Mostly, however, they paid no attention to her, these many aunts and uncles who came and went. And, oddly enough, Uncle Marius always shut the door to Muvver's room when they came, and wouldn't let them, no matter how much they wanted to, go in and see Muvver, who was, she gathered, very sick. Ariadne didn't see, really, why they came at all, since they couldn't see Muvver and they certainly never so much as looked at 'Stashie, dear darling 'Stashie—more of a comfort these queer days than ever before—and they never, never spoke to the new man, who came and went as though nobody knew he was there. They would look right at him and never see him. Everything was very hard for a little girl to understand, and she dared ask no questions.

Everybody seemed to be very angry, and yet not at her. Indeed, she took the most prodigious care to avoid doing anything naughty lest she concentrate on herself this now widely diffused disapprobation. Never in her life had she tried so hard to be good, but nobody paid the least attention to her—nobody but the new man and 'Stashie, and they weren't the angry ones. The others stood about in groups in corners, talking in voices that started in to be low and always got loud before they stopped. Ariadne added several new words to her vocabulary at this time, from hearing them so constantly repeated. When her dolls were bad now, she shook them and called them "Indecent! indecent!" and asked them, with as close an imitation as she could manage, of Great-Aunt Hollister's tone, "What do you suppose people are thinking! What do you suppose people are thinking!" Or she knocked them into a corner and said "Shocking! Shocking!"

One day she stopped Uncle Marius, hurrying past her up the stairs, and asked him: "What are you thinking of, Uncle Marius?"

"What am I thinking of? What do you mean?" he repeated, his face and eyes twitching the way they did when he couldn't understand something right off.

"Why, Auntie Madeleine keeps asking everybody all the time, 'What can the doctor be thinking of?' I just wondered."

He bent to kiss her raspingly—there were stiff little stubby white hairs coming out all over his face—and he said, as he trotted on up the stairs, "I am thinking of making sure that you have a mother, my poor dear."

And then there was a bigger change one day. She went to bed in her own little crib, and when she woke up she wasn't there at all, but in a big bed in a room at Aunt Julia's; and Aunt Julia was smiling at her, and hugging her, and saying she was so glad she had come to live with her and Uncle Marius for a while. Ariadne found out that Uncle Marius had brought her and Muvver the night before in a carriage all the way from Bellevue. She regretted excessively that she had not been awake to enjoy the adventure.

At Aunt Julia's, things were quieter. All at once the other people, the other uncles and aunts, had disappeared. That, of course, was because she and Muvver were at Aunt Julia's. She conceived of the house in Bellevue as still filled with their angry faces and voices, still echoing to "Indecent! indecent!" and "What do you suppose people are saying?"

There was a long, long time after this when nothing special happened. The new man continued to come here, and his visits were the only events in Ariadne's quiet days. Apparently he came to see Ariadne, for he never went to see Muvver at all, as he used to do in Bellevue. He took Ariadne out in the back yard as the weather began to get warmer, and showed her lots of outdoor plays. He was as nice as ever, only a good deal whiter; and that was odd, for they were now in May, and from playing outdoors all the time Ariadne herself was as brown as a berry. At least, that was what Aunt Julia said. Ariadne accepted it with her usual patient indulgence of grown-ups' mistakes. There was not, of course, a single berry that was anything but red or black, or at least a sort of blue, like huckleberries in milk. She and 'Stashie had gone over them, one by one; they knew.

Uncle Marius remembered to shave himself nowadays. In fact, everything was more normal. Ariadne began to forget about the exciting time in Bellevue. Muvver wasn't in bed all the time now, but sat up in a chair for part of the day and even, if one were ever so quiet, could listen to accounts of what happened in Ariadne's world and could be told how Aunt Julia said that 'Stashie was quite a help as second girl if you just remembered to put away the best china, and that they had had eight new cooks since Ariadne had been there, but the second would have stayed, only her mother got sick. The others just left. But Aunt Julia didn't mind. When there wasn't any cook, if it happened to be 'Stashie's day off, they all had bread and milk for supper, just as she had, and they let her set the table, and she could do it ever so well only she forgot some things, of course, and Uncle Marius never got mad. He just said he hoped eating bread and milk like her would make him as good as she was—and she was good—oh, Muvver, she was trying ever so hard to be good—

"Come, dear," said Aunt Julia, "Mother's getting tired. We'd better go."

It was only after she went away, sometimes only when she lay awake in her strange big bed, that Ariadne remembered that Muvver never said a word, but only smoothed her hair and kissed her.

She and the new man used to play out in the old grape-arbor in the back yard, and it was there, one day in mid-May, that Uncle Marius came teetering out and called the new man to one side, only Ariadne could hear what they said. Uncle Marius said: "It's no use, Rankin. It's a fixed idea with her. She isn't violent any more, but she hasn't changed. She is certainly a little deranged, but not enough for legal restraint. She could take Ariadne and disappear any day. I'm in terror lest she do that. I've no authority to prevent her. She won't talk to me freely about what she is afraid of. She doesn't seem to trust me—me!"

Ariadne found the conversation as dull as all overheard grown-ups' talk, and tried to busy herself with a corn-cob house the new man had been showing her how to build. Two or three times lately he had taken her out to his little house in the woods and showed her a lot of tools, and told her what they were for, and said if she were older he would teach her how to use them. Ariadne's head was full of the happy excitement of those visits. Corn-cob houses were for babies, she thought now.

After a time, Uncle Marius went away, slamming the front gate after him and stamping away up the street as though he were angry, only he did all kinds of queer things without being angry. In fact, she had never seen him angry. Perhaps he and Muvver were different from other people and never were.

She looked up with a start. The new man had come back to the arbor, but he did not look like play. He looked queer, so queer that Ariadne's sensitive lower lip began to tremble and the corners of her mouth to draw down. She could not remember having done anything naughty. She was frightened by the way he looked. And yet, he picked her up quite gently, and held her on his knee, and asked her if Muvver could walk about the house yet.

"Oh, yes," she told him, "and came down to dinner last night."

The new man put her down, and asked her with a "please" and "I'd be much obliged" as though she were a grown-up herself, if she would do something for him—go to Muvver and ask her if she felt strong enough to come down into the grape-arbor to see him. Tell her he had something very special to say to her.

Ariadne went, skipping and hopping in pleasurable excitement at her own importance, and returned triumphantly to say that Muvver said she would come. She wondered if he felt too grown-up for cob houses himself. He hadn't built it any higher when she was gone. He looked as if he hadn't even winked. While she stood wondering at his silence, his face got very white. He stood up looking toward the house. Muvver was coming out, very slowly, leaning on the railing to the steps—Muvver in the nightgowny dress Aunt Julia had made her, only it wasn't really nightgowny, because it was all over lace—Muvver with her hair in two braids over her shoulders and all mussed up where she'd been lying down. Ariadne wondered that she hadn't smoothed it a little. She knew what people would say to her if she came around with her hair looking like that.

The man went forward to meet Muvver, and gave her his hand, and they neither of them smiled or said how do you do, but came back together toward the arbor. And when they got there Muvver sat down quick, as though she were tired, and laid her head back against the chair. The man lifted Ariadne up and kissed her—he had never done that before. Now she knew how his beard felt—very soft. She felt it against her face for a long time. And he told her to go into the house to 'Stashie.

So she went. Ariadne always did as she was told. 'Stashie was trying to make some ginger cookies, and the oven "jist would not bake thim," she said. They were all doughy when they came out, very much as they were when they went in; but the dough was deliciously sweet and spicy. 'Stashie and Ariadne ate a great deal of it, because 'Stashie knew very well from experience that the grown-ups have an ineradicable prejudice against food that comes out of the oven "prezackly" the way it went in.

After that they had to wash their hands, all sticky with dough, and after that 'Stashie took Ariadne on her lap and told her Irish fairy stories, all about Cap O'Rushes and the Leprechaun, till they were startled by the boiling over of the milk 'Stashie had put on the stove to start a pudding. 'Stashie certainly did have bad luck with her cooking, as she herself frequently sadly admitted.

But, oh! wasn't she darling to Ariadne! It made the lonely little girl warm all over to be loved the way 'Stashie loved her. Sometimes when Ariadne woke up with a bad dream it was 'Stashie who came to quiet her, and she just hugged her up close, close, so that she could feel her heart go thump, thump, thump. And she always, always had time to explain things. It was wonderful how much time 'Stashie had for that—or anything else Ariadne needed.

She was putting more milk on the stove when in dashed Uncle Marius, his mouth wide open and his hands jumping around. "Where's your mother? Where's Mrs. Hollister?" he cried.

"Out in the arbor," said Ariadne.

"Alone?"

"Oh, no—" Ariadne began to explain, but the doctor had darted to the window. You could see the grape-arbor plainly from there—Muvver sitting with her hair all mussed up around her face, listening to the new man, who sat across the table from her and talked and talked and talked, and never moved a finger. Uncle Marius put his hand up quick to his side and said something Ariadne couldn't catch. She looked up, saw his face, and ran away, terrified, to hide her face in 'Stashie's dirty apron. Now she knew how Uncle Marius looked when he was angry. She heard him go out and down the steps, and went fearfully to watch him. He went across the grass to the arbor. The others looked toward him without moving, and when he came close and leaned against the table, Muvver looked up at him and said something, and then leaned back again, her head resting against the chair, her eyes closed, her hands dropped down. How tired Muvver always looked!

And just then 'Stashie spilled all the cocoa she was going to use to flavor the pudding with. She spilled it on the stove, and it smoked and stinked—there was nobody nowadays to forbid Ariadne to use 'Stashie's words—and 'Stashie said there wasn't any more and they'd have to go off to the grocery-store to get some, and if Ariadne knew where that nickel was Mis' Sandworth give her, they could get a soda-water on the way, and with two straws it would do for both.



CHAPTER XXXIII

WHAT IS BEST FOR THE CHILDREN?

Lydia lifted her face, white under the shadow of her disordered hair, and said: "It is Mr. Rankin who must take care of the children—Ariadne, and the baby if it lives."

She spoke in a low, expressionless voice, as though she had no strength to spare. Dr. Melton's hand on the table began to shake. He answered: "I have told you before, my dear, that there is no reason for your fixed belief that you will not live after the baby's birth. You must not dwell on that so steadily."

Lydia raised her heavy eyes once more to his. "I want him to have the children," she said.

The doctor took a step or two away from the table. He was now shaking from head to foot, and when he came back to the silent couple and took a chair between them he made two or three attempts at speech before he could command his voice. "It is very hard on me, Lydia, to—to have you turn from me to a—to a stranger." His voice had grotesque quavers.

Lydia raised a thin, trembling hand, and laid it on her godfather's sinewy fingers. She tried to smile into his face. "Dear Godfather," she said wistfully, "if it were only myself—but the children—"

"What do you mean, Lydia? What do you mean?" he demanded with tremulous indignation.

She dropped her eyes again and drew a long, sighing breath. "I haven't strength to explain to you all I mean," she said gently, "and I think you know without my telling you. You have always known what is in my heart."

"I had thought there was some affection for me in your heart," said the doctor, thrusting out his lips to keep them from trembling.

Lydia's drooping position changed slightly. She lifted her hands and folded them together on the table, leaning forward, and bending full on the doctor the somber intensity of her dark, deep-sunken eyes. "Dear Godfather, I have no time or strength to waste." The slowness with which she chose her words gave them a solemn weight. "I cannot choose. If it hurts you to have me speak truth, you must be hurt. You know what a failure I have made of my life, how I have missed everything worth having—"

Dr. Melton, driven hard by some overmastering emotion, drew back, and threw aside precipitately the tacit understanding he and Lydia had always kept. "Lydia, what are you talking about! You have been more than usually favored—you have been loved and cherished as few women—" His voice died away under Lydia's honest, tragic eyes.

She went on as though he had not spoken. "My children must know something different. My children must have a chance at the real things. If I die, who can give it to them? Even if I live, shall I be wise enough to give them what I had not wisdom or strength enough to get for myself?"

"You speak as though I were not in the world, Lydia," the doctor broke in bitterly, "or as though you hated and mistrusted me. Why do you look to a stranger to—"

"Could you do for my children what you have not done for yourself?" she asked him earnestly. "How much would you see of them? How much would you know of them? How much of your time would you be willing to sacrifice to learn patiently the inner lives of two little children? You would be busy all day, like the other people I know, making money for them to dress like other well-to-do children, for them to live in this fine, big house, for them to go to expensive private schools with the children of the people you know socially—for them to be as much as possible like the fatherless child I was."

Lydia clenched her thin hands and went on passionately: "I would rather my children went ragged and hungry than to be starved of real companionship."

The doctor made a shocked gesture. "But, Lydia, someone must earn the livings. You are—"

Lydia broke in fiercely: "They are not earning livings—they are earning more dresses and furniture and delicate food than their families need. They are earning a satisfaction for their own ambitions. They are willing to give their families anything but time and themselves."

"Lydia! Lydia! I never knew you to be cruel before! They can not help it—the way their lives are run. It's not that they wish to—they can not help it! It is against an economic law you are protesting."

"That economic law has been broken by one person I know," said Lydia, "and that is the reason I—"

The doctor flushed darkly. The tears rose to his eyes. "Lydia, oh, my dear! trust me—trust me! I, too, will—I swear I will do all that you wish—don't turn away from me—trust me—!"

Lydia's mouth began to quiver. "Ah! don't make me say what must sound so cruel!"

The doctor stared at her hard. "Make you say, you mean, that you don't trust me."

She drew a little, pitiful breath, and turned away her head. "Yes; that is what I mean," she said. She went on hurriedly, putting up appealing hands to soften her words, "You see—it's the children—I must do what is best for them. It must be done once for all. Suppose you found you couldn't now, after all these years, turn about and be different? Suppose you found you couldn't arrange a life that the children could be a part of, and help in, and really do their share and live with you. You mean to—I'm sure you mean to! But you never have yet! How dare I let you try if you are not sure? I can't come back if I am dead, you know, and make a new arrangement. Mr. Rankin has proved that he can—"

At the name, the doctor's face darkened. He shot a black look at the younger man sitting beside him in his strange silence. "What has Rankin done?" he asked bitterly. "I should say the very point about him is that he has done nothing."

"He has tried, he has tried, he is trying," cried Lydia, beating her hands on the table. "Think! Of all the people I know, he is the only one who is even trying. That was all I wanted myself. That is all I dare ask for my children—a chance to try."

"To try what?" asked the doctor challengingly.

"To try not to have life make them worse instead of better. That's not much to ask—but nobody I know, but one only has—"

"Simplicity and right living don't come from camping out in a shed," said the doctor angrily. "Externals are nothing. If the heart is right and simple—"

"If the heart is right and simple, nothing else matters. That is what I say," answered Lydia.

Dr. Melton gave a gesture of cutting the question short. "Well, of course it's quite impossible! Rankin can't possibly have any claim on your children in the event of your death. Think of all your family, who would be—"

"I think of them," said Lydia with an accent so strange that the doctor was halted. "Oh, I have thought of them!" she said again. She put her hands over her eyes. "Could I not make a will, and appoint as guardian—" she began to ask.

Dr. Melton cut her short with a sound like a laugh, although his face was savage. "Did you never hear of wills being contested? How long do you suppose a will you make under the present circumstances would stand against an attack on it by your family and the Hollisters, with their money and influence!"

"Oh! Oh!" moaned Lydia, "and I shall not be here to—"

Rankin stirred throughout all his great height and broke his silence. He said to Lydia: "There is some way—there must be some way. I will find it."

Lydia took down her hands and showed a face so ravaged by the emotions of the colloquy that the physician in her godfather sprang up through the wounded jealousy of the man. "Lydia, my dear, you must stop—this is idiotic of me to allow you—not another word. You must go into the house this instant and lie down and rest—"

He bent over her with his old, anxious, exasperated, protecting air. Lydia seized his hands. Her own were hot and burning. "Rest! I can't rest with all this unsettled! I go over and over it—how can I sleep! How can you think that your little opiates will make me forget that my children may be helpless, with no one to protect them—" She looked about her wildly. "Why, little Ariadne may be given to Madeleine!" Her horrified eyes rested again on her godfather. She drew him to her. "Oh, help me! You've always been kind to me. Help me now!"

There was a silence, the two exchanging a long gaze. The man's forehead was glistening wet. Finally, his breath coming short, he said: "Yes; I will help you," and, his eyes still on hers, put out a hand toward Rankin.

The younger man was beside them in a stride. He took the hand offered him, but his gaze also was on the white face of the woman between them. "We will do it together," he told her. "Rest assured. It shall be done."

The corners of Lydia's mouth twitched nervously. "You are a good man," she said to her godfather. She looked at Rankin for a moment without speaking, and then turned toward the house, wavering. "Will you help me back?" she said to the doctor, her voice quite flat and toneless; "I am horribly tired."

* * * * *

When the doctor came back again to the arbor, Mrs. Sandworth was with him, her bearing, like his, that of a person in the midst of some cataclysmic upheaval. It was evident that her brother had told her. Without greeting Rankin, she sat down and fixed her eyes on his face. She did not remove them during the talk that followed.

The doctor stood by the table, drumming with his fingers and grimacing. "You must know," he finally made a beginning with difficulty, "I don't know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks best for her children's future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children—to mortgage all your future—"

Rankin broke in with a shaking voice and a face of exultation: "Good God, Doctor! Don't grudge me this one chance of my life!"

The doctor stared, bewildered. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"About myself. I don't do it often—let me now. Do you think I haven't realized all along that what you said of me is true—that I have done nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I'm no orator, to convince other people. I haven't any universal panacea to offer! I'm only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer's son, with the education the state gives everyone—who am I, to try to lead? Apparently there was nothing for me to do but ignobly to take care of myself—but now, God be thanked! I have my chance. Someone has been hurt in their infernal squirrel-cage, and I can help—"

The older man was looking at him piercingly, as though struck by a sudden thought. He now cut him short with, "You're not deceiving yourself with any notion that she—"

The other answered quickly, with a smile of bitter humility: "You have seen her look at me. She does not know whether I am a human being or not—I am to her any strong animal, a horse, an ox—any force that can carry Ariadne safely!" He added, in another tone, his infinitely gentle tone: "I see in that the extremity of her anxiety."

The doctor put his hand on the other man's powerful arm. "Do you realize what you are proposing to yourself? You are human. You are a young man. Are you strong enough to keep to it?"

Rankin looked at him. Mrs. Sandworth leaned forward.

"I am," said Rankin finally.

The words echoed in a long silence.

The younger man stood up. "I am going to see a lawyer," he announced in a quiet voice of return to an everyday level. "Until then, we have all more to think over than to talk about, it seems to me."

* * * * *

After he had left them the brother and sister did not speak for a time. Then the doctor said, irritably: "Julia, say something, for Heaven's sake. What did you think of what he said?"

"I didn't hear what he said," answered Mrs. Sandworth; "I was looking at him."

"Well?" urged her brother.

"He is a good man," she said.

A sense that she was holding something in reserve kept him silent, gazing expectantly at her.

"How awfully he's in love with her!" she brought out finally. "That's the whole point. He's in love with her! All this talk about 'ways of living' and theories and things that they make so much of—it just amounts to nothing but that he's in love with her."

"Oh, you sentimental idiot!" cried the doctor. "I hoped to get some sense out of you."

"That's sense," said Mrs. Sandworth.

"It hasn't anything to do with the point! Why, as for that, Paul was in love with—"

"He was not!" cried Mrs. Sandworth, with a sudden loud certainty.

The doctor caught her meaning and considered it frowningly. When he spoke, it was to burst out pathetically: "I have loved her all her life."

"Oh, you!" retorted his sister, with a sad conclusiveness.

Ariadne came running out to them. "I just went to look into Muvver's room, and she was sound asleep! Honest! She was!"

The child had heard enough of the doctor's long futile struggles with the horrors of Lydia's sleepless nights to divine that her news was important. She was rewarded with a startled look from her elders. "Come!" said the doctor.

They went into the house, and silently to Lydia's half-open door. She lay across the bed as she had dropped down when she came in, one long dark braid hanging to the floor. They stood looking at her almost with awe, as though they were observing for the first time the merciful miracle of sleep. Her bosom rose and fell in long, regular breaths. The drawn, haggard mask that had overlain her face so many months was dissolved away in an utter unconsciousness. Her eyelashes lay on a cheek like a child's; her mouth, relaxed and drooping, fell again into the lines they had loved in her when she was a little girl. She looked like a little girl again to them.

Mrs. Sandworth's hand went to her throat. She looked at her brother through misty eyes. He closed the door gently, and drew her away, making the gesture of a man who admits his own ignorance of a mystery.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT

"They must have gone crazy, simply crazy!" said Madeleine, making quick, excited gestures. "Mrs. Sandworth, of course—a person can hardly blame her for anything! She's a cipher with the rim off when the doctor has made up his mind. But, even so, shouldn't you think in common decency she'd have let us know what they were up to in time to prevent it? I never heard a word of this sickening business of Ariadne's adoption till day before yesterday. Did you?" she ended half-suspiciously.

Mrs. Mortimer stopped her restless pace up and down the old-fashioned, high-ceilinged room, and made a gesture for silence. "I thought I heard something—up there," she explained, motioning to the upper part of the house. "I wonder what made Lydia so sure beforehand that she wouldn't live through this?"

"Well, I guess from what the nurse told me there isn't much chance for her," said Madeleine in a hard voice. Her color was not so high as usual, her beautiful face looked grim, and she spoke in a bitter tone of seriousness that made her seem quite another person. Marietta's thin, dark countenance gave less indication of her mood, whatever it was. She looked sallow and worn, and only her black eyes, hot and gloomy, showed emotion.

Both women were silent a moment, listening to the sound of footsteps overhead. "It seems as though it must be over soon now!" cried the childless one of the two, drawing in her breath sharply. "It makes me furious to think of women suffering so. Bertha Williamson was telling me the other day about when her little Walter was born—it made me sick!"

The matron looked at her and shivered a little, but made no response.

"The nurse says Lydia is mostly unconscious now. Perhaps the worst is over for her! Poor Lyd! What do you suppose made her act so?" went on Madeleine, moving about restlessly, her voice uncertain. She went to the window, and drew aside the shade to look out into the blackness. "Oh, I wish the men would come! What time is it, do you suppose? Yes, I see; half-past three. Oh, it must be over soon! I wish they'd come! You telegraphed George, didn't you? Heavens! how it rains!"

"He was to come on the midnight train. Is your husband—"

"Oh, he was horrid about it—wanted me to do it all myself. He's in the midst of some big deal or other. But I told him he'd have to come and help out, or I'd—I'd kill him! He'll bring the lawyer."

"Where do you suppose?" began Marietta, looking over her shoulder.

"Out in his shanty in the Black Rock woods," said Madeleine harshly, "with no idea of what's going on. Just before you came, the doctor sent out for a messenger to take him word, and you'd better believe I got hold of that messenger!"

"Of course that'll make things easier," said Marietta.

"Oh, it won't be hard at all," Madeleine assured her; "the lawyer'll be right at hand; it'll be over in a minute."

Marietta's face altered. She drew back from the other woman. "Oh, Madeleine! you act as though—you were counting on Lydia's—"

"No; I'm not. I used to think a lot of Lydia before she disgraced poor Paul's memory in this way! But you see it'll be easy to do, one way or the other. If she—if she doesn't—why, Marietta, you know Lydia! She never can hold out against you and George, the nearest she has in the world. I should think you'd feel awfully about what people are saying—her letting Ariadne be adopted in that scandalous way when she had brothers and sisters. I should think you'd feel like asserting yourselves. I do, certainly! I'm just as near to Ariadne as you are! And I know George is perfectly furious about the whole business!"

"But maybe the doctor won't let us go in, right in to her—"

A long-cherished grudge rose to the surface in Mrs. Lowder's energetic reply: "Well, I guess this is one time when the high-and-mighty Dr. Melton'll have to be shoved on one side, and if necessary I'll do the shoving!"

"You feel justified?"

"Justified! I should think I do! Justified in keeping my brother's child out of the clutches of that—and if my husband and your brother together can't raise the cash and the pull to get Ariadne away from him, too, I miss my guess. They will; of course they will, or what's the use of having money when you go to law!"

Marietta was silent. Madeleine took her lack of responsiveness as due to the resentment of a poor person to her remarks as to the value of wealth in a democracy. She frowned, regretting a false step, and went on conciliatorily: "Of course we're only doing what any decent family is bound to do—protecting the children. It's what Lydia herself would want if she were in her right mind."

She fell silent now, restless, fidgeting about, picking up small objects and setting them down unseeingly, and occasionally going to the window to look out at the hot, rainy night. She was in mourning for Paul, and above her black draperies her face was now like marble.

Mrs. Mortimer, also in black, sat in a determinedly passive silence.

Finally, the younger woman broke out: "Oh, I'll go crazy if I just stay here! I'm going upstairs to see the nurse again."

In an instant she was back, her face whiter than before.

"It's a boy—alive, all right—half an hour ago. Would you think they'd let us sit here and never tell us—" Her voice changed. "A little boy—" She sat down.

"How is Lydia?" asked Lydia's sister.

"—a little boy," said Madeleine. She addressed the other woman peremptorily. "I want him! You can have Ariadne!" She flushed as she spoke, and added defiantly: "I know I always said I didn't want children!"

"How is Lydia?" Marietta broke in with an angry impatience.

"Very low, the nurse said; Dr. Melton wouldn't give any hope."

Marietta's face twitched. Her large white hands clasped each other hard.

"I'm going into the doctor's office to telephone my husband," went on Madeleine; "there's not a minute to lose."

After she was alone, Mrs. Mortimer's thin, dark face settled into tragic repose. She leaned back her head and closed her eyes, from which a slow tear ran down over her sallow cheeks. There was no sound but the patter of summer rain on the porch roof outside.

Firm, light steps came hastily to the outer door, the door clicked open and shut, the steps came down the hall. Mrs. Mortimer sat up and opened her eyes. She saw a tall man in rough clothes, hatless, with raindrops glistening on his bright, close-cropped hair and beard. He was hesitating at the foot of the stairs, but at her slight movement he caught sight of her and rushed toward her. "Has she—is there—" he began.

Mrs. Mortimer gazed intently into his quivering face. "My sister has given birth to a son, and lies at the point of death," she said with her unsparing conciseness, but not harshly.

The man she addressed threw up one hand as though she had struck him, and took an aimless, unsteady step. Mrs. Mortimer did not turn away her eyes from the revelation of his face. Her own grew sterner. She was trying to bring herself to speak again. She put her hand on his arm to attract his attention, and looked with a fierce earnestness into his face. "Listen," she said. "We were wrong, all of us, about Lydia. We were wrong about everything. You were right. I wanted to tell you. If my sister had lived—she is so young—I hoped—" She turned away to hide the sudden break-up of her rigid calm. "Little Lydia!" she cried. "Oh, misery! misery!"

Behind them was the sound of a shutting door and a key turned in the lock. They both spun about and saw Mrs. Lowder slip the key into the bosom of her dress. Her aspect of white determination suited this theatrical gesture, as she placed herself quickly before the door. "If you will promise me solemnly that you will leave the house at once, I will let you out," she said, in a high, shaking voice.

Rankin did not answer. He looked at her as though he did not see her.

"What business have you here, anyhow?" she went on fiercely.

"I am here to adopt Mrs. Hollister's second child," stated Rankin, collecting himself with an effort.

Mrs. Lowder's pale face flushed. "You'll do nothing of the sort. I shall adopt my brother's child myself! How dare you—a perfect stranger—"

"Mrs. Hollister wishes it," said Rankin.

"Lydia is out of her mind—if she is alive!" said Madeleine, trembling excitedly, "and the child's own relatives are the proper—you needn't think you are going to keep Ariadne, either! It can be proved in any court that Lydia was crazy, and that her family are the ones that ought to—"

"That will be decided in the future," said Rankin. "For the present I have a legal right to Ariadne, and I shall have to the boy!"

"Do you mean you would dare to lay hands on a woman?" cried Madeleine, extending her arms across the door.

Rankin turned, and in one stride had reached the window, which stood open to the hot, rainy summer night. He was gone in an instant.

"Quick! quick! Lock the front door!" cried Madeleine, fumbling with the key. She turned it and darted into the hallway, and fell back, crying angrily: "Oh, no! there's the back door—and the doctor's office and all the windows. It's no use! It's no use!" She broke into a storm of sobs. "You didn't help a bit!" she cried furiously to the other woman. "You didn't even try to help!"

It was an accusation against which Marietta did not attempt to defend herself.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE SWAYING BALANCE

Dr. Melton was at the top of the stairs as the other man came bounding up. "Where in God's name have you been?" he demanded. "Did you start as soon as my messenger—"

"No messenger came—only 'Stashie just now. I started the instant she—"

"Have you the paper—the contract—whatever it—"

Rankin showed a flash of white in his pocket. "Is she able to sign it?"

"Oh, she must! She won't have an instant's peace until she does. She has been wild because you were so late in—"

Their hurried, broken colloquy was cut short by a nurse who came to Dr. Melton, saying, "The patient is always asking if the gentleman who is to—"

"Yes, yes; he is here." The doctor motioned her to precede them. "Go in; you're needed as a witness."

He held Rankin back an instant at the door. "Remember! No heroics! Just have the signing done as quickly as possible and get out!" His little wizened face looked ghastly in the dim light of the hall, but his voice was firm, and his hand did not tremble.

Rankin followed him into the bedroom, which was filled with a strong odor of antiseptics. The nurse turned on the electric light, shading it with her hand so that the light fell only on the lower part of the bed, leaving Lydia's head in the shadow.

She lay very straight and stark, as though, thought Rankin despairingly, she were already dead. Her right arm was out over the sheet, her thin hand nerveless. Her face was very white, her lips swollen and bleeding as though she had bitten them repeatedly. She was absolutely motionless, lying on her back with closed eyes. At the slight sound made by the men in entering, she opened her eyes and looked at them. Every vestige of color dropped out of Rankin's face. Her eyes were alive, sane, exalted—Lydia's own eyes again.

He was holding the paper open in his hand, and without a word knelt down by the bed, offering it to her mutely. Their eyes met in a long gaze. The doctor and nurse looked away from this mute communion. Rankin put a pen in Lydia's fingers and held up the paper. With, a faint, sighing breath, loud in the silent room, she raised her hand. It fell to the bed again. Dr. Melton then knelt beside her, put his own sinewy, corded fingers around it and guided it to the paper. The few lines were traced. Lydia's hand dropped and her eyes closed. Rankin stood up to go.

The nurse turned off the light and the room was again in a half obscurity, the deep, steady voice of the rain coming in through the open windows, the sweet summer-night smells mingling with the acrid odor of chemicals, Lydia lying straight and stark under the sheet—but now her eyes were open, shining, fixed on Rankin. Their light was the last he saw as he closed the door behind him.

After a time the doctor came out and joined Rankin waiting at the head of the stairs. He looked very old and tired, but the ghastly expression of strain was replaced with a flickering restlessness. He came up to Rankin, blinking rapidly, and touched him on the arm. "Look here!" he whispered. "Her pulse has gone down from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and thirty."

He sat down on the top step, clasped his hands about his knees, and leaned his white head against the balustrade. He looked like some small, weary, excited old child. "Lord, Rankin! Sit down when you get a chance!" he whispered. "If you'd been through what I have! And you needn't try to get me to add another word to what I've just told you. I don't dare! It may mean nothing, you know. It may very likely mean nothing. Good Heavens! The mental sensitiveness of women at this time! It's beyond belief. I never get used to the miracle of it. Everything turns on it—everything! If the pulse should go down ten more now, I should—Oh, Heaven bless that crazy Celt for getting you here! Good Lord! If you hadn't come when you did! I don't see what could have become of the messenger I sent—why, hours ago—I knew that nothing could go right if you weren't—is that the door?" He sprang up and sank back again—"I told the nurse to report as soon as there was any change—I was afraid if I stayed in the room she would feel the twitching of my damned nerves—yes, really—it's so—she's in a state when a feather's weight—suppose 'Stashie hadn't brought you! I couldn't have kept Madeleine off much longer—God! if Madeleine had gone into that room, I—Lydia—but nobody told 'Stashie to go! It must have been an inspiration. I thought of course my messenger—I was expecting you every instant. She's been crouching out here in the hall all night, not venturing even to ask a question, until I caught sight of her eyes—she loves Lydia too! I told her then the baby had come and that her mistress had no chance unless you were here. She must have—when did she—"

Rankin gave a sound like a sob, and leaned against the wall. He had not stirred before since the doctor's first words. "You don't mean there's hope?" he whispered, "any hope at all?"

The doctor sprang at him and clapped his hand over his mouth. "I didn't say it! I didn't say it!"

The door behind them opened, and the nurse stepped out with a noiseless briskness. The doctor walked toward her steadily and listened to her quick, low-toned report. Then he nodded, and she stepped back into the bedroom and shut the door. He stood staring at the floor, one hand at his lips.

Rankin made an inarticulate murmur of appeal. His face glared white through the obscurity of the hall.

The older man went back to him, and looked up earnestly into his eyes. "Yes; there's every hope," he said. He added, with a brave smile: "For you and Lydia there's every hope in the world. For me, there's the usual lot of fathers."



CHAPTER XXXVI

ANOTHER DAY BEGINS

They started. From below came a wail of fright. As they listened the sound came nearer and nearer. "That's Ariadne—a bad dream—get her quiet, for the Lord's sake."

"Where is she sleeping?"

"In the room next the parlor."

Rankin gave an exclamation, and leaped down the stairs. At the foot he was met by a little figure in sleeping-drawers. "Favver! Favver!" she sobbed, holding up her arms.

Rankin caught her up and held her close. "You promised you wouldn't get so afraid of dreams, little daughter," he said in a low, tender voice of reproach.

"But this was a nawful one!" wept Ariadne. "I fought I heard a lot of voices, men's and ladies' as mad—Oh! awful mad—and loud!" She went on incoherently that she had been too frightened to stir, even though after a while she dreamed that the front door slammed and they all went away. But then she was too frightened, and came out to find Favver.

Rankin took her back to her bed, and sat down beside it, keeping one big hand about the trembling child's cold little fingers. "It was only a bad dream, Ariadne. Just go to sleep now. Father'll sit here till you do."

"You won't let them come back?" asked the child, drawing long, shaken breaths.

"No," he said quietly.

"You'll always be close, to take care of me?"

"Yes, dear."

"And of Muvver and 'Stashie?"

There was a pause.

Ariadne spoke in grieved astonishment. "Why, of course of Muvver and 'Stashie, Favver."

Rankin took a sudden great breath. "I hope so, Ariadne."

"Well, you can if you want to," the child gravely gave her assent.

She said no more for a time, clutching tightly to his hand. Then, "Favver."

"Yes, dear."

"I fink I could go to sleep better if I had my bunny."

"Yes, dear," said the man patiently; "where is he?"

"I fink he's under ve chair where my clothes are—ve big chair. 'Stashie lets me put my clothes on ve biggest chair."

The man fumbled about in the dark. Then, "Here's your bunny, Ariadne."

The child murmured something drowsily unintelligible. The man took his seat again by the bed. There was a pause. The child's breathing grew long and regular. The rain sounded loud in the silence.

In the distance a street-car rattled noisily by. Ariadne started up with a scream: "Favver! Favver!"

"Right here, dear. Just the trolley-car."

"It 'minded me of ve mad ladies' voices," explained Ariadne apologetically, breathing quickly. She added: "Vat was such a nawful dream, Favver. I wonder could I have your watch to hear tick in my hand to go me to sleep."

"Yes, dear; but only for to-night because of the bad dream."

There were little nestling noises, gradually quieting down. Then, sleepily:

"Favver, please."

"Yes, dear."

"I fink I could go all to sleep if you'd pit your head down on my pillow next my bunny."

A stir in the darkness, and an instant's quiet, followed by, "Why, Favver, what makes your face all over water?"

There was no answer.

"And your beard is as wet as—" She broke off to explain to herself: "Oh, it's rain, of tourse. I forgot it's raining. Now I remember how to really go all to sleep. I did before. I listen to it going patter, patter, patter, patter—" The little voice died away.

There was no sound at all in the room but the swift, light voice of the watch calling out that Time, Time, Time can cure all, can cure all, can cure all—and outside the brooding murmur of the rain.

A faint, clear gray began to show at the windows.

THE END

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ROMAIN ROLLAND'S JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DAWN . MORNING . YOUTH . REVOLT Translated by GILBERT CANNAN.

600 pp. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.62.

It commences with vivid episodes of this musician's childhood, his fears, fancies, and troubles, and his almost uncanny musical sense. He plays before the Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for greater things. An idol of the hour, in some ways suggesting Richard Strauss, tries in vain to wreck his faith in his career. Early love episodes follow, and at the close the hero, like Wagner, has to fly, a hopeful exile.

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This is a neat, crisp, matter-of-fact account of our Navy, with an occasional illuminating anecdote of famous court-martials and such. It has been passed by high authorities and its publication officially sanctioned. The Contents includes: Naval History—The Navy's Organization—The Navy's Personnel—Man-of-War in Commission—Classes of Ships in the Navy—Description—High Explosives; Torpedoes; Mines; Aeroplanes—Designing and Building a Warship; Dry Docks—The National Defense.

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SIXTH EDITION, ENLARGED AND WITH PORTRAITS

HALE'S DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAY

ROSTAND, HAUPTMANN, SUDERMANN, PINERO, SHAW, PHILLIPS, MAETERLINCK

By Prof. Edward Everett Hale, Jr., of Union College. With gilt top, $1.50 net; by mail, $1.60.

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THE END