Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series

NOTHING was ever funnier than Barton’s election to the City Council. However, it occurs to me that, if I’m going to speak of it at all, I may as well tell the whole story.

At the University Club, where a dozen of us have met for luncheon every business day for many years, Barton’s ideas on the subject of municipal reform were always received in the most contumelious fashion. We shared his rage that things were as they were, but as practical business men we knew that there was no remedy. A city, Barton held, should be conducted like any other corporation. Its affairs are so various, and touch so intimately the comfort and security of all of us, that it is imperative that they be administered by servants of indubitable character and special training. He would point out that a citizen’s rights and privileges are similar to those of a stockholder, and that taxes are in effect assessments to which we submit only in the belief that the sums demanded are necessary to the wise handling of the public business; that we should be as anxious for dividends in the form of efficient and economical service as we are for cash dividends in other corporations.

There is nothing foolish or unreasonable in these notions; but most of us are not as ingenious as Barton, or as resourceful as he in finding means of realizing them.

Barton accepted his defeat with equanimity and spoke kindly of the bankers as good men but deficient in courage. But in the primaries the following spring he got himself nominated for city councilman. No one knew just how he had accomplished this. Of course, as things go in our American cities, no one qualified for membership in a university club is eligible for any municipal office, and no man of our acquaintance had ever before offered himself for a position soiled through many years by ignoble use.

Even more amazing than Barton’s nomination was Barton’s election. Our councilmen are elected at large, and we had assumed that any strength he might develop in the more prosperous residential districts would be overbalanced by losses in industrial neighborhoods. The results proved to be quite otherwise. Barton ran his own campaign. He made no speeches, but spent the better part of two months personally appealing to mechanics and laborers, usually in their homes or on their doorsteps. He was at pains to keep out of the newspapers, and his own party organization (he is a Republican) gave him only the most grudging support.

The biggest joke of all was Barton’s appointment to the chairmanship of the Committee on Municipal Art. That this was the only recognition his associates accorded to the keenest lawyer in the state,—a man possessing a broad knowledge of municipal methods, gathered in every part of the world,—was ludicrous, it must be confessed; but Barton was not in the least disturbed, and continued to suffer our chaff with his usual good humor.

Barton is a secretive person, but we learned later that he had meekly asked the president of the Council to give him this appointment. And it was conferred upon him chiefly because no one else wanted it, there being, obviously 'nothing in' municipal art discernible to the bleared eye of the average councilman.

About that time old Sam Follonsby died, bequeathing half a million dollars—twice as much as anybody knew he had—to be spent on fountains and statues in the city parks and along the boulevards.

The many attempts of the administration to divert the money to other uses; the efforts of the mayor to throw the estate into the hands of a hungry trust company in which he had friends—these matters need not be recited here. Suffice it to say that Barton was equal to all the demands made upon his legal genius. When the estate was settled at the end of a year, Barton had won every point. Follonsby’s money was definitely set aside by the court as a special fund for the objects specified by the testator, and Barton, as the Chairman of the Committee on Municipal Art, had so tied it up in a legal mesh of his own ingenious contriving that it was, to all intents and purposes, subject only to his personal check.

With what has seemed to me a sublime cynicism, Barton proceeded to spend Follonsby’s money in a manner at once novel and arresting. He commissioned one of the most distinguished sculptors in the country to design a statue; and at the end of his second year in the Council (he had been elected for four years), it was set up on the new boulevard that parallels the river.

His choice of a subject had never been made known, so that curiosity was greatly excited on the day of the unveiling. Barton had brought the governor of an adjoining state, who was just then much in the public eye as a fighter of grafters, to deliver the oration. It was a speech with a sting to it, but our people had long been hardened to such lashings. The mayor spoke in praise of the civic spirit which had impelled Follonsby to make so large a bequest to the public; and then, before five thousand persons, a little schoolgirl pulled the cord, and the statue, a splendid creation in heroic bronze, was exposed to the amazed populace.

To
MICHAEL P. O’GRADY
PROTECTOR OF SALOONS, FRIEND OF CROOKS
FOR TEN YEARS A CITY COUNCILMAN
DOMINATING THE AFFAIRS OF THE MUNICIPALITY
THIS STATUE IS ERECTED
BY GRATEFUL FELLOW-CITIZENS
IN RECOGNITION OF HIS PUBLIC SERVICES

The effect of this was tremendously disturbing, as may be imagined. Every newspaper in America printed a picture of the O’Grady statue; our rival cities made merry over it at our expense. The Chamber of Commerce, incensed at the affront to the city’s good name, passed resolutions condemning Barton in the bitterest terms; the local press howled; a mass meeting was held in our biggest hall to voice public indignation. But amid the clamor Barton remained calm, pointing to the stipulation in Follonsby’s will that his money should be spent in memorials of men who had enjoyed most fully the confidence of the people. And as O’Grady had been permitted for years to run the town about as he liked, with only feeble protests and occasional futile efforts to get rid of him, Barton was able to defend himself against all comers.

The figures were exact and a matter of record. An impudent prosecuting attorney who had broken with the machine had laid them before the public some time earlier; but his efforts to convict the culprits had been frustrated by a judge of the criminal court who took orders from the bosses. Barton broke his rule against talking through the newspapers by issuing a caustic statement imploring the infuriated councilmen to sue him for libel as they threatened to do.

The city was beginning to feel the edge of Barton’s little ironies. At the club we all realized that he was animated by a definite and high purpose in thus flaunting in enduring bronze the shame of the city.

'It is to such men as these,' said Barton, referring to the gentlemen he had favored with his statue and tablets, 'that we confide all our affairs. For years we have stupidly allowed a band of outlaws to run our town. They spend our money; they hitch the saloons and brothels to the city hall, and manage in their own way large affairs that concern all of us. These scoundrels are our creatures, and we encourage and foster them; they represent us and our ideals, and it’s only fitting that we should publish their merits to the world.'

The Boulevard of Rogues we called it for a time. But after Barton had been in the mayor’s office a year he dumped the O’Grady statue into the river, destroyed the tablets, and returned to the Follonsby Fund out of his own pocket the money he had paid for them. Three noble statues of honest patriots now adorn the boulevard, and half a dozen beautiful fountains have been distributed among the parks.

The Barton plan is, I submit, worthy of all emulation. If every boss-ridden, machine-managed American city could once visualize its shame and folly as Barton compelled us to do, there would be less complaint about the general failure of local government. There is, when you come to think of it, nothing so preposterous in the idea of perpetuating in outward and visible forms the public servants we humbly permit to misgovern us. Nothing could be better calculated to quicken the civic impulse in the lethargic citizen than the enforced contemplation of a line of statues erected to the men he has allowed to govern him and spend his money.

A CAPPED and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors. Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to allude as 'the top o' the line,' violently left their own sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue frock, shut The Wide, Wide World with a sigh, and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa’s pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were, graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was now compared, in her mother’s secret heart, to the gracious Queen of all the Saints. 'As she was when a little girl,' Mrs. Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery’s sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.

Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo—her senior, but not her match at anything—on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering desperate the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman Costello, who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all hungry, clean, and good-natured, and Alanna’s voice led the other voices, even as her feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their feet.

Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk and lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her big shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm water, and the shining rings of black hair at her temples were moist, too.

'This is all my doin', dad,' said she comfortably, as she and her flock entered the dining-room. 'Put the soup on, Alma. I’m the one that was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!' she added, with a superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little John’s napkin.

F. X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an immense majority, was already at the head of the table.

'Late, eh, mommie?' said he, good-naturedly.

He threw his newspaper on the floor, cast a householder’s critical glance at the lights and the fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and left carelessly with both his fat hands.

'Well, an’ what’s the news on the Rialter?' said the head of the house, busy with his soup.

'You’ll have the laugh on me, dad,' his wife assured him placidly. 'After all my sayin' that nothing’d take me to Father Crowley’s meetin'!'

'Oh, that was it?' said the mayor. 'What’s he goin' to have—a concert?'

'—And a fair, too!' supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an interval devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low aside to the waitress. Then she went on: 'As you know, I went, meanin' to beg off. On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo’s cough, and the paperers bein' upstairs—and all! I thought I’d just make a donation, and let it go at that. But the ladies all kind of hung back—there was very few there—and I got talkin'—'

'Well, 't is but our dooty, after all,' said the mayor, nodding approval.

'That’s all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee, and the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for the concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course, the Children of Mary’ll have the other, just like they always do.'

'Oh, was Grace there?' Teresa was eager to know.

'Grace was, darlin'.'

'And we’re to have the fancy-work! You’ll help us, won’t you, mother? Goody—I’m in that!' exulted Teresa.

'I’m in that, too!' echoed Alanna quickly.

'A lot you are, you baby!' said Leo unkindly.

'Well—well—I can help!' protested Alanna, putting up her lip. 'Can’t I, mother? Can’t I, mother?'

'You can help me, dovey,' said her mother absently. 'I’m not goin' to work as I did for Saint Patrick’s Bazaar, dad, and I said so! Mrs. O’Connell and Mrs. King said they’d do all the work, if I’d just be the nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers—leather—with Gibsons and Indians on them. And I’ll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a month, makin' me aprons and little Jappy wrappers, and so on.'

She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been helping with an amazing attention to personal preference. The young Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother’s fine eyes saw them not.

'Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price,' she reflected aloud. 'My bill’s six or seven hundred a month!'

'You always say you’re not going to do a thing, and then get in and make more than any other booth!' said Dan proudly.

'Oh, not this year, I won’t,' his mother assured him. But in her heart she knew she would.

'Aren’t you glad it’s fancy-work?' said Teresa. 'It doesn’t get all sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?'

'Gee, don’t you love fairs!' burst out Leo rapturously.

'Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work in the wax?' suggested Jimmy, in pleasant anticipation. 'We go every day and every night, don’t we, mother?'

'Ask your father,' said Mrs. Costello discreetly.

'Why, here’s Alanna’s heart broken!' said he cheerfully, encircling her little figure with a big arm.

Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on his shoulder.

'Now, whatever is it, darlin'?' wondered her mother, sympathetically but without concern. 'You’ve not got a pain, have you, dear?'

'She wants to help the Children of Mary!' said her father tenderly. 'She wants to do as much as Tessie does!'

'Oh, but, dad, she can’t!' fretted Teresa. 'She’s not a Child of Mary! She oughtn’t to want to tag that way. Now all the other girls' sisters will tag!'

'They haven’t got sisters!' said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.

'Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too! Jean has, and Stella has, and Grace has her little cousins!' protested Teresa triumphantly.

'Never mind, baby,' said Mrs. Costello hurriedly. 'Mother’ll find you something to do. There now! How’d you like to have a raffle-book on something—a chair or a piller? And you could get all the names yourself, and keep the money in a little bag—'

'Oh, my! I wish I could!' said Jim artfully. 'Think of the last night, when the drawing comes! You’ll have the fun of looking up the winning number in your book and calling it out in the hall.'

'Would I, dad?' said Alanna softly, but with dawning interest.

'And then, from the pulpit, when the returns are all in,' contributed Dan warmly, 'Father Crowley will read out your name,—"With Mrs. Frank Costello’s booth—raffle of sofa cushion, by Miss Alanna Costello, twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents!"

'Of course he would!' said her father. 'Now go back to your seat, machree, and eat your dinner. When mommer takes you and Tess to the matinée to-morrow, ask her to bring you in to me first, and you and I’ll step over to Paul’s, and pick out a table or a couch, or something. Eh, mommie?'

'And what do you say?' said that lady to Alanna, as the radiant little girl went back to her chair.

Whereupon Alanna breathed a bashful 'Thank you, dad,' into the ruffled yoke of her frock, and the matter was settled.

The next day she trotted beside her father to Paul’s big furniture store, and after long hesitation selected a little desk of shining brass and dull oak.

'Now,' said her father, when they were back in his office, and Teresa and Mrs. Costello were eager for the matinée, 'here’s your book of numbers, Alanna. And here, I’ll tie a pencil and a string to it. Don’t lose it. I’ve given you two hundred numbers, at two bits each, and mind, the minute any one pays for one, you put their name down on the same line!'

'Oo,—oo!' said Alanna, in pride. 'Two hundred! That’s lots of money, isn’t it, dad? That’s eleven or fourteen dollars, isn’t it, dad?'

'That’s fifty dollars, goose!' said her father, making a dot with the pencil on the tip of her upturned little nose.

'Oo!' said Teresa, awed. Hatted, furred, and muffed, she leaned on her father’s shoulder.

'Oo—dad!' whispered Alanna, with scarlet cheeks.

'So now!' said her mother, with a little nod of encouragement and warning. 'Put it right in your muff, lovey. Don’t lose it. Dan or Jim will help you count your money, and keep things straight.'

'I’m thirty-seven—all but, as well you know, Frank!' said his wife promptly.

'Thirty-six and thirty-seven for you, then!' He wrote her name opposite both numbers. 'And here’s the mayor on the same page—forty-four! And twelve for Tessie, and eight for this highbinder on my knee, here! And now we’ll have one for little Gertie!'

Gertrude Costello was not yet three months old, her mother said.

'Well, she can have number one, any way!' said the mayor. 'You make a rejooced rate for one family, I understand, Miss Costello?'

'I don’t!' chuckled Alanna, locking her thin little arms about his neck, and digging her chin into his eye.

So he gave her full price, and she went off with her mother in a state of great content, between rows and rows of coffins, and cases of plumes, and handles and rosettes, and designs for monuments.

'Mrs. Church will want some chances, won’t she, mother?' she said suddenly.

'Let Mrs. Church alone, darlin',' advised Mrs. Costello. 'She’s not a Catholic, and there’s plenty to take chances without her!'

Alanna reluctantly assented; but she need not have worried. Mrs. Church voluntarily took many chances, and became very enthusiastic about the desk.

And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.

But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It so chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs. Church’s rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to win it. Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways, realized what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the desk. It distressed her very much to notice that lady’s growing certainty of success.

She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned Alanna of the dreadful results of her not winning; and Alanna, with a worried line between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.

'She will do it, dad!' the little girl confided to him one evening, when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. 'And it worries me so.'

'Oh, I hope she wins it,' said Teresa ardently. 'She 's not a Catholic, but we’re praying for her. And you know people who aren’t Catholics, dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty—pretty money-making, you know!'

'And if only she could point to that desk,' said Alanna, 'and say that she won it at a Catholic fair.'

'But she won’t,' said Teresa, suddenly cold.

'I’m praying she will,' said Alanna suddenly.

'I ought to,' said Alanna, in a whisper that reached only her father’s ear.

'You suit me, whatever you do,' said Mayor Costello, 'and Mrs. Church can take her chances with the rest of us.'

Mrs. Church seemed to be quite willing to do so. When at last the great day of the fair came, she was one of the first to reach the hall, in the morning, to ask Mrs. Costello how she might be of use.

'Now wait a minute, then!' said Mrs. Costello cordially. She straightened up as she spoke, from an inspection of a box of fancy-work. 'We could only get into the hall this hour gone, my dear, and 't was a sight, after the Native Sons' Banquet last night. It’ll be a miracle if we get things in order for to-night. Father Crowley said he’d have three carpenters here this morning at nine, without fail; but not one’s come yet. That’s the way!'

'Oh, we’ll fix things,' said Mrs. Church, shaking out a dainty little apron.

Alanna came briskly up, and beamed at her. The little girl was driving about on all sorts of errands for her mother, and had come in to report.

'Mother, I went home,' she said, in a breathless rush, 'and told Alma four extra were coming to lunch, and here are your big scissors, and I told the boys you wanted them to go out to Uncle Dan’s for greens, they took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser’s for the cheesecloth, and he had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley’s have more, and there are the tacks, and they don’t keep spool-wire, and the electrician will be here in ten minutes.'

'Alanna, you’re the pride of me life,' said her mother, kissing her. 'That’s all now, dearie. Sit down and rest.'

'Oh, but I 'd rather go round and see things,' said Alanna, and off she went.

Alanna found the stage fascinating. Lunch and dinner were to be served there, for the five days of the fair, and it had been set with many chairs and tables, fenced with ferns and bamboo. Alanna was charmed to arrange knives and forks, to unpack oily hams and sticky cakes, and great bowls of salad, and to store them neatly away in a green room.

The grand piano had been moved down to the floor. Now and then an audacious boy or two banged on it for the few moments that it took his mother’s voice or hands to reach him. Little girls gently played 'The Carnival of Venice' or 'Echoes of the Ball,' with their scared eyes alert for reproof. And once two of the 'big' Sodality girls came up, assured and laughing and dusty, and boldly performed one of their convent duets. Some of the tired women in the booths straightened up and clapped, and called, 'Encore!'

Teresa was not one of these girls. Her instrument was the violin; moreover, she was busy and absorbed at the Children of Mary’s booth, which by four o’clock began to blossom all over its white-draped pillars and tables with ribbons and embroidery and tissue paper, and cushions and aprons and collars, and all sorts of perfumed prettiness.

And over all the confusion, Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk, big figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk dress, she had a tack-hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron-pockets were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors hung at her side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black hair. She advised and consulted and directed; even with the priests it was to be observed that her mild, 'Well, Father, it seems to me,' always won the day. She led the electricians a life of it; she became the terror of the carpenters' lives.

Where was the young lady that played the violin going to stay? Send her up to Mrs. Costello’s.—Heavens! We were short a tablecloth! Oh, but Mrs. Costello had just sent Dan home for one.—How on earth could the Male Quartette from Tower Town find its way to the hall? Mrs. Costello had promised to tell Mr. C. to send a carriage for them.

She came up to the Children of Mary’s booth about five o’clock.

'Well, if you girls ain’t the wonders!' she said to the tired little Sodalists, in a tone of unbounded admiration and surprise. 'You make me ashamed of me own booth. This is beautiful.'

'Oh, do you think so, mother?' said Teresa wistfully, clinging to her mother’s arm.

'I think it’s grand!' said Mrs. Costello, with conviction. There was a delighted laugh. 'I’m going to bring all the ladies up to see it.'

'Oh, I’m so glad!' said all the girls together, reviving visibly.

Everyone laughed joyously.

'Did you hear of Alanna’s luck?' said Mrs. Costello. 'When the Bishop got here, he took her all around the hall with him, and between this one and that, every last one of her chances is gone. She couldn’t keep her feet on the floor for joy. The lucky girl! They’re waitin' for you, Tess, darlin', with the buckboard. Go home and lay down a while before dinner.'

'Aren’t you lucky!' said Teresa, as she climbed a few minutes later into the back seat with Jim, and Dan pulled out the whip.

Alanna, swinging her legs, gave a joyful assent. She was too happy to talk, but the other three had much to say.

'Mother thinks we’ll make eight hundred dollars,' said Teresa.

'Gee!' said the twins together; and Dan added, 'If only Mrs. Church wins that desk, now!'

'Who’s going to do the drawing of numbers?' Jimmy wondered.

'Bishop,' said Dan; 'and he’ll call down from the platform, "Number twenty-six wins the desk." And then Alanna’ll look in her book, and pipe up and say, "Daniel Ignatius Costello, the handsomest fellow in the parish, wins the desk."'

'Twenty-six is Harry Plummer,' said Alanna seriously, looking up from her chance-book; at which they all laughed.

'But take care of that book,' warned Teresa, as she climbed down.

And through the next four happy days she did, and took the precaution of tying it by a stout cord to her arm.

Then on Saturday, the last afternoon, quite late, when her mother had suggested that she go home with Leo and Jack and Frank and Gertrude and the nurses, Alanna felt the cord hanging loose against her hand, and looking down, saw that the book was gone.

She was holding out her arms for her coat when this took place, and she went cold all over. But she did not move, and Minnie buttoned her in snugly, and tied the ribbons of her hat with cold, hard knuckles, without suspecting anything.

Then Alanna disappeared, and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies on without her. It was getting dark and cold for the small Costellos.

But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna. She searched and she hoped and she prayed in vain. She stood up, after a long hands-and-knees expedition under the tables where she had been earlier, and pressed her right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery, 'Oh, I can’t have lost it! I can’t have. Oh, don’t let me have lost it!'

She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a wretched, restless little figure. And when the dreadful moment came when she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in the carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.

'The drawing will begin,' said Alanna, 'and the Bishop will call out the number! And what’ll I say? Everyone will look at me; and how can I say I’ve lost it! Oh, what a baby they’ll call me!'

'Father’ll pay the money back,' she said, in sudden relief. But the impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting again with fresh terror.

'But, he can’t! How can he? A hundred names; and I don’t know them, or half of them.'

Then she felt the tears coming, and she crept in under some benches, and cried.

She lay there a long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz above her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and tell this old, kind friend the truth.

But she was too late. As she got to her feet, she heard her own name called from the platform, in the Bishop’s voice.

'Where’s Alanna Costello? Ask her who has number eighty-three on the desk. Eighty-three wins the desk! Find little Alanna Costello!'

Alanna had no time for thought. Only one course of action occurred to her. She cleared her throat.

'Mrs. Will Church has that number, Bishop,' she said.

The crowd about her gave way, and the Bishop saw her, rosy, embarrassed, and breathless.

'Ah, there you are!' said the Bishop. 'WHO has it?'

'Mrs. Church, your Grace,' said Alanna, calmly this time.

'Well, did you ever!' said Mrs. Costello to the Bishop.

She had gone up to claim a mirror she had won—a mirror with a gold frame, and lilacs and roses painted lavishly on its surface.

'Mrs. Church nearly cried,' Teresa said. 'But where’d Alanna go to? I couldn’t find her until just a few minutes ago, and then she was so queer!'

'It’s my opinion she was dead tired,' said her mother. 'Look how sound she’s asleep! Carry her up, Frank. I’ll keep her in bed in the morning.'

They kept Alanna in bed for many mornings, for her secret weighed on her soul, and she failed suddenly in color, strength, and appetite. She grew weak and nervous, and one afternoon, when the Bishop came to see her, worked herself into such a frenzy that Mrs. Costello wonderingly consented to her entreaty that he should not come up.

She would not see Mrs. Church, or go to see the desk in its new house, or speak of the fair in any way. But she did ask her mother who swept out the hall after the fair.

'I did a good deal meself,' said Mrs. Costello, dashing one hope to the ground.

Alanna leaned back in her chair, sick with disappointment.

One afternoon, about a week after the fair, she was brooding over the fire. The other children were at the matinée, Mrs. Costello was out, and a violent storm was whirling about the nursery windows.

Presently, Annie, the laundress, put her frowsy head in at the door. She was a queer, warm-hearted Irish girl; her big arms were still steaming from the tub, and her apron was wet.

'Ahl alone?' said Annie with a broad smile.

'Yes; come in, won’t you, Annie?' said little Alanna.

'My—what did you say?' said Alanna, very white.

'Your little buke,' said Annie.

She laid the chance-book on the table, and proceeded to mend the fire.

Alanna sank back in her chair. She twisted her fingers together, and tried to think of an appropriate prayer.

'Thank you, Annie,' she said weakly, when the laundress went out. Then she sprang for the book. It slipped twice from her cold little fingers before she could open it.

'Eighty-three!' she said hoarsely. 'Sixty—seventy—eighty-three!'

She looked and looked and looked. She shut the book and opened it again, and looked. She laid it on the table, and walked away from it, and then came back suddenly, and looked. She laughed over it, and cried over it, and thought how natural it was, and how wonderful it was, all in the space of ten blissful minutes.

And then, with returning appetite and color and peace of mind, her eyes filled with pity for the wretched little girl who had watched this same sparkling, delightful fire so drearily a few minutes ago.

I

THE story I am about to tell I have never told before. The events in it took place when I was a child of fifteen, an oldish child of fifteen. I had a taste for books and dreams, and a kind of adoring love of older people; a predilection, too, for romance and wonderment. There were many things I meant to do some day.

Among my lesser resolves was one that I had held for a good many years: I mean the resolve some day to be a passenger in the absurd old-fashioned 'bus that had made its daily journey, ever since I could remember, from my home town to a small town quite off the railroad, and some twelve miles away, the county-seat of that county in which my home was situated.

The 'bus was an extraordinary-looking vehicle. It had the air of a huge beetle. It creaked and rattled when it was in action. It had enormous dipping springs. It lunged and rolled a bit from side to side as it went. Its top bulged and had ribs across it and a low iron railing around it, convenient for the lashing of ropes to hold the packages of all kinds and sizes with which it usually went laden. There was a door at the back and there were two steps by which to enter. It had the air of being a distinguished character, even among the antiquated and entirely individual types of vehicle still common then in the little old-fashioned town.

I hardly think Keats had more lasting enjoyment of his Grecian urn with 'brede of marble men and maidens overwrought' than I of those pictures, where, not less than in the more classic example, I saw perpetually preserved what I took to be the most thrilling and desirable of moments, death forever arrested by unending loyalty and undying affection.

But, interesting as all this was, it was by no means the heart of that strange fascination with which, for so many years, I contemplated the old beetling vehicle. Its fascination lay for me in its daily journey to parts beyond the bounds of my narrow horizon. It plied faithfully every week-day of the year, an envoy extraordinary, ambassador plenipotentiary, between another world and mine. Some day I should see that world and know it.

It must not be supposed, however, that I had in mind only the town to which the 'bus journeyed, the mere inconsiderable county seat. Children’s imaginations, especially when the child is just emerging into all the glorious possibilities of womanhood, deal, not in towns, but in worlds. The world outside my own narrow bounds of life—that was what I meant to see and experience.

I had never seen the stockyards. I was never informed very particularly about them, and by some instinct, I suppose, I never inquired too carefully. But I knew this for another world also, and dread as it was, it fascinated me. I believe the hurrying herds stood to me for a kind of world of fearful reality that I meant some day to look into, and the old picture-painted 'bus for a world of romance, yonder, yonder over the dip of the horizon, which not less, some day, I was determined to know.

Just how I came to take my resolve, and the events which precipitated it—all this has no bearing on the story. The story begins just where I stood that hot day in June waiting for the 'bus by the dusty mullens beside the pike. I had walked a good mile outside the town so that none of the townspeople would see the beginning of my adventure.

The 'bus was late, I think, even allowing for my anxiety. It came in sight at last, at a slow beetling pace. I held up a slim finger. But not until he was alongside did the driver begin to draw in the long reins. I ran after the 'bus a few paces, opened the door, climbed the high steps with a beating heart, and got in.

The driver peeked through the little peek-hole in the roof to make sure I was safe; then he called to his horses, and the vehicle lunged ahead.

The lovely rolling Kentucky land began to spread out on all sides. Long white curves of the pike flowed slowly behind us and were seen in glimpses through the open front windows ahead of us. Dust rose and settled over us.

A little while before we got to Latonia, the old horse-radish woman, with a tin cup she carried, knocked on the ceiling of the 'bus near the driver’s peep-hole, to warn him that she wished to get out. When we arrived at Latonia and the horses were having water at the big trough, the old man with the basket of eggs also left.

But I was going all the way to the county seat and I considered these passengers much below my own level as travelers. They were merely making a convenience of the 'bus, you see, which just happened to go past their homes; whereas I was off for adventure, my home quite in the other direction, and the world spread wide before me.

It was with a tourist’s pleasure, then, that I looked at that little grouping of houses and the elm-and poplar-shaded pike, which in those days was called, and I believe is still called, Latonia; and at the old Latonia Springs Hotel. It was a typical relic of Southern before-the-war hotel architecture, with its white pillars, its long verandas, its wide doorway, its large lawn sombred by very old shade trees.

The driver came around now from sponging his horses' heads and noses at the trough.

'Going all the way, are you?'

I nodded.

'Well, you can get out and stretch your legs if you like, for we’ll be here ten minutes.'

But I did not 'like.' In the 'bus I felt safe enough; but if I got out—adventurous spirit though I was—I knew with unconquerable shyness that everybody would be staring at me.

I contented myself with watching the lazy coming and going of a few people; a dog snapping at flies; some chickens taking dust-baths in the road.

What a still, lazy place it was! Some one asked the time. The driver’s watch had stopped. Nobody knew; it appeared not to matter. This seemed no place for clocks. A stout lame man, having the look of a Southern war veteran, stopped on his cane in the middle of the road, looked around carefully at the outlying country and the shadows, then took a calculating glance at the heavens.

'Well, I should reckon, colonel,' he said, addressing the stage-driver, 'it mout be about twenty-two minutes past two. You gen’lly get here about two, but you was a bit late to-day, a leetle bit late, I should say maybe to the amount of about twelve minutes.'

He leaned on his cane again and began dotting his way slowly and heavily through the dust toward the hotel.

A big fly sailed in one of the 'bus windows, round and round, droning, and then out; it went with every effect of careful choice and deliberation, to settle on the nose of the old dog that lay, alternately napping and snapping, four feet in the sun.

I can give you no idea of the keen enjoyment with which I noted all these details. I take pleasure now in remembering that, despite the fact that I had lived in Paris, among its thrilling boulevards and monuments, and had seen some stagey Swiss villages and dramatic little French towns, this little cluster of houses known as Latonia, on a dusty pike in Kentucky, only a few miles from my own home,—this village which never a tourist would have gone to see,—was to me in that droning, incredibly quiet afternoon a very piece of romance; the air itself,—I beg you to have patience with me, for really, I tell you only the truth,—the very air itself being 'ambient' for me; the green fields 'amburbial'; the white clouds, so nearly at rest in the blue sky, 'huge symbols of a high romance'; the silver poplars and elms not less than 'immemorial'; and the old hotel a thing made of dreams, haunted with green and shaded memories of before-the-war days, across whose veranda might have stepped at any moment, before my unastonished eyes, the actors in some noble human drama.

The 'bus driver was making ready to leave.

The lame war veteran,—for I still take him to have been such,—having got as far as the gate of the Latonia Hotel, was met by a long, lazy-legged darkey coming down the walk, carrying two traveling satchels. Noticeably new-looking they were, and handsome, for that part of the world. He had one under his arm, the other dangling from the same hand, which left his other hand free to manipulate a long piece of ribbon-grass which he was chewing lazily. The veteran held the gate open, the weight of his body leaning against it.

'Going away, are they?'

'Yassuh.'

There emerged from the hotel at this moment a man and a woman.

The darkey crossed the road and put the two satchels in the 'bus—and stood with his hand on the handle of the door, holding it wide open, waiting.

II

I watched the two strangers as they approached. When they reached the 'bus the man assisted the woman, in a somewhat formal yet indifferent way. She entered and took her seat nearly diagonally opposite to me. The man plunged his hand in his pocket, brought out a coin, and put it in the darkey’s hand, and stooping, for he was tall, entered the 'bus after her. It swayed a little perilously with his weight, and rocked quite a bit before he finally comfortably seated himself directly across from me.

If the town had interested me before, I forgot it now—forgot it quite in the attention, direct and indirect, which I gave to my fellow passengers.

The man was faultlessly dressed. Such clothes were not customary in that corner of the world. The neat derby, the band of which he was even now wiping with a lavender-edged silk handkerchief, was a thing foreign to those parts at that season, cheap straw hats being rather the rule. The tips of the fingers of a pair of new tan gloves were to be seen just looking out from the left breast-pocket of his well-buttoned light gray suit. I could see that he wore a white vest, and his shirt had a little hair-line of purple in it. His hands were large and very white and well kept, the fingers close fitted together. On one of them a conspicuous Mexican opal smouldered in a massive, very dark gold setting.

I have no words, even to this day, to describe the woman who sat a foot or two from him and to whom he addressed his remarks in an indifferently possessive manner.

I watched her, very fascinated. She was a creature of another world. That she and the horse-radish woman could live on the same planet spoke volumes for the infinite scale of life.

At first these two new passengers spoke hardly at all. Once the man bent his massive figure to get a better look at the landscape from the window opposite him, and called the attention of his companion to some point in it.

'There! As I recollect it, the property is not unlike that, Louise. It rolls that way, I mean; and Felton’s line comes into it just as that snake fence comes across there. It is on the other side that the vein of coal is said to begin.'

Though she gave a courteous hearing, I had the impression that she was not really interested.

She watched the country with a kind of well-bred inattentive glance. For myself I could not take my eyes off her. I watched her with that hunger for beauty which is native to the heart of a child. Above all I watched her eyes. The strange, unusual color of them was in itself a kind of romance. She gave one the impression of being a woman unique; something rare and choice, not to be found again or elsewhere.

Once she turned her head and met my full gaze. I was embarrassed, but I need not have been. She set the matter right by addressing me with a gentle courtesy.

'Do you live out here?'

'Never heard of Thomas Felton, I suppose, did you? Used to live once in Owen County not far from here.'

I shook my head again and formed the word 'No.'

The woman gave him a gentle glance; nothing reproving, but he took it in the manner of reproof.

'Well, I did not know but she might have,' he explained. Then he settled back a little. 'Maybe some one else will get in later who does know. I thought them confoundedly stupid at the hotel. Didn’t seem anxious to give any information either. Nobody knows anything in a place like that.'

There was silence again. The fields at one side of the road climbed now, here and there. Low pastures rose to be foothills. Around one of these hills a rocky road appeared sloping down to the pike. Up the road, at a little distance, was a rustic archway like an entrance to a private property. Waiting by the side of the road, stood a figure strange to me, in the garb of some monastic order.

The woman did not notice him. Her glance was far off at the horizon at the other side. The man did. He regarded the stranger with a stolid bold curiosity. Then some idea of his own occurred to him, suddenly. As the 'bus stopped to take on this new passenger, the heavy man rose, to take advantage of its steadiness, no doubt, and stooping so as not to knock his derby against the ceiling of the vehicle, tapped imperatively on the lid of the little peep-hole, and when it was raised, spoke to the driver.

'This road leading up at the side here doesn’t happen to be the Chorley road, does it, that leads into Felton’s woods? They said there was a road at the foot of a hill that led into some timber lands belonging to a man named Felton.'

There was just that one look between them. The next instant she had turned to the other, returning from his questions with the driver. He had not seen the look that I had noted.

The Franciscan now drew his eyes away from the woman’s face, fumbled in the skirt of his habit, and brought out a prayer-book which he opened with fingers that shook.

The heavy man seated himself, exactly opposite the woman, and beside me and within touch of the Franciscan. He addressed the woman.

'I just thought that that might be Chorley’s road. They said it ran up a slope. It wasn’t, though. I thought I’d like to get a sight of the timber. We may try to make him throw that in, in payment.'

He glanced around at the Franciscan, whose eyes were now entirely on his book; took him in, as it were; then let his glance glide off out one of the windows. After a sufficient time, a kind of courteous pause, he leaned forward a little, raised his derby the least bit, and said, 'Excuse me, but I suppose you live here?'

The Franciscan looked up, but answered nothing. The color came surging back suddenly into his face, which was haggard. There was a noncommittal look in his eyes, as though his lips were to say, 'I beg your pardon.'

The Franciscan gave a gentle smile, raised one slim hand, which yet trembled visibly—a fine deprecating gesture.

'Pardon, m 'sieu!'

'Oh, I see.' The other touched his hat with a little motion of withdrawal and clumsy apology. 'I see. I didn’t know you were French. I don’t speak French myself. Wish I did! Excuse me. Excuse me.'

Here was an occasion! The adventure was turning squarely toward me. I knew French; I was proud of it and eager to offer my services. I could perfectly well act as translator, interpreter for these two. Moreover, it would give me that greatly to be desired thing, the attention of this beautiful woman. Yet I did not dare all this at once. I would wait a moment. How should I break into the conversation? A child of fifteen, however oldish, is shy. Would it be proper for me to say, 'Excuse me, but—?'

As I was thinking of it with a kind of tumult of pride and shyness, the man turned to the woman.

'Look here, Louise; that’s a fact! You speak French! Ask him if he knows Thomas Felton’s property. Tell him it’s Felton who lived over in Owen County and used to be a wealthy man.'

She turned her clear eyes to the Franciscan and spoke in a pure Parisian French.

'This man, my husband, wishes me to ask if you know a Thomas Felton who has property out here in this direction.' In the same tone exactly, she added, 'Do not let him suspect that you know me.'

Her wonderful orange-colored eyes quivered the least bit as she drew them away from the Franciscan and met the waiting eyes of her husband.

She spoke with perfect composure, however.

'He says he believes there was such a man hereabout some years ago.'

Her husband turned quickly as if he himself would further address the Franciscan; then, recollecting that he knew no French, he appealed to her again.

'Now Louise, look here. Try to get it straight. As I told you, there are two men of that name, a nephew and an uncle. It’s the uncle I want to get hold of. He is the man who owns the property we want. Ask this man how old this Felton is, this man he knows; I can tell by that.'

She turned again to the Franciscan, and spoke again in French. Indeed they spoke nothing else but that sweet and flowing language, a knowledge of which put me, without my will, in league with them.

'How do you happen to be here?' she questioned.

'I joined the order after I left you,' he said. 'That is, they simply allow me to live with them, chiefly on account of my name, I think; that, and, I think, as an act of mercy. As a kind of lay brother—it is simple. But, this man—he is your husband?'

'Yes, I have been married to him eight months.'

'In God’s name!' he said, but in a perfectly even conversational tone. 'And you have suffered. Of course you have suffered.'

The husband, understanding nothing of what they said, was watching the two with interest; his small eyes were eager in his heavy face; he was waiting for his answer.

'Do not let us talk too long,' the Franciscan said, and turned with a faintly courteous smile, as though to include the heavy man in the conversation. 'Ask me some more questions,' he said to the woman; 'get him to ask some more questions, I mean. In that way we shall have a little time to talk together.'

She addressed her husband.

'He is not quite sure. He thinks, however, the man he has in mind has a gray beard.'

Her husband drew his large flat fingers down his heavy chin twice, as if stroking an imaginary beard of his own, thoughtfully; his eyes narrowed even more, very speculatively.

'I see, I see! Well now, like as not it’s the same one.' Then he put his hands on his knees and leaned forward as though really addressing himself to the business. 'Look here, Louise, you ask him if this man he knows ever had anything to do with a railway—a railway out West and coal lands out there.'

'You must give me time. Let me see! How does one say all that? My French is not so fluent as it once was. I shall have to get at it in a roundabout way. Have patience.'

'Take your time,' he said, leaning back, 'only get at it if you can. It’s important.'

She turned now to the Franciscan. But it was he rather who addressed her.

'But what are you going to do about this horrible marriage?'

'Nothing, nothing at all.'

'He owns the better part of two railroads,' she said, with a kind of pitiful look in her eyes. 'He is here now to push to the wall—if he can—a man already overtaken by mischance and misfortune.'

'Why do you evade?' said the other. 'He does of course touch you, he owns you, along with the better part of two railroads. He fondles you at his pleasure. I would not have thought it possible. Not you; not you.'

'You forget,' she said, and still her voice kept the strangely even tone. 'My sister was ill, dying, I thought. I could give her everything by this means. I did give her everything. She is better now, as well as she will ever be. She could not bear poverty; it was killing her. She never could. She is better.'

'But at what horrible, what hellish cost!' he replied. 'She was selfish always, and complaining; one of the useless ones; and moreover, answer me, does one buy a cracked pitcher, doomed to be broken at any rate, with the most exquisite pearl in the world, priceless above ten sultans' ransoms? Were it not so horrible it would be ridiculous. Does one, I ask you, do a thing like that?'

She turned to her husband.

'He says he believes the man you ask about was once engaged in a large coal-mining deal in the West.'

'Yes,' said the heavy man eagerly, leaning forward again to listen to what he could not understand, but with as keen attention as though he comprehended fully.

'Wait and I will ask him more.'

Again she turned to the other.

'But you, you also have bought unworthy things at fearful cost?'

'You bought for yourself the approval of what you may choose to call your conscience,' she said in the same almost monotonous, even voice. 'You bought freedom from the world’s censure, freedom from what the world would have said had you married me.'

He flung out a trembling hand. I thought it would have betrayed him.

'That! Will you bring up that old mad folly of yours? Would you hope to persuade me it was not my duty to renounce you? They told me I could not possibly get well. You see for yourself. You see now how I am changed. I shall last now, perhaps, six months. You had nothing. I had nothing. What would have become of you, not to speak of all the horror? It was clearly my duty. I leave it to any man.'

'Yes; always that. The opinion of others,' she said, but even still without emotion. 'I do not care for the opinion of a worldful. I accept the fact that you could not get well. I tell you it does not matter. It was for each other God made us; without any regard to circumstance.'