However, she had placed a finger upon a daily perplexity of his. The Carrolls indeed owed him, and every day the debt was increasing. He felt that his old clerk regarded him with wonder at every fresh entry on the books. That very day he had come into the office to inform him, in a hushed voice, that the Carrolls had sent for a pail of lard and a box of butter, besides a bag of flour, and to inquire what he should do about supplying them.

"The girl hasn't brought any money," said he, further, in an ominous whisper.

Anderson, glancing out, saw the small, sturdy, and smiling face of the Hungarian girl employed by the Carrolls. She was gazing straight through at him in the office with a shrewd expression in her untutored black eyes. "Send the order," Anderson replied, in a low voice.

"But," began the clerk.

"It's all right," said Anderson. He dipped his pen in the ink and went on with the letter he was writing. The clerk retreated with a long, anxious, wondering look, which the other man felt.

The Hungarian girl plodded smiling forth with the promise to have the groceries sent at once. Stepping flat-footedly and heavily through the door, she caught her cotton skirt on a nail, and, lo! a rent. The boy, who was a gallant soul for all femininity in need, hurried to her aid with some pins gathered from the lapel of his gingham coat. Little Marie, with a coquettish shake of her head and a blush and smile began repairing the damage.

"It is the cloth that is easy broke," explained she, when she lifted her suffused but still smiling face, "and I a new one will have when I haf my money, my vage." With that Marie was gone, her poor gown scalloping around her heavy, backward heels, her smiling glance of artless coquetry over her shoulder to the last, and the boy and the old clerk looked at each other. The boy whistled.

Just then the delivery-wagon drove up in front of the store. The driver, who was a young fellow in the first stages of pulmonary consumption, got down with weakly alacrity from the seat and came in to get the new orders. He coughed as he entered, but he looked radiant. He was driving the delivery-wagon in the hope of recovering his health by out-of-door life, and he was, or flattered himself that he was, perceptibly gaining.

"Where's the next delivery?" he inquired, hoarsely.

"Wait a minute," said the old clerk, and again invaded the office.

"They 'ain't paid their hired girl," he said, in a whisper. "Had we better—"

"Better what?" said Anderson, impatiently, though he looked confused.

"Better send them things to the Carrolls'?"

"Didn't I tell you? What—"

"Oh, all right, sir," said the clerk, and retreated hastily. At times he had an awe of his employer.

"Goin' to take all that truck to the Carrolls'?" inquired the consumptive deliverer.

"Yep," replied the boy, lugging out the flour-bag.

"Credit," whispered the man.

The boy nodded.

The man essayed a whistle, but he coughed. "Well, it's none of my funeral," he declared, when he got his breath, "but I hear he's a dead-beat. I s'pose he knows what he is about."

"If he don't, nobody is goin' to tell him, you bet," said the boy, succinctly.

"Well, it's none of my funeral," said the man, and he coughed again, and gathered up the reins, and drove away in a cloud of dust down the street. It had not rained for two weeks and the roads gave evidence of it.

Anderson, back in his office, heard the sound of the retreating wheels with a feeling of annoyance, even scorn of himself for his gullibility, and his stress upon the financial part of the affair.

He was losing a good deal of money, and he did not wish to do so. "I am a fool," he told himself, with that voice of mentality which sounds the loudest, to the consciousness, of any voice on earth. He frowned, then he laughed a little, and began mounting a fine new butterfly specimen. "Other men marry and spend their hard earnings in that way, on love," said he. "Why should I not spend mine after this fashion if I choose?"

That noon, as he passed out of the store on his way home to dinner, Ina and Charlotte came out of the dressmaker's opposite. They looked flushed and happily excited. Charlotte carried a large parcel. They rushed past without seeing him at all, as he gained the opposite sidewalk. He walked along, grave and self-possessed. Nobody seeing him would have dreamed of his inward perturbation, that spiritual alienation as secret as the processes of the body.

Nobody could have suspected how his fond thought and yearning followed one of those small, hurrying, girlish figures. In a way the man, even with his frustrated aims in the progress of life, was so superior to the little, unconscious feminine thing whose chief assets of life were her youth and innocence, and even those of slight weight against the man's age and innocence, that it seemed a pity.

It was not a case of pearls before swine, but seemingly rather of pearls before canary-birds or butterflies, which would not defile them, but flutter over them unheedingly.

However, it may be better to cast away one's pearls of love before anything, rather than keep them. Anderson, walking along home to his dinner in the summer noon, loving foolishly and unreasonably this young girl who would never, probably, place the slightest value on his love, was not actively unhappy. After he had turned the corner of the street on which his house stood he heard the whistle of the noon-train, and soon the carriages from the station came whirling in sight.

Samson Rawdy came first, driving a victoria in which sat the gentleman who had been pointed out to him as Ina Carroll's fiance. He glanced at him approvingly, and the thought even was in his mind that had this stranger been going to marry Charlotte, instead of her sister, he could have had nothing to say against his appearance. Suddenly, Major Arms in the victoria looked full at him and bowed, raising his hat in his soldierly fashion. Anderson was surprised, but returned the salutation promptly.

"Who was that gentleman bowing to you?" his mother asked, as he went up the front steps. She was standing on the porch in her muslin morning panoply.

"He is the gentleman who is to marry the eldest daughter of Captain Carroll," replied Anderson.

"Do you know him?"

"No."

"He bowed."

"I suppose he thought he recognized me."

"He looks old enough to be her grandfather, but he looks like a fine man. I hope she will make him a good wife. It is a risk for a man of his age, marrying a little young thing. I wonder why Samson Rawdy was bringing him from the station. Strange the Carroll carriage didn't meet him, wasn't it?"

"Perhaps they were not expecting him," replied Randolph, which was true.

The carriage occupied by Major Arms and Samson Rawdy overtook Ina and Charlotte before they had walked far, in front of Drake's drug-store. They had stopped in there for soda, in fact, and were just coming out.

"Why, there's Major Arms!" cried Charlotte, so loudly that some lounging men in the drug-store heard her. Drake, Amidon, and the postmaster, who had just stopped, stood in the doorway, with no attempt to disguise their interest, and watched Major Arms spring out of the carriage like a boy, kiss his sweetheart, utterly unmindful of their observance, then assist the sisters to the back seat, and spring to the front himself.

"Pretty spry for an old boy," remarked the postmaster as the carriage rolled away.

"Oh, he's Southern," returned Amidon, easily. "That is why. Catch a Yankee his age with joints as limber. The cold winters here stiffen folk up quick after they get middle-aged."

"You don't seem very stiff in the joints," said Drake, jocularly. "Guess you are near as old as that man."

"I'm a right smart stiffer than I'd been ef I'd stayed South," replied Amidon.

Then the postmaster wondered, as Mrs. Anderson had done, why Major Arms was driving up with Samson Rawdy rather than in the Carroll carriage, and the others opined, as Randolph had done, that they had not expected him.

"I don't see, for my part, what they get to feed him on when he comes," said Amidon, wisely.

The postmaster and Drake looked at him with expressions like hunting-dogs, although a certain wisdom as to his meaning was evident in both faces.

"I suppose it's getting harder and harder for them to get credit," said Drake.

"Harder," returned Amidon. "I guess it is. I had it from Strauss this morning, that he wouldn't let them have a pound of beef without cash, and I know that Abbot stopped giving them anything some time ago."

"How do they manage, then?" asked the postmaster.

"Strauss says sometimes they send a little money and get a little, the rest of the time he guesses they go without; live on garden-sauce—they've got a little garden, you know, or grocery stuff."

"Can they get trusted at the grocer's?"

"Ingram won't trust 'em, but Anderson lets 'em have all they want, they say."

"S'pose he knows what he's about."

"Lawyers generally do," said Drake.

"He wasn't much of a lawyer, anyhow," said Amidon.

"That's so. He didn't set the river afire," remarked the postmaster.

"I don't believe, if Anderson trusts him, but he knows what he is about," said the druggist. "I guess he knows he's goin' to get his pay."

"Mebbe some of those fine securities of his will come up sometime," Amidon said. "I heard they'd been slumpin' lately. Guess there's some Banbridge folks got hit pretty bad, too."

"Who?" asked Drake, eagerly.

"I heard Lee was in it, for one, and I guess there's others. I must light out of this. It's dinner-time. Where's that arrow-root? My wife's got to make arrow-root gruel for old Mrs. Joy. She's dreadful poorly. Oh, there it is!"

Amidon started, and the postmaster also. In the doorway Amidon paused. "Suppose you knew Carroll was away?" he said.

"No," said Drake.

"Yes, he's been gone a week; ain't coming home till the day before the wedding. Their girl told ours. We've got a Hungarian, too, you know. Carroll's girl can't get any pay. It's a dam'ed shame."

"Why don't she leave?"

"Afraid she'll lose it all, if she does. Same way with the coachman."

"Where's Carroll gone?" asked the postmaster.

"Don't know. The girl said he'd gone to Chicago on business."

"Guess he'll want to go farther than Chicago on business if he don't look out, before long. I don't see how he's goin' to have the weddin', anyway. I don't believe anybody 'll trust him here, and, unless I miss my guess, he won't find it very easy anywhere else."

"They say the man the girl's goin' to marry is rich. Maybe he'll foot the bills," said Drake.

"Mebbe he is," assented Amidon. Then he went out in earnest, and the postmaster with him.

"Look at here," said Amidon, mysteriously, as the two men separated on the next corner. "I'll tell you something, if you want to know."

"What?"

"I believe Drake trusts those Carrolls a little."



Chapter XVIII

There was in Banbridge, at this date, almost universal distrust of Carroll, but very little of it was expressed, for the reason, common to the greater proportion of humanity: the victims in proclaiming their distrust would have proclaimed at the same time their victimization. It was quite safe to assume that the open detractors of Carroll had not been duped by him; it was also quite safe to assume that many of those who either remained silent or declared their belief in him had suffered more or less. The latter were those who made it possible for the Carrolls to remain in Banbridge at all. There were many who had a lingering hope of securing something in the end, who did not wish Carroll to depart, and who were even uneasy at his absence, although the fact of his family remaining and of the wedding preparations for his daughter going on seemed sufficient to allay suspicions. It is generally true that partisanship, even of the few, counts for more than disparagement of the many, with all right-intentioned people who have a reasonable amount of love for their fellow-men. Somehow partisanship, up to a certain limit, beyond which the partisan appears a fool to all who listen to him, seems to give credit to the believer in it. At all events, while the number of Arthur Carroll's detractors was greatly in advance of his adherents, the moral atmosphere of Banbridge, while lowering, was still very far from cyclonic for him. He got little credit, yet still friendly, admiring, and even obsequious recognition.

The invitations to his daughter's wedding had been eagerly accepted. The speculations as to whether the bills would be paid or not added to the interest. In those days the florist and the dressmaker were quite local celebrities. They looked anxious, yet rather pleasantly self-conscious. The dressmaker bragged by day and lay awake by night. Every time the florist felt uneasy, he slipped across to the nearest saloon and got a drink of beer. After that, when asked if he did not feel afraid he would lose money through the Carroll wedding, he said something about the general esteem in which people should be held who patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned, and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms.

On the Sunday morning before the wedding there were an unusual number of men in the barber-shop—old Eastman, Frank's father, who generally shaved himself, besides Amidon, Drake, the postmaster, Tappan the milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like a silver ball.

"Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little wind for the weddin'," he said.

"I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet," remarked the barber.

Lee looked up from his Sunday paper—all the men except young Willy Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a spare page finished and thrown aside by another. Besides the odors of soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest.

Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious, consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height. Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it at times.

"I guess Captain Carroll hadn't any need to go out West promoting. I rather think he can find all the business he wants right here," he said.

Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on the coal strike. "Guess he can find about fools enough right here to work on, that's right," said he, and there was a laugh.

Lee's small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in response. "Perhaps those he doesn't work, as you call it, are bigger fools than those he does," said he.

"Say," said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor. He fastened brutally twinkling eyes on Lee. Everybody waited; the little barber held the razor poised over Amidon's chin. "When do your next dividends come in?" he inquired.

Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face.

"Why don't ye say?" pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others.

"I don't know that it is any of your business," replied Lee.

"Ask when the millennium's comin'," said Amidon, in the chair.

"I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends," declared Lee, brought to bay.

"Glad you've got faith in that dead-beat. He's owin' me for fifteen dollars' worth of milk-tickets, and I can't get a dam'ed penny of it," said Tappan. He gave the sheet of paper he held a vicious crumple and flung it to the floor, whence little Willy Eddy timidly and softly gathered it up. "Gettin' up at four o'clock in the mornin'," continued the milkman, in a cursing voice, "an' milkin' a lot of dam'ed old kickin' cows, and gittin' on the road half-dead with sleep, to make a present to whelps like him, goin' to the City dressed up like Morgan hisself, ridin' to the station in a carriage he 'ain't paid for, with a man drivin' that can't git a cent out of him. Talk about coal strikes! Lord! I could give them miners points. Strikin' for eight hours a day! Lord! what's that? Here I've got to go home an' hay, if it is Sunday, to git enough for them dam'ed cows to eat in the winter! Eight hours! Hm! I work eighteen an' I 'ain't got anybody over me to strike again', 'cept the Almighty, an' I ruther guess He wouldn't make much account of it. Guess he'd starve me out ef I quit work, and not make much bones of it. I can stop peddlin' milk to sech as Carroll, but the milk sours, an' hanged if I know who suffers most. Here's my wife been makin' dam'ed little pot-cheeses out of the sour milk as 'tis, and sellin' 'em for two cents apiece. They're hangin' all over the bushes tied up in little rags. She's got to work all day to-day makin' butter to save the cream, and then I s'pose I've got to hustle round and find somebody to give the butter to. Carroll ain't the only one. I wish they all had to work as hard as I do one day for the things they git for nothin', the whole bilin' lot of 'em. He's the worst, though. What business did he have settlin' down on us here in Banbridge, I'd like to know? If he'd got to steal to feather his nest, why didn't he go to some other place, confound him?" The milkman's voice and manner were malignant.

The barber looked at him with some apprehension, but he spoke, still holding his razor aloft. "Now I rather guess you are jumpin' at exclusions too hasty, Mr. Tappan," said he, in an anxiously pacific voice. "I don't know about them dividends Mr. Lee's talkin' about. Captain Carroll, he gave me a little dip." The barber winked about mysteriously. "He told me he'd tell me when to come in, and he ain't told me yet, but I ain't no disprehension, but he's all right. Captain Carroll is a gentleman, he is." Flynn's voice fairly quivered with affectionate championship. There were tears in his foolish eyes. He bent over Amidon's face, which grinned up at him cautiously through the lather.

"Let him pay me them milk-tickets, then, if he's all right," Tappan said, viciously.

"He will when he's disembarrassed and his adventures are on a dividend-paying adipoise," said the barber, in a tearful voice.

"I think he is all right," said the druggist.

Then little Willy Eddy added his pipe. He had been covertly smoothing out Tappan's crumpled newspaper. "He's real nice-spoken," said he. "I guess he will come right in time."

Tappan turned on him and snatched back his newspaper. "Here, I ain't done with that," he said; "I've got to take it home to my wife." Then he added, "For God's sake, you little fool, he ain't been swipin' anything from you, has he?"

Then the barber arose to the situation. He advanced, razor in hand. He strode up to the milkman and stood dramatically before him, arm raised and head thrown back. "Now, look at here," he proclaimed, in a high falsetto, "I ain't agoin' to hear no asparagusment of my friends, not here in this tonsorial parlor. No, sir!" There was something at once touching, noble, and absurd about the demonstration. The others chuckled, then sobered, and watched.

Tappan stared at him a second incredulously. Then he grinned, showing his teeth like a dog.

"Lord! then that jailbird is one of your friends, is he?" he said. He had just lit his pipe. He puffed at it, and deliberately blew the smoke into the little barber's face.

Flynn bent over towards him with a sudden motion, and his mild, consequential face in the cloud of smoke changed into something terrible, from its very absurdity. His blue eyes glittered greenly; he lifted the razor and cut the air with it close to the other man's face. Tappan heard the hiss of it, and drew back involuntarily, his expression changing.

"What the devil are you up to?" he growled, with wary eyes on the other's face.

The barber continued to hold the razor like a bayonet in rest, fixed within an inch of the other's nose. "I'm up to kickin' you out of my parlor if you don't stop speakin' individuously disregardin' my friends," said he, with an emphasis which was ridiculous and yet impressive. The other men chuckled again, then grew grave.