In my eagerness to dispel my fears it never crossed my mind that Breck's absence was planned, so that Mrs. Sewall could start her attack without interference. She was a very clever woman, an old and experienced hand at social maneuvers. I am only a beginner. It was an uneven, one-sided fight—for fight it was after all. She won. She bore away the laurels. I bore away simply the tattered remnants of my self-respect.

* * * * *

Every year at the Hilton Country Club a local horse show is held in mid-August, and many of the summer colonists—women as well as men—exhibit and take part in the different events.

Edith always has liked horses, and when she married Alec she rebuilt our run-down stable along with the house, and filled the empty old box stalls with two or three valuable thorough-breds. Edith's Arrow, Pierre, and Blue-grass had won some sort of a ribbon for the last half-dozen years. I usually rode Blue-grass for Edith in the jumping event. I was to do so on the afternoon that Breck's letter arrived.

It was a perfect day. The grand-stand with its temporary boxes that always sell at absurdly high prices was filled with the summer society, dressed in its gayest and best. The brass band was striking up gala airs now and again, and the big bell in the tower clanged at intervals. Between events horses were being led to and fro, and in front of the grand-stand important individuals wearing white badges leaned over the sides of the lowest tier of boxes, chatting familiarly with the ladies above. A lot of outsiders, anybody who could pay a dollar admission, wandered at large, staring openly at the boxes, leveling opera-glasses, and telling each other who the celebrities were.

Alec was West on a business trip, but Edith had a box, of course, as she always does. All around us were gathered in their various stalls our friends and acquaintances. It is the custom to visit back and forth from box to box, and the owner of each box is as much a host in his own reservation as in his own reception-room at home. Our box is usually very popular, but this year there was a marked difference. Of course some of our best friends did stop for a minute or two, but those who sat down and stayed long enough to be observed were only men. I was surprised and unpleasantly disturbed.

Mrs. Sewall's box was not far away. We could see her seated prominently in a corner of it, surrounded by a very smart bevy—strangers mostly, New Yorkers I supposed—with Miss Gale Oliphant, strikingly costumed in scarlet, in their midst. A vigilant group of summer colonists hovered near-by, now and again becoming one of the party. Edith and I sat quite alone in our box for an hour fully; I in my severe black habit, with my elbow on the railing, my chin in my hand, steadily gazing at the track; Edith erect, sharp-eyed, and nervously looking about in search of some one desirable to bow to and invite to join us.

Finally she leaned forward and said to me, "Isn't this simply terrible? I can't stand it. Come, let's get out."

"Where to?" I asked. "My event comes very soon."

"Oh, let's go over and see Mrs. Jackson. I'm sick of sitting here stark alone. Come on—the girls are all over there."

I glanced toward the Jackson box and saw a group of our most intimate friends—Edith's bridge club members and several of the girls in my set, too.

"All right," I said, and we got up and strolled along the aisle.

As we approached I observed one of the women nudge another. I saw Helene McClellan open her mouth to speak and then close it quickly as she caught sight of us. I felt under Mrs. Jackson's over-effusive greeting the effort it was for her to appear easy and cordial. The group must have been talking about the masquerade, for as we joined it there ensued an uncomfortable silence. I would have withdrawn, but Edith pinched my arm and boldly went over and sat down in one of the empty chairs.

We couldn't have been there five minutes when Mrs. Sewall came strolling along the aisle, accompanied by Miss Oliphant. She, who usually held herself so aloof, was very gracious this afternoon, smiling cordially at left and right, and stopping now and again to present her niece. I saw her recognize Mrs. Jackson and then smilingly approach her. We all rose as our hostess got up and beamingly put her hand into Mrs. Sewall's extended one.

"How do you do, Mrs. Jackson," said Mrs. Sewall. "I've been enjoying your lovely boxful of young ladies all the afternoon. Charming, really! Delightful! I hope you are all planning to come to my masquerade," she went on, addressing the whole group now. "I want it to be a success. I am giving it for my little guest here—and my son also," she added with a significant smile, as if to imply that the coupling of Miss Oliphant's and her son's names was not accidental. "Oh, how do you do, Mrs. McClellan!" she interrupted herself, smiling across the group to Helene who stood next to me, "I haven't caught your eye before today. I hope you're well—and oh, Miss McDowell!" She bowed to Leslie McDowell on my other side.

It was just about at this juncture that I observed Edith threading her way around back of several chairs toward Mrs. Sewall. I wish I could have stopped her, but it was too late. I heard her clear voice suddenly exclaiming from easy speaking distance,

"How do you do, Mrs. Sewall."

"Ah! how do you do!" the lady condescended to reply. There was chilliness in the voice. Edith continued.

"We're so delighted," she went on bravely, "to have Grassmere occupied again. The lights are very pretty on your hilltop from The Homestead, our place, you know."

"Ah, The Homestead!" The chilliness was frosty now. Edith blushed.

"Perhaps you do not recall me, Mrs. Sewall—I am Mrs. Alexander Vars—you know. My sister——"

"Oh, yes—Mrs. Alexander Vars. I recall you quite well, Mrs. Vars. Perfectly, in fact," she said. Then stopped short. There was a terrible silence. It continued like a long-drawn out note on a violin.

"Oh," nervously piped out some one in the group, at last, "look at that lovely horse! I just adore black ones!"

Mrs. Sewall raised her lorgnette and gazed at the track.

"By the way, Mrs. Jackson," she resumed, as if she had not just slaughtered poor Edith. "By the way, can you tell me the participants in the next event? I've left my program. So careless!" she purred. And afterwards she smilingly accepted a proffered armchair in the midst of the scene of her successful encounter.

It would have been thoughtful, I think, and more humane to have waited until the wounded had been carried away—or crawled away. For there was no one to offer a helping hand to Edith and me. I didn't expect it. In social encounters the vanquished must look out for themselves. With what dignity I could, I advanced towards Mrs. Jackson.

"Well, I must trot along," I said lightly. "My turn at the hurdles will be coming soon. Come, Edith, let's go and have a look at Blue-grass. Good-by." And leisurely, although I longed to cast down my eyes and hasten quickly away from the staring faces, I strolled out of the box, followed by Edith; walked without haste along the aisle, even stopping twice to exchange a word or two with friends; and finally escaped.



CHAPTER IX

CATASTROPHE

The incident at the horse show was simply the beginning. I couldn't go anywhere—to a tea, to the Country Club, or even down town for a morning's shopping—and feel sure of escaping a fresh cut or insult of some kind. Mrs. Sewall went out of her way to make occasion to meet and ignore me. It was necessary for her to go out of her way, for we didn't meet often by chance. I was omitted from the many dinners and dances which all the hostesses in Hilton began to give in Miss Oliphant's honor. I was omitted from the more intimate afternoon tea and sewing parties. Gale attended them now, and of course it would have been awkward.

I didn't blame my girl friends for leaving me out. I might have done the same to one of them. It isn't contrary to the rules. In fact the few times I did encounter the old associates it was far from pleasant. There was a feeling of constraint. There was nothing to talk about, either. Even my manicurist and hairdresser, usually so conversational about all the social events of the community, felt embarrassed and ill at ease, with the parties at Grassmere, the costumes for the masquerade, Miss Oliphant, and the Vars scandal barred from the conversation.

I was glad that Alec was away on a western trip. He, at least, was spared the unbeautifying effect of the ordeal upon his wife and sister. Alec hardly ever finds fault or criticizes, but underneath his silence and his kindness I often wonder if there are not hidden, wounded illusions and bleeding ideals. Edith and I were both in the same boat, and we weren't pleasant traveling companions. I had never sailed with Edith under such baffling winds as we now encountered. Squalls, calms, and occasional storms we had experienced, but she had always kept a firm hand on the rudder. Now she seemed to lose her nerve and forget all the rules of successful navigation that she ever had learned. She threw the charts to the winds, and burst into uncontrolled passions of disappointment and rage.

I couldn't believe that Edith was the same woman who but six months ago had nursed her only little daughter, whom she loves passionately, through an alarming sickness. There had been trained nurses, but every night Edith had taken her place in the low chair by the little girl's crib, there to remain hour after hour, waiting, watching, noting with complete control the changes for better or for worse; sleeping scarcely at all; and always smiling quiet encouragement to Alec or to me when we would steal in upon her. Every one said she was marvelous—even the nurses and the doctor. It was as if she actually willed her daughter to pass through her terrific crisis, speaking firmly now and again to the little sufferer, holding her spirit steady as it crossed the yawning abyss. She had seemed superb to me. I had asked myself if I could ever summon to my support such unswerving strength and courage.

I didn't hear from Breck again until he arrived at the front door unexpectedly one night at ten o'clock. I led the way down into the shaded pergola, and there we remained until nearly midnight. When I finally stole back to my room, I found Edith waiting for me, sitting bolt upright on the foot of my bed, wide-awake, alert, eyes bright and hard as steel.

"Well?" she asked the instant I came in, "tell me, is he as keen as ever?"

A wave of something like sickness swept over me.

"Yes," I said shortly.

"Is he really?" she pursued. "Oh, isn't that splendid! Really? He still wants you to marry him?"

"Yes," I said.

Edith flung her arm about me and squeezed me hard.

"We'll make that old cat of a mother of his sing another song one of these days," she said. "You're a wonderful little kiddie, after all. You'll save the day! Trust you! You'll pull it off yet! Oh, I have been horrid, Ruth, this last fortnight. Really I have. I was so afraid we were ruined, and we would be if it wasn't for you. Wait a jiffy."

Fifteen minutes later, just as, very wearily, I was putting out my light, Edith pushed open my door again with a cup of something steaming hot in her hand.

"Here," she said. "Malted milk, good and hot, with just a dash of sherry in it. 'Twill make you sleep. You drink it, poor child—wonderful child too! You jump in and drink it! I'll fix the windows and the lights."

I tried to be Edith's idea of wonderful. For a week I endured the ignominy of receiving calls from Breck in secret, late at night when he was able to steal away from the gaieties at Grassmere. For a week I spent long idle days in the garden, in my room, on the veranda—anywhere at all where I could best kill the galling, unoccupied hours until night, and Breck was free to come to me.

I did not annoy him with demands for explanation of a situation already painfully clear to me. I knew that he spoke truth when he assured me he could not alter his mother's opposition at present, and I did not disturb our evening talks by reproaches. I assumed a grand air of indifference toward Mrs. Sewall and her attacks, as if I was some invulnerable creature beyond and above her. I didn't even cheapen myself by appearing to observe that Breck's invitations to appear in public with him had suddenly been replaced by demands for private and stolen interviews.

Of course his duties as host were many and consumed most of his time. His clever mother saw to that. He said that there were twenty guests at Grassmere. Naturally, I told myself, he couldn't take all-day motor trips with me. I was convinced that my strength lay in whatever charm I possessed for him, and I had no intention of injuring it by ill-timed complaints. I was attractive, alluring to him—more so than ever. I tried to be! Oh, I tried to be diplomatic, wise, to bide my time; by quiet and determined endurance to withstand the siege of Mrs. Sewall's disapproval; to hold her son's affection; and to marry him some day, with her sanction, too, just exactly as I had planned. I tried and I failed.

The very fact that I could hold Breck's affection hastened my defeat—that and my lacerated pride.

I met him one day when I was out walking with Dandy, not far from the very spot where once he had begged me to ride with him in his automobile. Today in the seat beside him, which had been of late so often mine, sat Gale Oliphant, her head almost upon his shoulder, and Breck leaning toward her laughing as they sped by.

He saw me, I was sure he saw me, but he did not raise his hat. His signal of recognition had been without Miss Oliphant's knowledge. After they had passed he had stretched out his arm as a sign to turn to the left, and had waved his hand without looking around. My face grew scarlet. What had I become? Why, I might have been a picked-up acquaintance, somebody to be ashamed of! Ruth Chenery Vars—where had disappeared that once proud and self-respecting girl?

Insignificant as the event really was, it stood as a symbol of the whole miserable situation to me. It was just enough to startle me into contempt for myself. That night Breck came stealing down to me along the dark roads in his quiet car about eleven-thirty. I knew he had been to the Jackson dinner and was surprised to find he had changed into street clothes. He was more eager than ever in his greeting.

"Come down into the sunken garden," he pleaded. "I've got something to say to you."

It was light in the garden. There was a full September moon. I stood beside the bird-bath and put a forefinger in it. I could hear Breck breathing hard beside me. I was sure he had broken his pledge and had been drinking.

"Well?" I said at last, calmly, looking up.

He answered me silently, vehemently.

"Don't, please, here. It's so fearfully light. Don't, Breck," I said.

"I've got the car," he whispered. "It will take us two hours. I've got it all planned. It's a peach of a night. You've got to come. I'm not for waiting any longer. You've got to marry me tonight, you little fish! I'll wake you up. Do you hear me? Tonight in two hours. I'm not going to hang around any longer. You've got to come!"

I managed to struggle away.

"Don't talk like that to me. It's insulting! Don't!" I said.

"Insulting! Say, ring off on that—will you? Insulting to ask a girl to marry you! Say, that's good! Well, insulting or not, I've made up my mind not to hang around any longer. I'll marry you tonight or not at all! You needn't be afraid. I've got it all fixed up—license and everything." He whipped a paper out of his pocket. "We'll surprise 'em, we will—you and I. I'm mad about you, and always have been. The mater—huh! Be a shock to her—but she'll survive."

"I wouldn't elope with the king of England!" I said hotly. "What do you think I am? Understand this, Breck. I require all the honors and high ceremonies that exist."

"Damn it," he said, "you've been letting me come here without much ceremony every night, late, on the quiet. What have you got to say to that? I'm tired of seeing you pose on that high horse of yours. Come down. You know as well as I you've been leading me along as hard as you could for the last week. Good Lord—what for? Say, what's the game? I don't know. But listen—if you don't marry me now, then you never will. There's a limit to a man's endurance. Come, come, you can't do better for yourself. You aren't so much. The mater will never come around. She's got her teeth set. The car's ready. I shan't come again."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I'll be back in a minute." And I went straight into the house and upstairs to my room, knelt down before my bureau and drew out a blue velvet box. Breck's ring was inside.

Just as I was stealing down the stairs again, ever-on-the-guard, Edith appeared in the hall in her nightdress.

"What are you after?" she asked.

For answer I held out the box toward her. She came down two or three of the stairs.

"What you going to do with it?" she demanded.

"Give it back to Breck."

She grasped my wrist. "You little fool!" she exclaimed.

"But he wants me to run off with him. He wants me to elope."

"He does!" she ejaculated, her eyes large. "Well?" she inquired.

I stared up at Edith on the step above me in silence.

"Well?" she repeated.

"You don't mean——" I began.

"His mother is sure to come around in time. They always do. My mother eloped," she said.

"Edith Campbell Vars," I exclaimed, "do you actually mean——" I stopped. Even in the dim light of the hall I saw her flush before my blank astonishment. "Do you mean——"

"Well, if you don't," she interrupted in defense, "everybody will think he threw you over. You'll simply become an old glove. There's not much choice."

"But my pride, my own self-respect! Edith Vars, you'd sell your soul for society; and you'd sell me too! But you can't—you can't! Let go my wrist. I'm sick of the whole miserable game. I'm sick of it. Let me go."

"And I'm sick of it too," flung back Edith. "But I've got a daughter's future to think about, I'd have you know, as well as yours. I've worked hard to establish ourselves in this place, and I've succeeded too. And now you come along, and look at the mess we're in! Humiliated! Ignored! Insulted! It isn't my fault, is it? If I'd paddled my own canoe, I'd be all right today."

"You can paddle it hereafter," I flashed out. "I shan't trouble you any more."

"Yes, that's pleasant, after you've jabbed it full of holes!"

"Let me go, Edith," I said and pulled away my wrist with a jerk.

"Are you going to give it back to him?"

"Yes, I am!" I retorted and fled down the stairs, out of the door, across the porch, and into the moonlit garden as fast as I could go.

"Here, Breck—here's your ring! Take it. You're free. You don't need to hang around, as you say, any more. And I'm free, too, thank heaven! I would have borne the glory and the honor of your name with pride. Your mother's friendship would have been a happiness, but for no name, and for no woman's favor will I descend to a stolen marriage. You're mistaken in me. Everybody seems to be. I'm mistaken in myself. I don't want to marry you after all. I don't love you, and I don't want to marry you. I'm tired. Please go."

He stared at me. "You little fool!" he exclaimed, just like Edith. Then he slipped the box into his pocket, shrugged his shoulders, and in truly chivalrous fashion added, "Don't imagine I'm going to commit suicide or anything tragic like that, young lady, because I'm not."

"I didn't imagine it," I replied.

"I'm going to marry Gale Oliphant," he informed me coolly. "I'm going to give her a ring in a little box—and she'll wear hers. You'll see." He produced a cigarette and lit it. "She's no fish," he added. "She's a pippin, she is. Good night," he finished, and turned and walked out of the garden.

Three days later I went away from Hilton. Edith's tirades became unendurable. I didn't want even to eat her food. The spinet desk, the bureau, the chiffonier, the closet, I cleared of every trace of me. I stripped the bed of its linen and left the mattress rolled over the foot-board in eloquent abandonment. The waste-basket bulged with discarded odds and ends. One had only to look into that room to feel convinced that its occupant had disappeared, like a spirit from a dead body, never to return.

I went to my sister Lucy's. I did not write her. I simply took a morning train to Boston and called her up on the 'phone in her not far distant university town. She came trotting cheerfully in to meet me. I told her my news; she tenderly gathered what was left of me together, and carried the bits out here to her little white house on the hill.



CHAPTER X

A UNIVERSITY TOWN

I did not think I would be seated here on my rustic bench writing so soon again. I finished the history of my catastrophe a week ago. But something almost pleasant has occurred, and I'd like to try my pencil at recording a pleasant story. Scarcely a story yet, though. Just a bit of a conversation—that's all—fragmentary. It refers to this very bench where I am sitting as I write, to the hills I am seeing out beyond the little maple tree stripped now of all its glory. I cannot see a dash of color anywhere. The world is brown. The sky is gray. It is rather chilly for writing out-of-doors.

The conversation I refer to began in an ugly little room in a professor's house. There was a roll-top desk in the room, and a map, yellow with age, hanging on the wall. The conversation ended underneath a lamp-post on a street curbing, and it was rainy and dark and cold. And yet when I think of that conversation, sitting here in the brown chill dusk, I see color, I feel warmth.

When I first came here to Lucy's three weeks ago, she assumed that I was suffering from a broken heart. I had been exposed and showed symptoms—going off alone for long walks and consuming reams of theme paper as if I was half mad. I told Lucy that my heart was too hard to break, but I couldn't convince her. There wasn't a day passed but that she planned some form of amusement or diversion. Even Will, her husband, cooperated and spent long evenings playing rum or three-handed auction, so I might not sit idle. I tried to fall in with Lucy's plans.

"But, please, no men! I don't want to see another man for years. If any man I know finds out I'm here, tell him I won't see him, absolutely," I warned. "I want to be alone. I want to think things out undisturbed. Sometimes I almost wish I could enter a convent."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Lucy would exclaim.

"You needn't be. You didn't break my engagement. For heaven's sake, Lucy, you needn't take it so hard."

But she did. She simply brooded over me. She read to me, smiled for me, and initiated every sally that I made into public. In conversation she picked her way with me with the precaution of a cat walking across a table covered with delicate china. She made wide detours to avoid a reference or remark that might reflect upon my engagement. Will did likewise. I lived in daily surprise and wonder. As a family we are brutally frank. This was a new phase, and one of the indirect results, I suppose, of my broken engagement.

What I am trying to arrive at is the change of attitude in me toward Lucy. Usually when I visit Lucy I do just about as I please; refuse to attend a lot of stupid student-teas and brain-fagging lectures, or to exert myself to appear engrossed in the conversation of her intellectual dinner guests.

I used to scorn Lucy's dinners. They are very different from Edith's, where, when the last guest in her stunning new gown has arrived and swept into the drawing-room, followed by her husband, a maid enters, balancing on her tray a dozen little glasses, amber filled; everybody takes one, daintily, between a thumb and forefinger and drains it; puts it nonchalantly aside on shelf or table; offers or accepts an arm and floats toward the dining-room. At Edith's dinners the table is long, flower-laden, candle-lighted. Your partner's face smiles at you dimly. His voice is almost drowned by the chatter and the laughter all about, but you hear him—just barely—and you laugh—he is immensely droll—and then reply. And he laughs, too, contagiously, and you know that you are going to get on!

Incidentally at Edith's dinners silent-footed servants pass you things; you take them; you eat a little, too—delicious morsels if you stopped to consider them; but you and your partner are having far too good a time (he is actually audacious, and so, if you please, are you) to bother about the food.

There's a little group of glasses beside your water, and once in a while there appears in your field of vision a hand grasping a white napkin folded like a cornucopia, out of which flows delicious nectar. You sip a little of it occasionally, a very little—you are careful of course—and waves of elation sweep over you because you are alive and happy and good to look upon; waves of keen delight that such a big and splendid life (there are orchids in the center of the table, there are pearls and diamonds everywhere)—that such a life as this is yours to grasp and to enjoy.

At Lucy's dinners the women do not wear diamonds and pearls. Lucy seldom entertains more than six at a time. "Shall we go out?" she says when her Delia mumbles something from the door. You straggle across the hall into the dining-room, where thirteen carnations—you count them later, there's time enough—where thirteen stiff carnations are doing duty in the center of the prim table. At each place there is a soup plate sending forth a cloud of steam. You wait until Lucy points out your place to you, and then sit down at last. There is a terrible pause—you wonder if they say grace—and then finally Lucy picks up her soup-spoon for signal and you're off! The conversation is general. That is because Lucy's guests are usually intellectuals, and whatever any one of them says is supposed to be so important that every one else must keep still and listen. You can't help but notice the food, because there's nothing to soften the effect of it upon your nerves, as it were. There are usually four courses, with chicken or ducks for the main dish, accompanied by potatoes cut in balls, the invariable rubber stamp of a party at Lucy's. Afterward there's coffee in the living-room, and you feel fearfully discouraged when you look at the clock and find it's only eight-thirty. You're surprised after the guests have gone to find that Lucy considers her party a success.

"Why," she exclaims, cheeks aglow, "Dr. Van Breeze gave us the entire resume of his new book. He seldom thinks anybody clever enough to talk to. It was a perfect combination!"

As I said, I usually visit Lucy in rather a critical state of mind and hold myself aloof from her learned old doctors and professors. On this visit, though, she is so obviously careful of me and my feelings, that I find myself going out of my way to consider hers a little. One day last week when she so brightly suggested that we go to a tea given by the wife of a member of the faculty, instead of exclaiming, "Oh, dear! it would bore me to extinction," I replied sweetly, "All right, if you want to, I'll go."

I wasn't feeling happy. I didn't want to go. I had been roaming the woods and country roads round about for a month in search of an excuse for existence. I had been autobiographing for days in the faint hope that I might run across something worth while in my life. But no. It was hopeless. I had lost all initiative. I couldn't see what reason there was for me to eat three meals a day. It seemed as foolish as stoking the furnaces of an ocean liner when it is in port. In such a mood, and through the drifting mist of a complaining October afternoon, in rubbers and a raincoat, I started out with Lucy for her afternoon tea.

The other guests wore raincoats, too—we met a few on the way—with dull-colored suits underneath, and tailored hats. There wasn't a single bright, frivolous thing about that tea. Even the house was dismal—rows of black walnut bookcases with busts of great men on top, steel engravings framed in oak on the walls, and a Boston fern or two in red pots sitting about on plates. When I looked up from my weak tea, served in a common stock-pattern willow cup, and saw Lucy sparkling with pleasure, talking away for dear life with a white-haired old man who wore a string tie and had had two fingers shot off in the Civil War (I always hated to shake hands with him) a wave of intolerance for age and learning swept over me. I told Lucy if she didn't mind I'd run along home, and stepped across the hall into a little stupid room with a roll-top desk in it, where we had left our raincoats, and rubbers. I put on my things and then stood staring a moment at a picture on the wall. I didn't know what the picture was. I simply looked at it blindly while I fought a sudden desire to cry. I hadn't wept before. But this dreadful house, these dry, drab people were such a contrast to my all-but-realized ambitions that it brought bitter tears to my eyes. Life at Grassmere—that was living! This was mere existence.

Just as I was groping for a handkerchief some little fool of a woman exclaimed, "Oh, there she is—in the study! I thought she hadn't gone. O Miss Vars, there's somebody I want you to meet, and meet you. Here she is, Mr. Jennings. Come in. Miss Vars," I was still facing the wall, "Miss Vars, I want to introduce Mr. Jennings." I turned finally, and as I did so she added, "Now, I must go back to Dr. Fuller. I was afraid you'd gone," and out she darted. I could have shot her.

Mr. Jennings came straight across the room. Through a blur I caught an impression of height, breadth and energy. His sudden hand-grasp was firm and decisive. "How do you do?" he said, and then abruptly observed my tears.

"You've caught me with my sails all down," I explained.

"Have I?" he replied pleasantly. "Well, I like sails down."

"Please do not think," I continued, "that I am often guilty of such a thing as this. I'm not. Who was that woman anyhow?"

"Oh, don't blame her," he laughed, and he stepped forward to look at the picture which I had been staring at. I was busy putting away my handkerchief. "Who was that woman?" Mr. Jennings repeated, abruptly turning away from the picture back to me, "Who was she? I'll tell you who she was—a good angel. Why," he went on, "I'd got into the way of thinking that sympathy as expressed by tears had gone out of style with the modern girl. They never shed any at the theater nowadays, I notice. I'm glad to know there is one who hasn't forgotten how."

I stepped forward then to find out what manner of picture it was to cause such a tribute to be paid me. It was called "The Doctor." A crude bare room was depicted. The light from a lamp on an old kitchen table threw its rays on the turned-aside, face of a little girl, who lay asleep—or unconscious—on an improvised bed made of two chairs drawn together. Beyond the narrow confines of the cot the little girl's hand extended, wistfully upturned. Seated beside her, watching, sat the big kind doctor. Anxiety, doubt were in his intelligent face. Near an east window, through which a streak of dawn was creeping, sat a woman, her face buried in the curve of her arms folded on the table. Beside her stood a bearded man, brow furrowed, his pleading eyes upon the doctor, while his hand, big, comforting, rested on the woman's bowed shoulders. A cup with a spoon in it, a collection of bottles near-by—all the poor, human, useless tools of defense were there, eloquent of a long and losing struggle. Every one who recalls the familiar picture knows what a dreary, hopeless scene it is—the room stamped with poverty, the window stark and curtainless, the woman meagerly clad, the man bearing the marks of hardship.

Suddenly in the face of all that, Mr. Jennings softly exclaimed, "That's living."

Only five minutes ago I had said the same thing of life at Grassmere.

"Is it?" I replied. "Is that living? I've been wondering lately. I thought—I thought—it's so poor and sad!" I remonstrated.

"Poor! Oh, no, it's rich," he replied quickly, "rich in everything worth while. Anyhow, only lives that are vacuums are free from sadness."

"Are lives that are vacuums free from happiness, too?" I enquired.

He took my question as if it was a statement. "That's true, too, I suppose," he agreed.

"How hopeless," I murmured, still gazing at the picture, but in reality contemplating my own empty life. He misunderstood.

"See here," he said. "I believe this little girl here is going to pull through after all. Don't worry. I insist she is. That artist ought to paint a sequel—just for you," he added, and abruptly he unfolded his arms and looked at me squarely for the first time. "I didn't in the least get your name," he broke off. "The good angel flew away so soon."

I told him.

"Oh, yes, Miss Vars. Thank you. Mine's Jennings. People mumble names so in introductions." He glanced around at the piles of raincoats and racks of umbrellas. I already had my coat on. "You weren't just going, were you?" he inquired brightly. "For if you were, so was I, too. Perhaps you will let me walk along—unless you're riding."

I forgot just for a minute that I didn't want to see another man for years and years. He wasn't a man just then, but a bright and colorful illumination. He stood before me full of life and vigor. He was tall and straight. His close-cropped hair shone like gold in the pale gas-light, and there was a tan or glow upon his face that made me think of out-of-doors. His smile, his straightforward gaze, his crisp voice, had brightened that dull little room for me. I went with him. Of course I did—out into the rainy darkness of the late October afternoon, drawn as a child towards the glow of red fire.



CHAPTER XI

A WALK IN THE RAIN

Once on the side-walk Mr. Jennings said, "I'm glad to know your name, for I know you by sight already. Shall we have any umbrella?"

"Let's not," I replied. "I like the mist. But how do you know me?"

"I thought you would—like the mist, I mean—because you seem to like my woods so well."

"Your woods! Why—what woods?"

"The ones you walk in every day," he cheerfully replied; "they're mine. I discovered them, and to whom else should they belong?"

"I've been trespassing, then."

"Oh, no! I'm delighted to lend my woods to you. If you wear blinders and keep your eyes straight ahead and stuff your ears with cotton so you can't hear the trolleys, you can almost cheat yourself into thinking they're real woods with a mountain to climb at the end of them. Do you like that little rustic seat I made beside the lake?"

"Did you make it?"

"Yes, Saturdays, for recreation last year. I'm afraid it doesn't fit very well." He smiled from out of the light of a sudden lamp-post. "You'll find a birch footstool some day pretty soon. I noticed your feet didn't reach. By the way," he broke off, "pardon me for quoting from you, but I don't think back-season debutantes are like out-of-demand best-sellers—not all of them. Anyhow, all best-sellers do not deteriorate. And tell me, is this chap with the deep-purring car the villain or the hero in your novel—the dark one with the hair blown straight back?"

I almost stopped in my amazement. He was quoting from my life history.

"I don't understand," I began. I could feel the color in my cheeks. "I dislike mystery. Tell me. Please. How did you—I dislike mystery," I repeated.

"Are you angry? It's so dark I can't see. Don't be angry. It was written on theme paper, in pencil, and in a university town theme paper is public property. I found them there one day—just two loose leaves behind the seat—and I read them. Afterwards I saw you—not until afterwards," he assured me, "writing there every day. I asked to be introduced to you when I saw you tucked away in a corner there this afternoon drinking tea behind a fern, so that I could return your property."

"Oh, you've kept the leaves! Where are they?" I demanded.

"Right here. Wait a minute." And underneath an arc-light we stopped, and from out of his breast-pocket this surprising man drew a leather case, and from out of that two crumpled pages of my life. "If any one should ask me to guess," he went on, "I should say that the author of these fragments is a student at Shirley" (the girls' college connected with the University) "and that she had strolled out to my woods for inspiration to write a story for an English course. Am I right?" He passed me the leaves. "It sounds promising," he added, "the story, I mean."

I took the leaves and glanced through them. There wasn't a name mentioned on either. "A student at Shirley!" I exclaimed. "How perfectly ridiculous! A school girl! Well, how old do you think I am?" and out of sheer relief I rippled into a laugh.

"I don't know," he replied. "How old are you?" And he laughed, too. The sound of our merriment mixing so rhythmically was music to my ears. I thought I had forgotten how to be foolish, and inconsequential.

"I don't know why it strikes me so funny," I tried to explain—for really I felt fairly elated—"I don't know why, but a story for an English course! A college girl!" And I burst into peals of mirth.

"That's right. Go ahead. I deserve it," urged Mr. Jennings self-depreciatively. "How I blunder! Anyhow I've found you can laugh as well as cry, and that's something. Perhaps now," he continued, "seeing I'm such a failure as a Sherlock Holmes, you will be so kind as to tell me yourself who you are. Do you live here? I never saw you before. I'm sure you're a stranger. Where is your home, Miss Vars?"

"Where is my home?" I repeated, and then paused an instant. Where indeed? "A wardrobe-trunk is my home, Mr. Jennings," I replied.

"Oh!" he took it up. "A wardrobe-trunk. Rather a small house for you to develop your individuality in, very freely, I should say!"

"Yes, but at least nothing hangs within its walls but of my own choosing."

"And it's convenient for house-cleaning, too," he followed it up. "But see here, is there room for two in it, because I was just going to ask to call."

"I usually entertain my callers in the garden," I primly announced.

"How delightful! I much prefer gardens." And we laughed again. "Which way?" he abruptly inquired. "Which way to your garden, please?" We had come to a crossing. I stopped, and he beside me.

"Why, I'm sure I don't know!" Nothing about me looked familiar. "These winding streets of yours! I'm afraid I'm lost," I confessed. "You'll have to put me on a car—a Greene Hill Avenue car. I know my way alone then. At least I believe it's a Greene Hill Avenue car. They've just moved there—my sister. Perhaps you know her—Mrs. William Maynard."

"Lucy Maynard!" he exclaimed. "I should say I did! Are you—why, are you her sister?"

He had heard about me then! Of course. How cruel!

"Yes. Why?" I managed to inquire.

"Oh, nothing. Only I've met you," he brought out triumphantly. "I met you at dinner, two or three years ago—at your sister's house. We're old friends," he said.

"Are we?" I asked in wonder. "Are we old friends?" I wanted to add, "How nice!"

He looked so steady and substantial, standing there—so kind and understanding. Any one would prize him for an old friend. I gazed up at him. The drifting mist had covered his broad chest and shoulders with a glistening veil of white. It shone like frost on the nap of his soft felt hat. It sparkled on his eyebrows and the lashes of his fine eyes. "How nice," I wanted to add. But a desire not to flirt with this man honestly possessed me. Besides I must remember I was tired of men. I wanted nothing of any of them. So instead I said, "Well, then, you know what car I need to take."

He ignored my remark.

"You had on a yellow dress—let's walk along—and wore purple pansies, fresh ones, although it was mid-winter. I remember it distinctly. But a hat and a raincoat today make you look different, and I couldn't get near enough to you in the woods. I remember there was a medical friend of your sister's husband there that night, and Will and he monopolized the conversation. I hardly spoke to you; but tell me, didn't you wear pansies with a yellow dress one night at your sister's?"

"Jennings? Are you Bob Jennings?" (Lucy's Bob Jennings! I remembered now—a teacher of English at the University.) "Of course," I exclaimed, "I recall you now. I remember that night perfectly. When you came into my sister's living-room, looking so—so unprofessor-like—I thought to myself, 'How nice for me; Professor Jennings couldn't come; she's got one of the students to take his place—some one nice and easy and my size.' I wondered if you were on the football team or crew, and it crossed my mind what a perfect shame it was to drag a man like you away from a dance in town, perhaps, to a stupid dinner with one of the faculty. And then you began to talk with Will about—what was it—Chaucer? Anyhow something terrifying, and I knew then that you were Professor Jennings after all."

"Oh, but I wasn't. I was just an assistant. I'm not a professor even yet. Never shall be either—the gods willing. I'm trying hard to be a lawyer. Circuitous route, I confess. But you know automobile guide-books often advise the longer and smoother road. Do you mind walking? It isn't far, and the cars are crowded."

We walked.

"I suppose," I remarked a little later, "trying hard to become a lawyer is what keeps your life from being a vacuum."

"Yes, that, and a little white-haired lady I call my mother," he added gallantly.

"Do you want to know what keeps my life from being a vacuum?" I abruptly asked.

"Of course I do!"

"Well, then—a little brown Boston terrier whom I call Dandy," I announced.

He laughed as if it was a joke. "What nonsense! Your sister has told me quite a lot about you, Miss Vars, one time and another; that you write verse a little, for instance. Any one who can create is able to fill all the empty corners of his life. You know that as well as I do."

I considered this new idea in silence for a moment. We turned in at Lucy's street.

"How long shall you be here, Miss Vars?" asked Mr. Jennings. "And, seriously, may I call some evening?"

How could I refuse such a friendly and straightforward request?

"Why, yes," I heard myself saying, man though he was, "I suppose so. I should be glad, only——"

"Only what?"

"Only—well——" We were at Lucy's gate. I stopped beneath the lamp-post. "I don't believe my sister has told you all about me, Mr. Jennings."

"Of course not!" He laughed. "I don't want her to. I don't want to know all that's in a new book I am about to read. It's pleasanter to discover the delights myself."

I felt conscience-stricken. There were no delights left in me. I ought to tell him. However, all I replied was, "How nicely you put things!"

And he: "Do I? Well—when may I come?"

"Why—any night. Only I'm not a very bright book—rather dreary. Truly. I warn you. You found me in tears, remember."

"Don't think again about that," he said to me. "Please. Listen. I always try to take home to the little white-haired lady something pleasant every night—a rose or a couple of pinks, or an incident of some sort to please her, never anything dreary. You, looking at the picture of the little sick girl, are to be the gift tonight." And then suddenly embarrassed, he added hastily, "I'm afraid you're awfully wet. I ought to be shot. Perhaps you preferred to ride. You're covered with mist. And perhaps it's spoiled something." He glanced at my hat.

"No, it hasn't," I assured him, "and good night. I can get in all right."

"Oh, let me——"

"No, please," I insisted.

"Very well," he acquiesced. And I gave him my hand and sped up the walk.

He waited until the door was opened to me, and then, "Good night," came his clear, pleasant voice to me from out of the rainy dark.

I went straight upstairs to my room. I felt as if I had just drunk long and deep of pure cold water. Tired and travel-worn I had been, uncertain of my way, disheartened, spent; and then suddenly across my path had appeared an unexpected brook, crystal clear, soul-refreshing. I had rested by it a moment, listened to its cheerful murmur, lifted up a little of its coolness in the hollow of my hand, and drunk. I went up to my room with a lighter heart than I had known for months, walked over to the window, raised it, and let in a little of the precious mistiness that had enshrouded me for the last half hour.

Standing there looking out into the darkness, I was interrupted by a knock on my door.

"I was just turning down the beds, Miss," explained Lucy's Delia, "and so brought up your letter." And she passed me the missive I had not noticed on the table as I came in, so blind a cheerful "good night" called from out of the rain had made me.

"A letter? Thank you, Delia. Isn't it rainy!" I added impulsively.

"It is, Miss. It is indeed, Miss Ruth!"

"Come," I went on, "let me help you turn down the beds. I haven't another thing to do." The letter could wait. Benevolence possessed my soul.

Later alone in my room I opened my note. It was from Edith. I had recognized her handwriting instantly. She seldom harbors ill-feeling for any length of time.

"Three cheers!" the letter jubilantly began. "Run up a flag. We win!" it shouted. "Prepare yourself, Toots. We have been bidden to Grassmere! Also I have received a personal note from the great Mogul herself. You were right, I guess, as always. Let's forgive and forget. Mrs. Sewall writes to know if we will honor her by our presence at a luncheon at Grassmere. What do you say to that? With pleasure, kind lady, say I! I enclose your invitation. You'll be ravishing in a new gown which I want you to go right in and order at Madame's—on me, understand, dearie. I'm going to blow myself to a new one, too. Won't the girls be surprised when they hear of this? The joke will be on them, I'm thinking. Probably you and Breck will be patching up your little difference, too. I don't pretend to fathom Mrs. S.'s change of front, but it's changed anyhow! That's all I care about. Good-by. Must hurry to catch mail. Hustle home, rascal. Love, Edith."

Two weeks later on the morning after the luncheon, to which it is unnecessary to say I sent my immediate regrets, the morning paper could not be found at Lucy's house. Will went off to the University berating the paper-boy soundly. After I had finished my coffee and toast and moved over to the front window, Lucy opened the wood-box.

"I stuffed it in here," she said, "just as you and Will were coming downstairs. I thought you'd rather see it first." And she put the lost paper into my hands and left me.

On the front page there appeared the following announcement:

"Breckenridge Sewall Engaged to be Married to Miss Gale Oliphant of New York and Newport. Announcement of Engagement Occasion for Brilliant Luncheon Given by Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall at her Beautiful Estate in Hilton. Wedding Set for Early December."

I read the announcement two or three times, and afterward the fine print below, containing a long list of the luncheon guests with Edith's name proudly in its midst. The scene of my shame and the actors flashed before me. Ignominy and defeat were no part of the new creature I had become since Lucy's tea. I read the announcement again. It was as if a dark cloud passed high over my head and cast a shadow on the sparkling beauty of the brook beside which I had been lingering for nearly two weeks.



CHAPTER XII

A DINNER PARTY

Robert Jennings sees the plainest and commonest things of life through the eyes of an artist. He never goes anywhere without a volume of poetry stuffed into his pocket, and if he runs across anything that no one else has endowed with beauty, then straightway he will endow it himself. Crowded trolleys, railroad stations, a muddy road—all have some hidden appeal. Even greed and discord he manages to ignore as such by looking beneath their exteriors for hidden significance. The simpler a pleasure, the greater to him its joy.

He is tall, broad; of light complexion; vigorous in every movement that he makes. Upon his face there is a perpetual glow, whether due to mere color, or to expression, I cannot make up my mind. He enters the house and brings with him a feeling of out-of-doors. His smile is like sunshine on white snow, his seriousness like a quiet pool hidden among trees, his enthusiasm like mad whitecaps on a lake stirred by a gale, his tenderness like the kind warmth of Indian summer caressing drooping flowers. I have never known any one just like him before. Instead of inviting me in town to luncheon and the matinee, or to dinner and the opera, he takes me out with him to drink draughts of cold November air, and to share the glory of an autumn sunset.

The first time he called he mentioned a course at Shirley offered to special students. I told him if he would use his influence and persuade the authorities to accept me, I believed I should like to take a course in college. I thought it would help to kill time while I was making up my mind how better to dispose of myself. I have therefore become what Mr. Jennings thought I was in the beginning—a student at Shirley; not a full-fledged one but a "special" in English. I attend class twice a week and in between times write compositions that are read out loud in class and criticized. Also in between times I occasionally see Mr. Jennings.

Last week each member of the class was required to submit an original sonnet. Mine is not finished yet. I am trying a rhapsody on the autumn woods. This is the way I work. Pencil, pad, low rocking-chair by the window. First line:

"I see the saffron woods of yesterday!" Then fixedly I gaze at the rubber on the end of my pencil. "I see the saffron woods of yesterday!" (What a young god he looked the day he called for me to go chestnutting! How his eyes laughed and his voice sang, and as we scuffled noisily through the leaf-strewn forest, how his long, easy stride put me in mind of the swinging meter of Longfellow's Hiawatha!)

"I see the saffron woods of yesterday!" (I see, too, the setting sun shining on the yellow leaves, clinging frailly. I see myself standing beneath a tree holding up an overcoat—his overcoat, thrown across my outstretched arms to catch the pelting burrs that he is shaking off. I see his eyes looking down from the tree into mine. Later as we lean over a rock to crack open the prickly burrs, I feel our shoulders touch! Did he feel them, too, I wonder? If he were any other man I would say that he meant that our eyes should meet too long, our shoulders lean too near, and our silence, as we walked home in the dark, continue too tense. But he is different. He is not a lover. He is a friend—a comrade.) "I see the saffron woods of yesterday!"

Abruptly I lay aside my pad and pencil. I put on my coat and hat, pull on my gloves, and in self-defense plunge out into the cold November afternoon. I avoid the country, and try to keep my recreant thoughts on such practical subjects as trolley cars, motor-trucks and delivery wagons, rumbling noisily beside me along the street. A sudden "To Let" card appears in a new apartment. I wonder how much the rent is. I wonder how much the salary of an assistant professor is. Probably something under five thousand a year. The income from the investments left me by my father amounts to almost eight hundred dollars. Clothes alone cost me more than a thousand. Of course one wouldn't need so many, but what with rent, and food, and service, and—what am I thinking of? Why, I've known the man only four weeks, and considering my recent relations with Breckenridge Sewall such mad air-castling is lacking in good taste. Besides, a teacher—a professor! I've always scorned professors. I was predestined to fill a high and influential place. A professor's wife? It is unthinkable! And then abruptly appears a street vender beside me. I smell his roasting chestnuts. And again—again, "I see the saffron woods of yesterday!"

About two days after I went chestnutting with Mr. Jennings, I went picnicking. We built a fire in the corner of two stones and cooked chops and bacon. Two days after that we tramped to an old farm-house, five miles straight-away north, and drank sweet cider—rather warm—from a jelly tumbler with a rough rim. Once we had some tea and thick slabs of bread in a country hotel by the roadside. Often we pillage orchards for apples. Day before yesterday we stopped in a dismantled vegetable garden and pulled a raw turnip from out of the frosty ground. Mr. Jennings scraped the dirt away and pared off a little morsel with his pocket knife. He offered it to me, then took a piece himself.

"Same old taste," I laughed.

"Same old taste," he laughed back. And we looked into each other's eyes in sympathetic appreciation of raw turnip. As he wiped the blade of his knife he added, "If I didn't know it wasn't so, I would swear we played together as children. Most young ladies, of this age, do not care for raw turnips."

A thrill passed through me. I blessed my brothers who had enriched my childhood with the lore of out-of-doors. I blessed even the difficult circumstances of my father's finances, which had forced me as a little girl to seek my pleasures in fields and woods and tilled gardens. Had I once said that my nature required a luxurious environment? I had been mistaken. I gazed upon Robert Jennings standing there before me in the forlorn garden. Bare brown hills were his background. The wind swept down bleakly from the east, bearing with it the dank odor of frostbitten cauliflower. Swift, sharp memories of my childhood swept over me. Smothered traditions stirred in my heart. All the young sweet impulses of my youth took sudden possession of me, and through a mist that blurred my eyes I recognized with a little stab in my breast—that was half joy, half fear—I recognized before me my perfect comrade!

Last night Lucy had one of her dinners and one of the men invited was Robert Jennings. She had increased the usual number of six to eight. "A real party," she explained to me, "with a fish course!"

For no other dinner party in my life did I dress with more care or trembling expectation. Lucy's dinners are always at seven o'clock. I was ready at quarter of, with cold hands and hot cheeks. I knew the very instant that Mr. Jennings entered the room that evening. I was standing at the far end with my back toward the door, talking to the war veteran. At the first sound of Mr. Jennings' greeting as he met Lucy, I became deaf to all else. I heard him speaking to the others near her—such a trained and cultured voice—but I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes riveted on the veteran. It was enough, at that instant, to be in the same room with Robert Jennings. And when Lucy finally said, "Shall we go out?" I wondered if I could bear the ordeal of turning around and meeting his eyes. I needn't have been afraid. He spared me that. There was no greeting of any kind between us until we sat down.

Lucy had placed him at the end of the table farthest away from me, and after the guests were all settled, I dared at last to look up. A swift, sweeping glance I meant it to be, but his eyes were waiting for mine, and secretly, concealed by the noise and chatter all around, somewhere among Lucy's carnations in the center of the table, we met. Only for an instant. He returned immediately to his partner, and I to mine. He answered her, we both selected a piece of silver—and then, abruptly, ran away to each other again. Frequently, during that dinner, as we gained confidence and learned the way, we met among the carnations.

Never before was I so glad of what good looks heaven had bestowed upon me as when I saw this man's eyes examine and approve. Never before did I feel so elated at a dinner, so glad to be alive. My pulse ran high. My spirits fairly danced. And all without cocktails, too! Not only did our eyes meet in stolen interviews, but our voices, too. He couldn't speak but what I heard him, nor did I laugh but what it was meant for him.

During the hour occasions occurred when Mr. Jennings alone did the talking, while the rest listened. I could observe him then without fear of discovery. He sat there opposite me in his perfect evening clothes, as much at home and at ease as in Scotch tweeds in the woods. As he leaned forward a little, one cuffed wrist resting on the table's edge, his fine head held erect, expressing his ideas in clear and well-turned phrases, confident in himself, and listened to with attention, I glowed with pride at the thought of my intimacy with him. A professor's wife? That was a mere name—but his, this young aristocrat's—what a privilege!

We didn't speak to each other until late in the evening, when the ladies rose from their chairs about the fire in the living-room and began to talk about the hour. I was standing alone by the mantel when I became conscious that Mr. Jennings had moved away from beside Mrs. Van Breeze, and was making his way toward me. Everybody was saying good night to Lucy. We were quite alone for a minute. He didn't shake hands—just stood before me smiling.

"Well, who are you?" he asked.

"Don't you recognize me?" I replied.

He looked me up and down deliberately.

"It is very pretty," he said quietly.

I felt my cheeks grow warm. I blushed. Somebody told me my dress was pretty, and I blushed! I might have been sixteen.

"Your sister said I could stay a little after the others go if I wanted to," Mr. Jennings went on. "Of course I want to. Shall I?"

"Yes," I said, with my cheeks still on fire. "Yes. Stay." And he went away in a moment. I heard him laughing with the others.

I strolled over to the pile of music on the back of Lucy's piano and became engrossed in looking it over. I felt weak and suddenly incompetent. I felt frightened and unprepared. I was still there with the pile of music when, fifteen minutes later, Lucy and Will, with effusive apologies, excused themselves and went upstairs. Mr. Jennings approached me. We were alone at last, and each keenly conscious of it.

"Any music here you know?" he asked indifferently, and drew a sheet towards him.

"Not a great deal."

"It looks pretty much worn," he attempted.

"Doesn't it?" I agreed.

"I hardly know you tonight!" he exclaimed, suddenly personal.

"Don't you? I wore a yellow dress and purple pansies on purpose," I replied as lightly as I could, touching the flowers at my waist.

"Yes, but you didn't wear the same look in your eyes," he remarked.

"No, I didn't," I acknowledged.

A silence enfolded us—sweet, significant.

Mr. Jennings broke it. "I think I had better go," he remarked.

"Had you?" I almost whispered. "Well——" and acquiesced.

"Unless," he added, "you'll sing me something. Do you sing—or play?"

"A little," I confessed.

"Well, will you then?"

"Why, yes, if you want me to." And I went over and sat down before the familiar keys.

It was at that moment that I knew at last why I had taken lessons for so many years; why so much money had been put into expensive instruction, and so many hours devoted to daily practise. It was for this—for this particular night—for this particular man. I saw it in a flash. I sang a song in English. "In a Garden," it was called. Softly I played the opening phrases, and then raised my chin a little and began. My voice isn't strong, but it can't help but behave nicely. It can't help but take its high notes truly, like a child who has been taught pretty manners ever since he could walk.

After I had finished Mr. Jennings said nothing for an instant. Then, "Sing something else," he murmured, and afterward he exclaimed, "I didn't know! I had no idea! Your sister never told me this!" Then, "I have come to a very lovely part in the beautiful book I discovered," he said to me. "It makes me want never to finish the book. Sing something else." His eyes admired; his voice caressed; his tenderness placed me high in the sacred precincts of his soul.

"Listen, please," I said impulsively. "You mustn't go on thinking well of me. It isn't right. I shall not let you. I'm not what you think. Listen. When I first met you, I had just broken my engagement—just barely. I never said a word about it. I let you go on thinking that I—you see it was this way—my pride was hurt more than my heart. I'm that sort of girl. His mother is Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall. They have a summer place in Hilton, and—and——"

"Don't bother to go into that. I've known it all from the beginning," Mr. Jennings interrupted gently.

"Oh, have you? You've known then, all along, that I'm just a frivolous society girl who can't do anything but perform a few parlor tricks—and things like that? I was afraid—I was so afraid I had misled you."

"You've misled only yourself," he smiled, and suddenly he put his hand over mine as it rested beside the music rack. I met his steady eyes. Just for an instant. Abruptly he took his hand away, went over to the fireplace, and began poking the logs. When he spoke next he did not turn around.

"This is an evening of confessions," he said. "There are some things about me you might as well know, too. I am an instructor, with a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars a year. I hope to make a lawyer out of myself some day, I don't know when. I've hoped to for a long while. Circumstances made it necessary after I graduated from college to find something to do that was immediately remunerative. I discovered that my mother was entirely dependent upon me. My ambitions had to be postponed for a while. I had tutored enough during my college course to make it evident that I could teach, and I grasped this opportunity as a fortunate one. There are hours each day when I can read law. There are even opportunities to attend lectures. It's a long way around to my goal, I know that, and a steep way. Everything that I can save is laid aside for the time when, finally admitted to the bar, I dare throw off the security of a salary. My mother is quite alone. I must always look out for her. I am all she has. I shall inherit little or nothing. If there is any one who has allowed a possible delusion to continue about himself it is I—not you, Miss Vars. Hello," he interrupted himself, "it's getting late. Quarter of twelve! I ought to be shot." He turned about and came over toward me. "Your sister will be turning me out next," he said glibly. He was quite formal now. We might have been just introduced.

His manner forbade me to speak. He gave me no opportunity to tell him that his circumstances made no difference. Salary or no salary I did not care—nothing made any difference now. He simply wanted me to keep still. He eagerly desired it.

"Good night," he said cheerfully. In matter-of-fact fashion we shook hands. "Forgive me for the disgraceful hour. Good night."



CHAPTER XIII

LUCY TAKES UP THE NARRATIVE

It was an afternoon in late February. A feeling of spring had been in the air all day. In the living-room a lingering sun cast a path of light upon the mahogany surface of a grand piano. In my living-room, I should say. For I am Mrs. Maynard, wife of Doctor William Ford Maynard of international guinea-pig fame; sister of Ruth Chenery Vars; one-time confidante of Robert Hopkinson Jennings. I haven't any identity of my own. I'm simply one of the audience, an onlooker—an anxious and worried one, just at present, who wishes somebody would assure me that the play has a happy ending. I don't like sad plays. I don't like being harrowed for nothing. I've taken to paper simply because I'm all of a tremble for fear the play I've been watching for the last month or two won't come out right. Sometimes I feel as if I'd like to dash across the footlights and tell the actors what to say.

Ruth is engaged to be married to Robert Jennings. At first it seemed to me too good to be true. After the sort of bringing up my sister has had, culminating in that miserable affair of hers with Breckenridge Sewall, I was afraid that happiness would slip by her altogether.

Robert Jennings is the salt of the earth. I believe I was as happy as Ruth the first four weeks of her engagement, and then these clouds began to gather. The first time I was conscious of them was the afternoon I have just referred to, in late February.

I went into my living-room that day just to see that it was in order in case of callers. It is difficult to keep a living-room in order when your spoiled young society-sister is visiting you. Today in the middle of one of the large cushions on the sofa appeared an indentation. From beneath one corner of the cushion escaped the edge of a crushed handkerchief. Open, face down, upon the floor lay an abandoned book. I straightened the pillow and then picked up the book.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, actually out loud as my eyes fell on the title. "This!"

It was a modern novel much under discussion, an unpleasant book, reviewers pronounced it, and unnecessarily bold. I opened it. Certain passages were marked with wriggling lines made with a soft pencil. I read a marked paragraph or two, standing just where I was in the middle of the room.

Suddenly the door-bell rang, twice, sharply, and almost immediately afterward I heard some one shove open the front door.

I slipped the book behind the pillow which I had just straightened, walked over to a geranium in the window, and nonchalantly snipped off a leaf.

"Hello!" a man's cheerful voice called out. "Any one at home?"

"Yes, in here, Bob," I called back. "Come in."

Robert Jennings entered. He glowed as if he had just been walking up hill briskly. He shook hands with me.

"Hello," he said, his gray eyes smiling pleasantly. "Been out today? Ought to! Like spring. Where's Ruth?"

"Just gone to the Square. She'll be right back. Run out of cotton for your breakfast-napkins."

"Breakfast-napkins!" he exclaimed, and laughed boyishly. I laughed, too. "It doesn't seem quite possible, does it? Breakfast-napkins, and four months ago I didn't even know her! Mind?" he asked abruptly, holding up a silver case. He selected and lit a cigarette, flipping the charred match straight as an arrow into the fireplace. He smoked in silence a moment, smiling meditatively. "Mother's making some napkins, too!" he broke out. "They're going to get on—Ruth and mother—beautifully. 'She's a dear!' That's what mother says of Ruth half a dozen times a day. 'She's a dear!' And somehow the triteness of the phrase from mother is ridiculously pleasing to me. May I sit down?"

"Of course. Do."

He approached the sofa, but before throwing himself into one of its inviting corners, manlike he placed one of the large sofa pillows rather gingerly on the floor against a table-leg. Behind the pillow appeared the book.

"Hello," he exclaimed, "what's this?" And he held it up.

I put out my hand. "I'll take it, thank you," I said.

"Whose is this, anyhow?" he asked, opening the book instead of passing it over to me. "Looks like Ruth's marks." Then after a pause, "Is it Ruth's?"

"I don't know. Perhaps."

"She shouldn't read stuff like this!" pronounced the young judge.

"Oh, Ruth has always read everything she wanted to."

"Yes, I suppose so—more's the pity—best-sellers, anything that's going. But this—this! It's not decent for her, for any girl. I don't believe in this modern idea of exposure, anyhow. But here she comes." His face lighted. He put aside the book. "Here Ruth comes!" And he went out into the hall to meet her.

I heard the front door open, the rustle of a greeting, and a moment later my sister and Robert Jennings both came in.

Ruth had become a shining roseate creature. Always beautiful, always exquisite—flawless features, perfect poise, now she pulsated with life. A new brightness glowed in her eyes. Of late across her cheeks color was wont to come and go like the shadow of clouds on a hillside on a windy day. Even her voice, usually steady and controlled, now and again trembled and broke with sudden emotion. She came into the room smiling, very pretty, very lovely (could we really be children of the same parents?), with a pink rose slipped into the opening of her coat. She drew out her rose and came over and passed it to me.

"There," she said, "it's for you, Lucy. I bought it especially!" Such a strange new Ruth! Once so worldly, so selfish; now so sweet and full of queer tenderness. I hardly recognized her. "It's heavenly out-doors," she went on. "I'll be back in a minute." And she went out into the hall to take off her hat and coat.

Robert went over to the book he had laid on the table and picked it up. When Ruth joined us he inquired pleasantly, "Where in the world did you run across this, Ruth?"

"That?" she smiled. "Oh, I bought it. Everybody is talking about it, and I bought it. It isn't so bad. Some parts are really very nice. I've marked a few I liked."

"Why, Ruth," he said solicitously, "it isn't a book for you to read."

"That's very sweet and protective, Bob," she laughed gently, "but after all I'm not—what do you call it—early Victorian. I'm twentieth century, and an American at that. Every book printed is for me to read."

"Oh, no! I should hope not! Too much of this sort of stuff would rob a girl of every illusion she ever had."

"Illusions! Oh, well," she shrugged her shoulders, "who wants illusions? I don't. I want truth, Bob. I want to know everything there is to know in this world, good, bad or indifferent. And you needn't be afraid. It won't hurt me. Truth is good for any one, whether it's pleasant truth or not. It makes one's opinions of more value, if nothing else. And of course you want my opinions to be worth something, don't you?" she wheedled.

"But, my dear," complained Bob, "this book represents more lies than it does truth."

"Do you think so?" she asked earnestly. "Now I thought it was a wonderfully true portrayal of just how a man and woman would feel under those circumstances."

Bob looked actually pained. "O Ruth, how can you judge of such circumstances? Of such feelings? Why, I don't like even to discuss such rottenness with you as this."

"How absurd, Bob," Ruth deprecated lightly. "I'm not a Jane Austen sort of girl. I've always read things. I've always read everything I wanted to." Bob was still standing with the book in his hands, looking at it. He didn't reply for a moment. Something especially obnoxious must have met his eyes, for abruptly he threw the book down upon the table.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to ask you not to finish reading this."

"You aren't serious!"

"Yes, I am, Ruth," replied Bob. "Let me be the judge about this. Trust it to me. You've read only a little of the book. It's worse later—unpleasant, distorted. There are other avenues to truth—not this one, please. Yes, I am serious."

He smiled disarmingly. For the first time since their engagement I saw Ruth fail to smile back. There was a perceptible pause. Then in a low voice Ruth asked, "Do you mean you ask me to stop reading a book right in the middle of it? Don't ask me to do a childish thing like that, Bob."

"But Ruth," he persisted, "it's to guard you, to protect you."

"But I don't want to be protected, not that way," she protested. Her gray eyes were almost black. Her voice, though low and quiet enough, trembled. They must have forgotten I was in the room.

"Is it such a lot to ask?" pleaded Bob.

"You do ask it then?" repeated Ruth uncomprehendingly.

"Why, Ruth, yes, I do. If a doctor told you not to eat a certain thing," Bob began trying to be playful, "that he knew was bad for you and——"

"But you're not my doctor," interrupted Ruth. "That's just it. You're——It seems all wrong somehow," she broke off, "as if I was a child, or an ignorant patient of yours, and I'm not. I'm not. Will you pass it to me, please—the book?"

Bob gave it to her immediately. "You're going to finish it then?" he asked, alarmed.

"I don't know," said Ruth, wide-eyed, a little alarmed herself, I think. "I don't know. I must think it over." She crossed the room to the secretary, opened the glass door, and placed the book on one of the high shelves. "There," she said, "there it is." Then turning around she added, "I'll let you know when I decide, Bob. And now I guess I'll go upstairs, if you don't mind. These walking-shoes are so heavy. Good-by." And she fled, on the verge of what I feared was tears.

Both Bob and Ruth were so surprised at the appearance of this sudden and unlooked-for issue that I felt convinced it was their first difference of opinion. I was worried. I couldn't foretell how it would come out. Their friendship had been brief—perhaps too brief. Their engagement was only four weeks old. They loved—I was sure of that—but they didn't know each other very well. Old friend of Will's and mine as Robert Jennings is, I knew him to be conservative, steeped in traditions since childhood. Robert idealizes everything mellowed by age, from pictures and literature to laws and institutions. Ruth, on the other hand, is a pronounced modernist. It doesn't make much difference whether it's a hat or a novel, if it's new and up to date Ruth delights in it.

I poured out my misgivings to Will that night behind closed doors. Will had never had a high opinion of Ruth.

"Modernism isn't her difficulty, my dear," he remarked. "Selfishness, with a big S. That's the trouble with Ruth. Society too. Big S. And a pinch of stubbornness also. She never would take any advice from any one—self-satisfied little Ruth wouldn't—and poor Bob is the salt of the earth too. It's a shame. Whoever would have thought fine old Bob would have fallen into calculating young Ruth's net anyhow!"

"O Will, please. You do misjudge her," I pleaded. "It isn't so. She isn't calculating. You've said it before, and she isn't—not always. Not this time."

"You ruffle like a protecting mother hen!" laughed Will. "Don't worry that young head of yours too much, dear. It isn't your love affair, remember."

It is my love affair. That's the difficulty. In all sorts of quiet and covered ways have I tried to help and urge the friendship along. Always, even before Ruth was engaged to Breckenridge Sewall, have I secretly nursed the hope that Robert Jennings and my sister might discover each other some day—each so beautiful to look upon, each so distinguished in poise and speech and manner; Ruth so clever; Bob such a scholar; both of them clean, young New Englanders, born under not dissimilar circumstances, and both much beloved by me. It is my love affair, and it simply mustn't have quarrels.

I didn't refer to the book the next day, nor did I let Ruth know by look or word that I noticed her silence at table or her preoccupied manner. I made no observation upon Robert's failure to make his daily call the next afternoon. She may have written and told him to stay away. I did not know. In mute suspense I awaited the announcement of her decision. It was made at last, sweetly, exquisitely, I thought.

On the second afternoon Robert called as usual. I was in the living-room when he came in. When Ruth appeared in the doorway, I got up to go.

"No, please," she said. "Stay, Lucy, you were here before. Hello, Bob," she smiled, then very quietly she added, "I've made my decision."

"Ruth!" Robert began.

"Wait a minute, please," she said.

She went over to the secretary, opened the door and took down the book. Then she crossed to the table, got a match, approached the fireplace, leaned down, and set fire to my cherished selected birch-logs. She held up the book then and smiled radiantly at Robert. "This is my decision!" she said, and laid the book in the flames.

"Good heavens," I wanted to exclaim, "that's worth a dollar thirty-five!"

"I've thought it all over," Ruth said simply, beautiful in the dignity of her new-born self-abnegation. "A book is only paper and print, after all. I was making a mountain out of it. It's as you wish, Bob. I won't finish reading it."

We were very happy that night. Robert stayed to dinner. Will chanced to be absent and there were only the three of us at table. There was a mellow sort of stillness. A softness of voice possessed us all, even when we asked for bread or salt. Our conversation was trivial, unimportant, but kind and gentle. Between Ruth and Robert there glowed adoration for each other, which words and commonplaces could not conceal.

Robert stayed late. Upstairs in Will's study the clock struck eleven-thirty when I heard the front door close, and peeked out and saw Robert walking down over our flag-stones.

A moment later Ruth came upstairs softly. She went straight to her own room. She closed the door without a sound. My sister, I knew, was filled with the kind of exaltation that made her gentle even to stairs and door-knobs.

Next morning she was singing as usual over her initialing. We went into town at eleven-thirty to look up table linen. Edith met us for lunch. One of the summer colonists had told Edith about Robert's "connections" (he has several in Boston in the Back Bay and he himself was born in a house with violet-colored panes) and Edith had become remarkably enthusiastic. She was going to present Ruth with all her lingerie.

"After all," she said one day in way of reassurance to Ruth, "you would have been in a pretty mess if you'd married Breck Sewall. Some gay lady in Breck's dark and shady past sprang up with a spicy little law suit two weeks before he was to be married to that Oliphant girl. Perhaps you saw it in the paper. Wedding all off, and Breck evading the law nobody knows where. This Bob of yours is as poor as Job's turkey, I suppose, but anyhow, he's decent. An uncle of his is president of a bank in Boston and belongs to all sorts of exclusive clubs and things. I'm going to give you your wedding, you know, Toots. I've always wanted a good excuse for a hack at Boston."



CHAPTER XIV

BOB TURNS OUT A CONSERVATIVE

But Edith didn't give Ruth her wedding. There was no wedding. Ruth didn't marry Robert Jennings!

I cannot feel the pain that is Ruth's, the daily loss of Bob's eyes that worshiped, voice that caressed—no, not that hurt—but I do feel bitterness and disappointment. They loved each other. I thought that love always could rescue. I was mistaken. Love is not the most important thing in marriage. No. They tell me ideals should be considered first. And yet as I sit here in my room and listen to the emptiness of the house—Ruth's song gone out of it, Ruth fled with her wound, I know not where—and see Bob, a new, quiet, subdued Bob, walking along by the house to the University, looking up to my window and smiling (a queer smile that hurts every time), the sparkle and joy gone out like a flame, I whisper to myself fiercely, "It's all wrong. Ideals to the winds. They loved each other, and it is all wrong."

They were engaged about three months in all. They were so jubilant at first that they wanted the engagement announced immediately. The college paper triumphantly blazoned the news, and of course the daily papers too. Everybody was interested. Everybody congratulated them. Ruth has hosts of friends, Robert too. Ruth's mail for a month was enormous. The house was sweet with flowers for days. Her presents rivaled a bride's. And yet she gave it all up—even loving Bob. She chose to face disapproval and distrust. Will called her heartless for it; Tom, fickle; Edith, a fool; but I call her courageous.

There was no doubt of the sincerity of Ruth's love for Robert Jennings. No other man before had got beneath the veneer of her worldliness. Robert laid bare secret expanses of her nature, and then, like warm sunlight on a hillside from which the snow has melted away, persuaded the expanses into bloom and beauty. Timid generosities sprang forth in Ruth. Tolerance, gratitude, appreciation blossomed frailly; and over all there spread, like those hosts of four-petaled flowers we used to call bluets, which grew in such abundance among rarer violets or wild strawberry—there spread through Ruth's awakened nature a thousand and one little kindly impulses that had to do with smiles for servants, kind words for old people, and courtesy to clerks in shops. I don't believe that anything but love could work such a miracle with Ruth. If only she had waited, perhaps it would have performed more wonderful feats.

The book incident was the first indication of trouble. The second was more trivial. It happened one Sunday noon. We had been to church that morning together—Ruth, Will and I—and Robert Jennings was expected for our mid-day dinner at one-thirty. He hadn't arrived when we returned at one, and after Ruth had taken off her church clothes and changed to something soft and filmy, she sat down at the piano and played a little while—five minutes or so—then rose and strolled over toward the front window. She seated herself, humming softly, by a table there. "Bob's late," she remarked and lazily reached across the table, opened my auction-bridge box, selected a pack of cards, and still humming began to play solitaire.

The cards were all laid out before her when Robert finally did arrive. Ruth gave him one of her long, sweet glances, then demurely began laying out more cards. "Good morning, Bob," she said richly.

Bob said good morning, too, but I discerned something forced and peremptory in his voice. I felt that that pack of playing cards laid out before Ruth on the Sabbath-day affected him just as it had me when first Ruth came to live with us. I had been brought up to look upon card-playing on Sunday as forbidden. In Hilton I could remember when policemen searched vacant lots and fields on Sunday for crowds of bad boys engaged in the shocking pastime beneath secreted shade trees. Ruth had traveled so widely and spent so many months visiting in various communities where card-playing on Sunday was the custom that I knew it didn't occur to her as anything out of the ordinary. I tried to listen to what Will was reading out loud to me from the paper, but the fascination of the argument going on behind my back by the window held me.

"But, Bob dear," I heard Ruth's surprised voice expostulate pleasantly, "you play golf occasionally on Sunday. What's the difference? Both a game, one played with sticks and a ball, and the other with black and red cards. I was allowed to play Bible authors when I was a child, and it's terribly narrow, when you look at it squarely, to say that one pack of cards is any more wicked than another."

"It's not a matter of wickedness," Bob replied in a low, disturbed voice. "It's a matter of taste, and reverence for pervading custom."

"But——" put in Ruth.

"Irreverence for pervading custom," went on Bob, "is shown by certain men when they smoke, with no word of apology, in a lady's reception-room, or track mud in on their boots, as if it was a country club. Some people enjoy having their Sundays observed as Sunday, just as they do their reception-rooms as reception-rooms."

"But, Bob——"

"I think of you as such an exquisite person," he pursued, "so fine, so sensitive, I cannot associate you with any form of offense or vulgarity, like this," he must have pointed to the cards, "or extreme fashions, or cigarette smoking. Do you see what I mean?"

"Vulgarity! Cigarette smoking! Why, Bob, some of the most refined women in the world smoke cigarettes—clever, intelligent women, too. And I never could see any justice at all in the idea some people have that it's any worse, or more vulgar, as you say, for women to smoke cigarettes than for men."

"Irreverence for custom again, I suppose," sighed Bob.

"Well, then, if it's a custom that's unjust and based on prejudice, why keep on observing it? It used to be the custom for men to wear satin knickerbockers and lace ruffles over their wrists, but some one was sensible enough—or irreverent enough—" she tucked in good-naturedly, "to object—and you're the gainer. There! How's that for an answer? Doesn't solitaire win?"

"Custom and tradition," replied Bob earnestly, anxiously, "is the work of the conservative and thoughtful majority, and to custom and tradition every civilization must look for a solid foundation. Ignore them and we wouldn't be much of a people."

"Then how shall we ever progress?" eagerly took up Ruth, "if we just keep blindly following old-fogey laws and fashions? It seems to me that the only way people ever get ahead is by breaking traditions. Father broke a few in his generation—he had to to keep up with the game—and so must I."

"Oh, well," said Bob, almost wearily, "let's not argue, you and I."

"Why not?" inquired Ruth, and I heard her dealing out more cards as she went on talking gaily. "I love a good argument. It wakes me up intellectually. My mind's been so lazy. It needs to be waked up. It feels good, like the first spring plunge in a pond of cold water to a sleepy old bear who's been rolled up in a ball in some dark hole all winter. That's what it feels like. I never knew what fun it was to think and argue till I began taking the English course at Shirley. We argue by the hour there. It's great fun. But I suppose I'm terribly illogical and no fun to argue with. That's the way with most women. It isn't our fault. Men seem to want to make just nice soft pussy-cats out of us, with ribbons round our necks," she laughed, "and hear us purr. There! wait a minute. I'm going to get this. Come and see." Then abruptly, "Why, Bob, do the cards shock you?"



"No, no—not a bit," he assured her.

"They do," she affirmed. "How funny. They do." There was a pause. "Well," she said at last (Will was still reading out loud and I could barely catch her answer). "Well, I suppose they're only pasteboard, just as the book was only paper and print. I can give them up."

"I don't want you to—not for me. No, don't. Go right ahead. Please," urged Bob. But it was too late.

"Of course not," replied Ruth, and I heard the cards going back into the box. "If I offend—and I see I do—of course not." And she rose and came over and sat on the sofa beside me.

From that time on I noticed a change in Robert and Ruth—nothing very perceptible. Robert came as often, stayed as late—later. That was what disturbed me. Ruth rose in the morning, after some of those protracted sessions, suspiciously quiet and subdued. In place of the radiance that so lately had shone upon her face, often I perceived a puzzled and troubled expression. In place of her almost hilarious joy, a wistfulness stole into her bearing toward Bob.

"Of course," she said to me one day, "I have been living a sort of—well, broad life you might call it for a daughter of father's, I suppose. He was so straightlaced. But all the modes and codes I've been adopting for the last several years I adopted only to be polite, to do as other people did, simply not to offend—as Bob said the other day. I thought if I ever wanted to go back to the strict laws of my childhood again, I could easily enough. In fact I intended to, after I had had my little fling. But I've outgrown them. They don't seem reasonable to me now. I can't go back to them. Convictions stand in my way."

"Women ought not to have convictions," I said shortly.

"Don't you think so?" queried Ruth.

"Men," I replied, "have so much more knowledge and experience of the world. Convictions have foundations with men."

"How unfair somehow," said Ruth, looking away into space.

"Just you take my advice, Ruth," I went on, "and don't you let any convictions you may think you have get in the way of your happiness. Just you let them lie for a while. When you and Bob are hanging up curtains in your new apartment, and pictures and things, you won't care a straw about your convictions, then."

"I don't suppose so," replied Ruth, still meditative. "No, I suppose you're right. I'll let Bob have the convictions for both of us. I'm younger. I can re-adjust easier than he, I guess."

A few days later Ruth went to a suffrage meeting in town; not because she was especially interested, but because a friend she had made in a course she was taking at Shirley College invited her to go.

It was the winter that everybody was discussing suffrage at teas and dinner parties; fairs and balls and parades were being given in various cities in its interest; and anti-organizations being formed to fight it and lend it zest. It was the winter that the term Feminism first reached the United States, and books on the greater freedom of women and their liberalization burst into print and popularity.

On the suffrage question Ruth had always been prettily "on the fence," and "Oh, dear, do let's talk of something else," she would laugh, while her eyes invited. Her dinner partners were always willing.

"On the fence, Kidlet," Edith had once remonstrated to Ruth, "that's stupid!" Edith herself was strongly anti. "Of course I'm anti," she maintained proudly. "Anybody who is anybody in Hilton is anti. The suffragists—dear me! Perfect freaks—most of them. People you never heard of! I peeked in at a suffrage tea the other day and mercy, such sights! I wouldn't be one of them for money. We're to give an anti-ball here in Hilton. I'm a patroness. Name to be printed alongside Mrs. ex-Governor Vaile's. How's that? 'On the fence,' Ruth! Why, good heavens, there's simply no two sides to the question. You come along to this anti-ball and you'll see, Kiddie!"

Well, as I said, Ruth went one day to a suffrage meeting in town. She had never heard the question discussed from a platform. When she came into the house about six o'clock, she was so full of enthusiasm that she didn't stop to go upstairs. She came right into the room where Will and I were reading by the cretonne-shaded lamp.

"I've just been to the most wonderful lecture!" she burst out, "on suffrage! I never cared a thing about the vote one way or the other, but I do now. I'm for it. Heart and soul, I'm for it! Oh, the most wonderful woman spoke. Every word she said applied straight to me. I didn't know I had such ideas until that woman got up and put them into words for me. They've been growing and ripening in me all these years, and I didn't know it—not until today. That woman said that sacrifices are made again and again to send boys to college and prepare them to earn a living, but that girls are brought up simply to be pretty and attractive, so as to capture a man who will provide them with food and clothes. Why, Lucy, don't you see that that's just what happened in our family? We slaved to send Oliver and Malcolm through college—but for you and for me—what slaving was there done to prepare us to earn a living? Just think what I might be had I been prepared for life like Malcolm or Oliver, instead of wasting all my years frivoling. Why, don't you see I could have convictions with a foundation then? I feel so helpless and ignorant with a really educated person now. Oh, dear, I wish this movement had been begun when I was a baby, so I could have profited by it! That woman said that when laws are equal for men and women, then advantages will be, and that every step we can make toward equalization is a step in the direction toward a fairer deal for women. Suffrage? Well, I should say I was for it! I think it's wonderful. I went straight up to that woman and said I wanted to join the League; and I did. It cost me a dollar."

"Good heavens, Ruth," exclaimed Will sleepily, from behind his paper. "Don't you go and get rabid on suffrage——Ease up, old girl. Steady."

"I don't see how any one can help but get rabid, Will, as you say, any more than a person could keep calm if he was a slave, when he first heard what Abraham Lincoln was trying to do."

"Steady there, old girl," jibed Will. "Is Bob such a terrific master as all that?"

"That's not the point, Will. Convention is the master—that's what the woman said. It isn't free of men we're trying to be."

"We! we! Come, Ruth. You aren't one of them in an hour, are you? Better wait and consult Bob first."

"Oh, Bob will agree with me. I know he will. It's such a progressive idea. And I am one of them. I'm proud to be. I'm going to march in the parade next week."

I came to life at that. "Oh, Ruth, not really—not in Boston!"

"What? Up the center of Washington Street in French heels and a shadow veil?" scoffed Will.

"Up the center of Washington Street in something," announced Ruth, "if that's the line of march. Remember, Will, French heels and shadow veils have been my stock in trade, and not through any choice of mine, either. So don't throw them at me, please."

Will subsided. "Well, well, what next? A raring, tearing little suffragette, in one afternoon, too!"

Ruth went upstairs.

"Poor old Bob," remarked Will to me when we were alone.



CHAPTER XV

ANOTHER CATASTROPHE

I didn't know whether it was more "poor old Bob" or "poor old Ruth." Ruth was so arduous at first, so in earnest—like a child with a new and engrossing plaything for a day or two, and then, I suppose, she showed her new toy to Bob, and he took it away from her. Anyway, she put it by. It seemed rather a shame to me. The new would have worn off after a while.

"And after all, Will," I maintained to my husband, "Robert Jennings is terribly old-school, sweet and chivalrous as can be toward women, but he can't treat Ruth in the way he does that helpless little miniature of a mother of his. He simply lives to protect her from anything practical or disagreeable. She adores it, but Ruth's a different proposition. The trouble with Robert is, he's about ten years behind the times."