THE GHOSTLY COUNSELORS
I
In a little hall bedroom in a big city lay a little woman in a big trouble. She had taken the room under an assumed name, and a visitor had come to her there—to little her in the big city, from the bigger unknown.
She had taken the room as "Mrs. Emerton." The landlady, Mrs. Rotch, had had her doubts. But then she was liberal-minded—folks had to be in that street. Still, she made it an invariable rule that "no visitors was never allowed in rooms," a parlor being kept for the purpose up to ten o'clock, when the landlady went to bed in it, "her having to have her sleep as well as anybody."
But, in spite of the rules, a visitor had come to "Mrs. Emerton's" room—a very, very young man. His only name as yet was "the Baby." She dared not give the young man his father's name, for then people would know, and she had come to the city to keep people from knowing. She had come to the wicked city from the sweet, wholesome country, where, according to fiction, there is no evil, but where, according to fact, people are still people and moonlight is still madness. In the country, love could be concealed but not its consequence.
Her coadjutor in the ceremony of summoning this little spirit from the vasty deep had not followed her to the city where the miracle was achieved. He was poor, and his parents would have been brokenhearted; his employer in the village would have taken away his seven-dollar-a-week job.
So the boy sent the girl to town alone, with what money he had saved up and what little he could borrow; and he stayed in the village to earn more.
The girl's name was Lightfoot—Hilda Lightfoot—a curiously prophetic name for her progress in the primrose path, though she had gone heavy-footed enough afterward. And now she could hardly walk at all.
Hilda Lightfoot had come to the city in no mood to enjoy its frivolities, and with no means. She had climbed the four flights to her room a few days ago for the last time. In all the weeks and weeks she had never had a caller, except, the other day, a doctor and a nurse, who had taken away most of her money and left her this little clamorous youth, whose victim she was as he was hers.
To-night she was desperately lonely. Even the baby's eternal demands and uproars were hushed in sleep. She felt strong enough now to go out into the wonderful air of the city; the breeze was as soft and moonseeped as the blithe night wind that blew across the meadows at home.
The crowds went by the window and teased her like a circus parade marching past a school.
But she could not go to circuses—she had no money. All she had was a nameless, restless baby.
She grew frantically lonely. She went almost out of her head from her solitude, the jail-like loneliness, with no one to talk to except her little fellow-prisoner who could not talk.
Her homesick heart ran back to the home life she was exiled from. She was thinking of the village. It was prayer-meeting night, and the moon would wait outside the church like Mary's white-fleeced lamb till the service was over, and then it would follow the couples home, gamboling after them when they walked, and, when they paused, waiting patiently about.
The moon was a lone white lamb on a shadowy hill all spotted with daisies. Everything in the world was beautiful except her fate, her prison, her poverty, and her loneliness.
If only she could go down from this dungeon into the streets! If only she had some clothes to wear and knew somebody who would take her somewhere where there was light and music! It was not much to ask. Hundreds of thousands of girls were having fun in the theaters and the restaurants and the streets. Hundreds of thousands of fellows were taking their best girls places.
If only Webster Edie would come and take her out for a walk! She had been his best girl, and he had been her fellow. Why must he send her here, alone? It was his duty to be with her, now of all times. A woman had a right to a little petting, now of all times. She had written him so yesterday, begging him to come to her at any cost. But her letter must have crossed his letter, and in that he said that he could not get away and could not send her any money for at least another week, and then not much.
She was doomed to loneliness—indefinitely. If only some one would come in and talk to her! The landlady never came except about the bill. The little slattern who brought her meals had gone to bed. She knew nobody—only voices, the voices of other boarders who went up and down the stairs and sometimes paused outside her door to talk and laugh or exchange gossip. She had caught a few names from occasional greeting or exclamation: "Good morning, Miss Marland!" "Why, Mrs. Elsbree!" "How was the show last night, Miss Bessett?" "Oh, Mrs. Teed, would you mind mailing these letters as you go out?" "Not at all, Mrs. Braywood."
They were as formless to her as ghosts, but she could not help imagining bodies and faces and clothes to fit the voices. She could not help forming likes and dislikes. She would have been glad to have any of them come to see her, to ask how she was or admire the baby, or to borrow a pin or lend a book.
If somebody did not come to see her she would go mad. If only she dared, she would leave the baby and steal down the stairs and out of the front door and slip along the streets. They called her; they beckoned to her and promised her happiness. She was like a little yacht held fast in a cove by a little anchor. The breeze was full of summons and nudgings; the water in the bay was dancing, every ripple a giggle. Only her anchor held her, such a little anchor, such a gripping anchor!
If only some one would come in! If only the baby could talk, or even listen with understanding! She was afraid to be alone any longer, lest she do something insane and fearful. She sat at the window, with one arm stretched out across the sill and her chin across it, and stared off into the city's well of white lights. Then she bent her head, hid her hot face in the hollow of her elbow, and clenched her eyelids to shut away the torment. She was loneliest staring at the city, but she was unendurably lonely with her eyes shut. She would go crazy if somebody did not come.
There was a knock at the door. It startled her.
She sat up and listened. The knock was repeated softly. She turned her head and stared at the door. Then she murmured, "Come in."
The door whispered open, and a woman in soft black skirts whispered in. The room was lighted only by the radiance from the sky, and the mysterious woman was mysteriously vague against the dimly illuminated hall.
She closed the door after her and stood, a shadow in a shadow. Even her face was a mere glimmer, like a patch of moonlight on the door, and her voice was stealthy as a breeze. It was something like the voice she heard called "Mrs. Elsbree."
Hilda started to rise, but a faint, white hand pressed her back and the voice said:
"Don't rise, my dear. I know how weak you are, what you have gone through, alone, here in this dreary place. I know what pain you have endured, and the shame you have felt, the shame that faces you outside in the world. It is a cruel world. To women—oh, but it is cruel! It has no mercy for a woman who loves too well.
"If you had a lot of money you might fight it with its own weapon. Money is the one weapon it respects. But you haven't any money, have you, my dear? If you had, you wouldn't be here in the dark alone, would you?
"I'm afraid there is nothing ahead of you, either, but darkness, my dear. The man you loved has deserted you, hasn't he? He is a poor, weak thing, anyway. Even if he married you, you would probably part. He'd always hate you. Nobody else will want you for a wife, you poor child; you know that, don't you? And nobody will help you, because of the baby. You couldn't find work and keep the baby with you, could you? And you couldn't leave it. It is a weight about your neck; it will drown you in deep waters.
"Even if it lived, it would have only misery ahead of it, for your story would follow it through life. The older it grew, the more it would suffer. It would despise you and itself. How much happier you would be not to be alive at all, both of you, you poor, unwelcome things!
"There are many problems ahead of you, my dear; and you'll never solve them, except in one way. If you were dead and asleep in your grave with your poor little one at your breast, all your troubles would be over then, wouldn't they? People would feel sorry for you; they wouldn't sneer at you then. And you wouldn't mind loneliness or hunger or pointing fingers or anything.
"Take my advice, dearie, and end it now. There are so many ways; so many things to buy at drug-stores. And that's the river you can just see over there. It is very peaceful in its depths. Its cool, dark waters will wash away your sorrows. Or if that is too far for you to go, there's the window. You could climb out on the ledge with your baby in your arms and just step off into—peace. Take my advice, poor, lonely, little thing. It's the one way; I know. The world will forgive you, and Heaven will be merciful. Didn't Christ take the Magdalen into His own company and His mother's? He will take you up into heaven, if you go now. Good-by. Don't be afraid. Good-by. Don't be afraid."
She was gone so softly that Hilda did not see her go. She had been staring off into that ocean of space, and when she turned her head the woman was gone. But her influence was left in the very air. Her words went on whispering about the room. Under their influence the girl rose, tottered to the bed, gathered the sleeping baby to her young bosom, kissed his brow without waking him, and stumbled to the window.
She pushed it as high as it would go and knelt on the ledge, peering down into the street. It was a fearful distance to the walk.
She hoped she would not strike the stone steps or the area rail. And yet what difference would it make? It would only assure her peace the quicker. She must wait for those people below to walk past. But they were not gone before others were there. She could not hurl herself upon them.
As she waited, it grew terrible to take the plunge. She had always been afraid of high places. She grew dizzy now, and must cling hard to keep from falling before she said her prayers and was ready. And, now the pavement was clear. She kissed her baby again. She drew in a deep breath, her last sip of the breath of life. How good it was, this clear, cool air flowing across this great, beautiful, heartless city that she should never see again! And now—
There was a knock at the door. It checked her. She lost impulse and impetus and crept back and sank into a chair. She was pretending to be rocking the baby to sleep when she murmured, "Come in."
Perhaps it would be Mrs. Elsbree, returned to reproach her for her cowardice and her delay. But when she dared to look up it was another woman. At least it was another voice—perhaps Miss Marland's.
"I've been meaning to call on you, Mrs. Emerton, but I haven't had a free moment. Of course I've known all along why you were here. We all have. There's been a good deal of backbiting. But that's the boarding-house of it. This evening, at dinner, there was some mention of you at the table, and some of the women were ridiculing you and some were condemning you. Oh, don't wince, my dear; everybody is always being ridiculed or condemned or both for something. If you were one of the saints they would burn you at the stake or put you to the torture.
"Anyway, I spoke up and told them that the only one who had a right to cast a stone at you was one without sin, and I despaired of finding such a person in this boarding-house—or outside, either, for that matter. I spoke up and told them that you were no worse than the others. They all had their scandals, and I know most of them. There's some scandal about everybody. We're all sinners—if you want to call it sin to follow your most sacred instincts.
"Why should you be afraid of a little gossip or a few jokes or a little abuse from a few hypocrites? They're all sinners—worse than you, too, most of them, if the truth were known.
"Why blame yourself and call yourself a criminal? You loved the boy—loved him too much, that's all. If you had been really wicked you would have refused to love him or to give yourself up to his plea. If you had been really bad you'd have known too much to have this child. You'd have got rid of it at all costs.
"You are really a very good little woman with a passion for being a mother. It's the world outside that's bad. Don't be ashamed before it. Hold your head up. The world owes you a living, and it will pay it if you demand it. It will pay for you and your child, too. Just demand your rights. You'll soon find a place. You're too young and beautiful to be neglected. You're young and beautiful and passionate. You can make some man awfully happy. He'll be glad to have your baby and you—disgrace and all. He may be very rich, too. Go find him. The baby may grow up to be a wonderful man. You could make enough to give the boy every advantage and a fine start in the world.
"The world is yours, if you'll only take it. Remember the Bible, 'Ask and it shall be given unto you.' Think it over, my dear. Don't do anything foolish or rash. You're too young and too beautiful. And now I must ran along. Good-by and good luck."
While Hilda was breathing deep of this wine of hope and courage the woman was gone.
Hilda glanced out of the window again. She shuddered. A moment more and she would have been lying below there, broken, mangled, unsightly—perhaps not dead, only crippled for life and arrested as a suicide that failed; perhaps as a murderess, since the fall would surely have killed her child—her precious child. She held him close, her great man-baby, her son; he laughed, beat the air with his hands, chuckled, and smote her cheek with palms like white roses. She would take him from this gloomy place. She would go out and demand money, fine clothes, attention.
She put on her hat, a very shabby little hat. She began to wrap the baby in a heavy shawl. They would have finer things soon.
She grew dizzy with excitement and the exertion, and sank back in the chair a moment, to regain her strength. The chair creaked. No, it was a knock at the door. It proved what the last woman had said. "Ask, and it shall be given unto you."
She had wished for some one to call on her. The whole boarding-house was coming. She was giving a party.
This time it was another voice out of the darkness. It must have been Miss Bessett's. She spoke in a cold, hard, hasty tone. "Going out, my dear? Alone, I hope? No, the baby's wrapped up! You're not going to be so foolish as to lug that baby along? He brands you at once. Nobody will want you round with a squalling baby. Oh, of course he's a pretty child; but he's too noisy. He'll ruin every chance you have.
"You're really very pretty, my dear. The landlady said so. If she noticed it, you must be a beauty, indeed. This is a great town for pretty girls. There's a steady market for them.
"The light is poor here, but beauty like yours glows even in darkness, and that's what they want, the men. The world will pay anything for beauty, if beauty has the brains to ask a high price and not give too much for it.
"Think of the slaves who have become queens, the mistresses who have become empresses. There are rich women all over town who came by their money dishonestly. You should see some of them in the Park with their automobiles. You'd be ashamed even to let them run over you. Yet, if you were dressed up, you'd look better than any of the automobile brigade.
"You might be a great singer. I've heard you crooning to the baby. You find a rich man and make him pay for your lessons, and then you make eyes at the manager and, before you know it, you'll be engaged for the opera and earning a thousand dollars a night—more than that, maybe.
"Think how much that means. It would make you mighty glad you didn't marry that young gawp at home. He's a cheap skate to get you into this trouble and not help you out.
"But I'll set you in the way of making a mint of money. There's only one thing: you must give up the baby and never let anybody know you ever had it. Don't freeze up and turn away. There are so many ways of disposing of a baby. Send it to a foundling asylum. No questions will be asked. The baby will have the best of care and grow so strong that some rich couple will insist on adopting it, or you could come back when you are married to a rich man and pretend you took a fancy to it and adopt it yourself.
"And there's a lot of other ways to get rid of a baby. You could give it the wrong medicine by mistake, or just walk out and forget it. And there's the river; you could drop it into those black waters. And then you're free—baby would never know. He would be ever so much better off. And you would be free.
"You must be free. You must get a little taste of life. You've a right to it. You lived in a little stupid village all your years—and now you're in the city. Listen to it! It would be yours for the asking. And it gives riches and glory to the pretty girls it likes. But you must go to it as a girl, not as a poor, broken, ragged thing, lugging a sickly baby with no name. Get rid of the baby, my dear. It will die, anyway. It will starve and sicken. Put it out of its misery. That medicine on your wash-stand—an overdose of that and you can say it was a mistake. Who can prove it wasn't? Then you are free. You'll have hundreds of friends, and a career, and a motor of your own, and servants, and a beautiful home. Don't waste your youth, my dear. Invest your beauty where it will bring big proceeds.
"See those lights off there—the big lights with the name of that woman in electric letters? She came to town poorer than you and with a worse name. Now she is rich and famous. And the Countess of—What's-her-name? She was poor and bad, but she didn't let any old-fashioned ideas of remorse hold her back. Go on; get rid of the brat. Go on!"
Hilda clutched the baby closer and moved away to shield her from this grim counselor. When she turned again she was alone. The woman had gone, but the air trembled with her fierce wisdom. She was ruthless, but how wise!
The lights flaring up into the sky carried that other woman's name. Her picture was everywhere. She had been poor and wicked. Now she was a household word, respected because she was rich. She had succeeded.
There came a lilting of music on a breeze. They were dancing, somewhere. The tango "coaxed her feet." Her body swayed with it.
If she were there, men would quarrel over her, rush to claim her—as they had done even in the village before she threw herself away on the most worthless, shiftless of the lot, who got her into trouble and deserted her. It was not her business to starve for his baby.
The baby began to fret again, to squawk with vicious explosions of ugly rage; it puled and yowled. It was a nuisance. It caught a fistful of her hair and wrenched till the tears of pain rushed to her eyes. She unclasped the little talons, ran to the wash-stand, took up an ugly bottle and poured out enough to put an end to that nauseating wail.
She bent over to lift the baby to the glass. Its lips touched her bosom. Its crying turned to a little chortle like a brook's music. It pommeled her with hands like white roses. The moon rested on its little head and made its fuzz of hair a halo. She paused, adoring it sacredly like another Madonna.
A soft tap at the door. She put the fatal glass away and turned guiltily. A dark little woman was there, and a soft, motherly voice spoke. It must be Mrs. Braywood's. She could not have suspected, for her tone was all of affection.
"I heard your child laughing, my dear—and crying. I don't know which went to my heart deeper. I just had to come to see it. It is so marvelous to be a mother. I've been married for ten years, and my husband and I have prayed and waited. But God would not send us a baby. He saved that honor for you. And such an honor and glory and power! To be a mother! To be a rose-bush and have a white bud grow upon your stem, and bloom! Oh, you lucky child, to be selected for such a privilege! You must have suffered; you must be suffering now; but there's nothing worth while that doesn't cost pain.
"It occurred to me that—don't misunderstand me, my child, but—well, the landlady said you were poor; she was in doubt of the room rent; so I thought—perhaps you might not want the baby as much as I do.
"I hoped you might let me take him. I'd be such a good mother to him. I'd love him as if he were my own, and my husband would pay you well for him. We'd give him our own name, and people should never know that he—that you—that we weren't really his parents. Give him to me, won't you? Please! I beg you!"
Hilda whirled away from her pleading hands and clenched the baby so hard that it cried a little. The sound was like that first wail of his she had ever heard. Again it went into her heart like a little hand seizing and wringing it.
Mrs. Braywood—if it were Mrs. Braywood—was not angry at the rebuff, though she was plainly disheartened. She tried to be brave, and sighed.
"Oh, I don't wonder you turn away. I understand. I wouldn't give him up if I were in your place. The father must come soon. He won't stay away long. Just let him see the baby and hear its voice and know it is his baby, and he will stand by you.
"He will come to you. He will hear the voice wherever he is, and he will make you his wife. And the baby will make a man of him and give him ambition and inspiration. Babies always provide for themselves, they say. You will have trouble, and you will suffer from the gibes of self-righteous people, and you will be cruelly blamed; but there is only one way to expiate sin, my child, and that is to face its consequences and pay its penalties in full. The only way to atone for a wrong deed is to do the next right thing. Take good care of your precious treasure. Good-by. His father will come soon. He will come. Good-by. Oh, you enviable thing, you mother!"
And now she was gone. But she had left the baby's value enhanced, and the mother's, too.
She had offered a price for the baby, and glorified the mother. The lonely young country girl felt no longer utterly disgraced. She did not feel that the baby was a mark of Heaven's disfavor, but rather of its favor. She felt lonely no longer. The streets interested her no more. Let those idle revelers go their way; let them dance and laugh. They had no child of their own to adore and to enjoy.
If the baby's father came they would be married. If he delayed—well, she would stumble on alone. The baby was her cross. She must carry it up the hill.
Hilda felt entirely content, but very tired, full of hope that Webster Edie would come to her, but full of contentment, too. She talked to the baby, and he seemed to understand her now. She could not translate his language, but he translated hers.
She slipped out of her day clothes and into her nightgown—and so to bed. She fell asleep with her baby in her arms. Her head drooped back and her parted lips seemed to pant and glow. The moon reached her window and sent in a long shaft of light. It found a great tear on her cheek. It gleamed on her throat bent back; it gleamed on one bare shoulder where the gown was torn; it gleamed on her breast where the baby drowsily clung.
There was a benediction in the moonlight.
DAUGHTERS OF SHILOH
I
Mrs. Serina Pepperall had called her husband twice without success. It was at that hatefulest hour of the whole week when everybody that has to get up is getting up and realizing that it is Monday morning, and raining besides.
It is bad enough for it to be Monday, but for it to be raining is inexcusable.
Young Horace Pepperall used to say that that was the reason the world didn't improve much. People got good on Sunday, and then it had to go and be Monday. He had an idea that if Sunday could be followed by some other day, preferably Saturday, there would be more happiness and virtue in the world. Mrs. Pepperall used to say that her boy was quite a ph'losopher in his way. Mr. Pepperall said he was a hopeless loafer and spent more time deciding whether he'd ought to do this or that than it would have taken to do 'em both twice. Whereupon Mrs. Pepperall, whose maiden name was Boody—daughter of Mrs. Ex-County-Clerk Boody—would remind her husband that he was only a Pepperall, after all, while her son was at least half Boody. Whereupon her husband would remind her of certain things about the Boodys. And so it would go. But that was other mornings. This was this morning.
Among all the homes that the sun looked upon—or would have looked upon if it could have looked upon anything and if it hadn't been raining and the Pepperall roof had not been impervious to light, though not to moisture—among them all, surely the Pepperall reveille would have been the least attractive. Homer never got his picture of rosy-fingered Aurora smilingly leaping out of the couch of night from any such home as the Pepperalls' in Carthage.
Serina was as unlike Aurora as possible. Aurora is usually poised on tiptoe, with her well-manicured nails gracefully extended, and nothing much about her except a chariot and more or less chiffon, according to whether the picture is for families or bachelors.
Serina was entirely surrounded by flannelette, of simple and pitilessly chaste design—a hole at the top for her head to go through and a larger one at the other extreme for her feet to stick out at. But it was so long that you couldn't have seen her feet if you had been there. And Papa Pepperall, who was there, was no longer interested in those once exciting ankles. They had been more interesting when there had been less of them. But we'd better talk about the sleeves.
The sleeves were so long that they kept falling into the water where Serina was making a hasty toilet at the little marble-topped altar to cleanliness which the Pepperalls called the "worsh-stand"—that is, the "hand-wash-basin," as Mrs. Hippisley called it after she came back from her never-to-be-forgotten trip to England.
But then Serina's sleeves had always been falling into the suds, and ever since she could remember she had rolled them up again with that peculiar motion with which people roll up sleeves. This morning, having failed to elicit papa from the bed by persuasion, she made such a racket about her ablutions that he lifted his dreary lids at last. He realized that it was morning, Monday, and raining. It irritated him so that he glared at his faithful wife with no fervor for her unsullied and unwearied—if not altogether unwearisome—devotion. He watched her roll up those sleeves thrice more. Somehow he wanted to scream at the futility of it. But he checked the impulse partly, and it was with softness that he made a comment he had choked back for years. "Serina—" he began.
"Well," she returned, pausing with the soap clenched in one hand.
He spoke with the luxurious leisureliness and the pauses for commas of a nearly educated man lolling too long abed:
"Serina, it has just occurred to me that, since we have been married, you have expended, on rolling back those everlastingly relapsing sleeves of yours, enough energy to have rolled the Sphinx of Egypt up on top of the Pyramid of Cheops."
Serina was so surprised that she shot the slippery soap under the wash-stand. She went right after it. There may be nymphs who can stalk a cake of soap under a wash-stand with grace, but Serina was not one of them. Her indolent spouse made another cynical comment:
"Don't do that! You look like the Goddess of Liberty trying to peek into the Subway."
But she did not hear him. She was rummaging for the soap and for an answer to his first remark. At length she emerged with both. She stood up and panted.
"Well, I can't see as it would 'a' done me any good if I had have!"
"Had have what?" her husband yawned, having forgotten his original remark.
"Got the Sphinnix on top of the Cheops. And besides, I've been meaning to hem them up; but now that you've gone bankrupt again, and I have to do my own cooking and all—"
"But, my dear Serina, you've said the same thing ever since we were married. What frets me is to think of the terrible waste of labor with nothing to show for it."
She sniffed, and retorted with all the superiority of the unsuccessful wife of an unsuccessful husband:
"Well, I can't see as you're so smart. Ever since we been married you been goin' to that stationery-store of yours, and you never learned enough to keep from going bankrupt three times. And now they've shut the shop, and you've nothing better to do than lay in bed and make fun of me that have slaved for you and your children."
They were always his children when she talked of the trouble they were. Her all too familiar oration was interrupted by the eel-like leap of the soap. This time it described a graceful arc that landed it under the middle of the bed—a double bed at that.
Pepperall had the gallantry to pursue it. He went head first over the starboard quarter of the deck, leaving his feet aboard. Just as he tagged the soap with his fingers his feet came on over after him, and he found himself flat on his back, with his head under the bed and his feet under the bureau.
When the thunder of his downfall had subsided he heard Serina say, "Now that you're up you better stay up."
So he wriggled out from under and got himself aloft, rubbing his indignant back. If Serina was no Aurora rising from the sea, her husband was no Phœbus Apollo. His gown looked like hers, only younger. It had a frivolous little pocket, and the slit-skirt effect on both sides; and it was cut what is called "misses' length," disclosing two of the least attractive shins in Carthage.
He was aching all over and he was angry, and he snarled as he stood at the wash-stand:
"Have you finished with this water?"
"Yes," she said, muffledly, from the depths of a face-towel.
"Why don't you ever empty the bowl then?" he growled, and viciously tilted the contents into the—must I say the awful word?—the slop-jar—what other word is there?
The water splashed over and struck the bare feet of both icily. They yowled and danced like Piute Indians, and glared at each other as they danced. They glared in a nagged rage that would have turned into an ugly quarrel if a great sorrow had not suddenly overswept them. They saw themselves as they were and by a whim of memory they remembered what they had been. He laughed bitterly:
"It's the first time we've danced together in a long time, eh?"
Her lower lip began to quiver and swell quite independently and she sighed:
"Not much like the dances we used to dance. Oh dear!"
She dropped into a chair and stared, not at her husband, but at the bridegroom of long ago he had shriveled from. She remembered those honeymoon mornings when they had awakened like eager children and laughed and romped and been glad of the new day. The mornings had been precious then, for it was a tragedy to let him go to his shop, as it was a festival to watch from the porch in the evening till he came round the corner and waved to her.
She looked from him to herself, to what she could see of herself—it was not all, but more than enough. She saw her heavy red hands and the coarse gown over her awkward knees, and the dismal slovenliness of her attitude. She felt that he was remembering the slim, wild, sweet girl he had married. And she was ashamed before his eyes, because she had let the years prey upon her and had lazily permitted beauty to escape from her—from her body, her face, her motions, her thoughts.
She felt that for all her prating of duty she had committed a great wickedness lifelong. She wondered if this were not "the unpardonable sin," whose exact identity nobody had seemed to decide—to grow strangers with beauty and to forget grace.
II
Whatever her husband may have been thinking, he had the presence of mind to hide his eyes in the water he had poured from the pitcher. He scooped it up now in double handfuls. He made a great splutter and soused his face in the bowl, and scrubbed the back of his neck and behind his ears and his bald spot, and slapped his eminent collar-bones with his wet hand. And then he was bathed.
Serina pulled on her stockings, and hated them and the coarser feet they covered. She opened the wardrobe door as a screen, less from modesty for herself than from sudden disgust of her old corset and her all too sober lingerie. She resolved that she would hereafter deck herself with more of that coquetry which had abruptly returned to her mind as a wife's most solemn duty.
Then she remembered that they were poorer than they ever had been. Now they could not even run into debt again; for who would give them further credit, since their previous bills had been canceled by nothing more satisfactory than the grim "Received payment" of the bankruptcy court?
It was too late for her to reform. Her song was sung. And as for buying frills and fallals, there were two daughters to provide for and a son who was growing into the stratum of foppery. With a sigh of dismissal she flung on her old wrapper, whose comfortableness she suddenly despised, and made her escape, murmuring, "I'll call the childern."
She pounded on the boy's door, and Horace eventually answered with his regular program of uncouth noises, like some one protesting against being strangled to death. These were followed by moans of woe, and then by far-off-sounding promises of "Oh, aw ri', I'm git'nup."
Serina moved on to her youngest daughter's door. She had tapped but once when it was opened by "the best girl that ever lived," according to her father; and according to her mother, "a treasure; never gave me a bit of trouble—plain, of course, but so willing!"
Ollie was fully dressed and so was her room, except for the bed, the covers of which were thrown back like a wave breaking over the footboard. In fact, after Ollie had kissed her mother she informed her that the kitchen fire was made, the wash-boiler on, and the breakfast going.
"You are a treasure!" Serina sighed.
She passed on to the door of Prue. Prue was the second daughter. Rosie, the eldest, had married Tom Milford and moved away. She was having troubles of her own, and children with a regularity that led Serina to dislike Tom Milford more than ever.
Serina knocked several times at Prue's door without response. Then she went in as she always had to. Prue was still asleep, and her yesterday's clothes seemed to be asleep, too, in all sorts of attitudes and all sorts of places. The only regularity about the room was the fact that every single thing was out of place. The dressing-table held a little chaos, including one stocking. The other stocking was on the floor. One silken garter glowed in the southeast corner and one in the northwest. One shoe reclined in the southwest corner and the other gaped in the northeast. But they were pretty shoes.
Her frock was in a heap, but it suggested a heap of flowers. Hair-ribbons and ribboned things and a crumpled sash bedecked the carpet. But the prettiest thing of all was the head half fallen from the pillow and half smothered in the tangled skeins of hair. One arm was bent back over her brow to shut out the sunlight and the other arm dangled to the floor. There was something adorable about the round chin nestling in the soft throat. Her chin seemed to frown with a lovable sullenness. There was a mysterious grace in the very sprawl vaguely outlined by the long wrinkles and ridges of the blankets.
Serina shook her head over Prue in a loving despair. She was the bad boy of the family, impatient, exacting, hot-tempered, stormy, luxurious, yet never monotonous.
"You can always put your hand on Ollie," Serina would say; "but you never know where Prue is from one minute to the next."
Consequently Ollie was not interesting and Prue was.
They were all afraid of Prue and afraid for her. They all toadied to her and she kept them excited—alarmed, perhaps; angry, oh yes; but never bored.
And there were rewards in her service, too, for she could be as stormy with affection as with mutiny. Sometimes she would attack Serina with such gusts of gratitude or admiration that her mother would cry for help. She would squeeze her father's ribs till he gasped for breath. When she was pleased she would dance about the house like a whirling mænad with ululations of ecstasy. These crises were sharp, but they left a sweet taste in the memory.
So Prue had the best clothes and did the least work. Prue was sent off to boarding-school in Chicago, though she had never been able to keep up with her classes in Carthage; while Ollie—who took first prizes till even the goody-goody boys hated her—stayed at home. She had dreamed of being a teacher in the High, but she never mentioned it, and she studied bookkeeping and stenography in the business college so that she could help her father.
Prue had not been home long and had come home with bad grace. When her father had found it impossible to borrow more money even to pay his clerks, to say nothing of boarding-school bills, he had to write the truth to Prue. He told her to come again to Carthage.
She did not come back at once and she refused to explain why. As a matter of fact, she had desperately endeavored to find a permanent job in Chicago. It was easy for so attractive a girl to get jobs, but it was hard for so domineering a soul to keep one. She was regretfully bounced out of three department stores in six days for "sassing" the customers and the aisle-manager.
She even tried the theater. She was readily accepted by a stage-manager, but when he found that he could not teach her the usual figures or persuade her to keep in step or line with the rest he regretfully let her go.
It was the regularity of it that stumped Prue. She could dance like a ballerina by herself, but she could not count "one-two-three-four" twice in succession. The second time it was "o-o-one-t'threeee-f'r" and next it would be "onety-thry-fo-o-our."
Prue hung about Chicago, getting herself into scrapes by her charm and fighting her way out of them by her ferocious pride. Finally she went hungry and came home. When she learned the extent of her father's financial collapse she delivered tirades against the people of Carthage and she sang him up as a genius. And then she sought escape from the depression at home by seeking what gaiety Carthage afforded. She made no effort to master the typewriter and she declined to sell dry-goods.
Serina stood and studied the sleeping girl, that strange wild thing she had borne and had tried in vain to control. She thought how odd it was that in the mystic transmission of her life she had given all the useful virtues to Ollie and none of them to Prue. She wondered what she had been thinking of to make such a mess of motherhood. And what could she do to correct the oversight? Ollie did not need restraint, and Prue would not endure it. She stood aloof, afraid to waken the girl to the miseries of existence in a household where every day was blue Monday now.
Ollie had not waited to be called. Ollie had risen betimes and done all the work that could be done, and stood ready to do whatever she could. Prue was still aloll on a bed of ease. Even to waken her was to waken a March wind. The moment she was up she would have everybody running errands for her. She would be lavish in complaint and parsimonious of help. And yet she was a dear! She did enjoy her morning sleep so well. It would be a pity to disturb her. The rescuing thought came to Serina that Prue loved to take a long hot bath on Monday mornings, because on wash-day there was always a plenty of hot water in the bathroom. On other mornings the hot-water faucet suffered from a distressing cough and nothing more.
So she tiptoed out and closed the door softly.
III
At breakfast Ollie waited on the table after compelling Serina to sit down and eat. There was little to tempt the appetite and no appetite to be tempted.
Papa was in the doldrums. He had always complained before of having to gulp his breakfast and hurry to the shop. And now he complained because there was no hurry; indeed, there was no shop. He must set out at his time of years, after his life of independent warfare, to ask for enlistment as a private in some other man's company—in a town where vacancies rarely occurred and where William Pepperall would not be welcome.
The whole town was mad at him. He had owed everybody, and then suddenly he owed nobody. By the presto-change-o of bankruptcy his debts had been passed from the hat of unpaid bills to the hat of worthless accounts.
Serina was as dismal as any wife is when she is faced with the prospect of having her man hanging about the house all day. A wife in a man's office hours is a nuisance, but a man at home in household office hours is a pest. This was the newest but not the least of Serina's woes.
Horace was even glummer than ever, as soggy as his own oatmeal. At best he was one of those breakfast bruins. Now he was a bear that has been hit on the nose. He, too, must seek a job. School had seemed confining before, but now that he must go to work, school seemed like one long recess.
Even Ollie was depressed. Hers was the misery of an active person denied activity. She had prepared herself as an aid in her father's business, and now he had no business. In this alkali desert of inanition Prue's vivacious temper would have been welcome.
"Where's Prue?" said papa for the fifth time.
Serina was about to say that she was still asleep when Prue made her presence known. Everybody was apprised that the water had been turned on in the bathroom; it resounded throughout the house. It seemed to fall about one's head.
Prue was filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard she was evidently dancing.
"What's that toon she's dancing to?" papa asked, after a while.
"I don't know," said Serina.
"I never heard it," said Ollie.
"Ah," growled Horace, "it's the Argentine tango."
"The tango!" gasped papa. "Isn't that the new dance I've been reading about, that's making a sensation in New York?"
"Ah, wake up, pop!" said Horace. "It's a sensation here, too."
"In Carthage? They're dancing the tango in our home town?"
"Surest thing you know, pop. The whole burg's goin' bug over it."
"How is it done? What is it like?"
"Something like this," said Horace, and, rising, he indulged in the prehistoric turkey-trot of a year ago, with burlesque hip-snaps and poultry-yard scrapings of the foot.
"Stop it!" papa thundered. "It's loathsome! Do you mean to tell me that my daughter does that sort of thing?"
"Sure! She's a wonder at it."
"What scoundrel taught my poor child such—such—Who taught her, I say?"
"Gosh!" sniffed Horace, "sis don't need teachin'. She's teachin' the rest of 'em. They're crazy about her."
"Teaching others! My g-g-goodness! Where did she learn?"
"Chicago, I guess."
"Oh, the wickedness of these cities and the foreigners that are dragging our American homes down to their own level!"
"I guess the foreigners got nothin' on us," said Horace. "It's a Namerican dance."
"What are we coming to? Go tell Prue to come here at once. I'll put a stop to that right here and now."
Serina gave him one searing glance, and he understood that he could not deliver his edict to Prue yet awhile. He heard her singing even more barbaric strains. The chandelier danced with a peculiar savagery, then the dance was evidently quenched and subdued. Awestruck yowls from above indicated that Prue was in hot water.
"This is the last straw!" groaned papa, with all the wretchedness of a father learning that his daughter was gone to the bad.
IV
Prue did not appear below-stairs for so long that her father had lost his magnificent running start by the time she sauntered in all sleek and shiny and asked for her food. She brought a radiant grace into the dull gray room; and Serina whispered to Will to let her have her breakfast first.
She and Ollie waited on Prue, while the father paced the floor, stealing sidelong glances at her, and wondering if it were possible that so sweet a thing should be as vicious as she would have to be to tango.
When she had scoured her plate and licked her spoon with a child-like charm her father began to crank up his throat for a tirade. He began with the reluctant horror of a young attorney cross-examining his first murderer:
"Prue—I want to—to—er—Prue, do you—did you—ever—This—er—this tango business—Prue—have you—do you—er—What do you know about it?"
"Well, of course, papa, they change it so fast on you it's hard to keep up with it, but I was about three days ahead of Chicago when I left there. I met with a man who had just stepped off the twenty-hour train and I learned all he knew before I turned him loose."
In a strangled tone the father croaked, "You dance it, then?"
"You bet! Papa, stand up and I'll show you the very newest roll. It's a peach. Put your weight on your right leg. Say, it's a shame we haven't a phonograph! Don't you suppose you could afford a little one? I could have you all in fine form in no time. And it would be so good for mamma."
Papa fell back into a chair with just strength enough to murmur, "I want you to promise me never to dance it again."
"Don't be foolish, you dear old bump-on-a-log!"
"I forbid you to dance it ever again."
She laughed uproariously: "Listen at the old Skeezicks! Get up here and I'll show you the cutest dip."
When at last he grew angry, and made her realize it, she flared into a tumult of mutiny that drove him out into the rain. He spent the day looking for a job without finding one. Horace came home wet and discouraged with the same news. Ollie, the treasure, however, announced that she had obtained a splendid position as typist in Judge Hippisley's office, at a salary of thirty dollars a month.
William was overjoyed, but Serina protested bitterly. She and Mrs. Judge Hippisley had been bitter social rivals for twenty years. They had fought each other with teas and euchre parties and receptions from young wifehood to middle-aged portliness. And now her daughter was to work in that hateful Anastasia Hippisley's old fool of a husband's office? Well, hardly!
"It's better than starving," said Ollie, and for once would not be coerced, though even her disobedience was on the ground of service. After she had cleared the table and washed the dishes she set out for her room, lugging a typewriter she had borrowed to brush up her speed on.
Prue had begged off from even wiping the dishes, because she had to dress. As Ollie started up-stairs to her task she was brought back by the door-bell. She ushered young Orton Hippisley into the parlor. He had come to take Prue to a dance.
When papa heard this mamma had to hold her hand over his mouth to keep him from making a scene. He was for kicking young Hippisley out of the house.
"And lose me my job?" gasped Ollie.
The overpowered parent whispered his determination to go up-stairs and forbid Prue to leave. He went up-stairs and forbade her, but she went right on binding her hair with Ollie's best ribbon. In the midst of her father's peroration she kissed him good-by and danced down-stairs in Ollie's new slippers. Her own had been trotted into shreds.
Papa sat fuming all evening. He would not go to bed till Prue came home to the ultimatum he was preparing for her. From above came the tick-tock-tock of Ollie's typewriter. It got on his nerves, like rain on a tin roof.
"To think of it—Ollie up-stairs working her fingers to the bone to help us out, and Prue dancing her feet off disgracing us! To think that one of our daughters should be so good and one so bad!"
"I can't believe that our little Prue is really bad," Serina sighed.
"Yet girls do go wrong, don't they?" her husband groaned. "This morning's paper prints a sermon about the tango. Reverend Doctor What's-his-name, the famous New York newspaper preacher, tears the whole tango crowd to pieces. He points out that the tango is the cause of the present-day wickedness, the ruin of the home!"
Serina was dismal and terrified, but from force of habit she took the opposite side.
"Oh, they were complaining of divorces long before the tango was ever heard of. That same preacher used to blame them on the bicycle, then on the automobile and the movies. And now it's the tango. It'll be flying-machines next."
Papa was used to fighting with mamma, and he roared with fine leoninity: "Are you defending your daughter's shamelessness? Do you approve of the tango?"
"I've never seen it."
"Then it must be just because you always encourage your children to flout my authority. I never could keep any discipline because you always fought for them, encouraged them to disobey their father, to—to—to—"
She chanted her responses according to the familiar family antipathy antiphony. They talked themselves out eventually; but Prue was not home. Ollie gradually typewrote herself to sleep and Prue was not home. Horace came in from the Y. M. C. A. bowling-alley and went to bed, and Prue was not home.
The old heads nodded. The sentinels slept. At some dimly distant time papa woke with a start and inquired, "Huh?"
Mamma jumped and gasped, "Who?"
They were shivering with the after-midnight chill of the cold room, and Prue was not home. Papa snapped his watch open and snapped it shut; and the same to his jaw:
"Two o'clock! And Prue not home. I'm going after her!"
He thrust into his overcoat, slapped his hat on his aching head, flung open the door. And Prue came home.
She was alone! And in tears!
V
As papa's overcoat slid off his arms and his hat off his head she tore down her gloves, tossed her cloak in the direction of the hat-tree and stumbled up the stairs, sobbing. Her mother caught her hand.
"What's the matter, honey?"
Prue wrenched loose and went on up.
Father and mother stared at her, then at each other, then at the floor. Each read the same unspeakable fear in the other's soul. Serina ran up the stairs as fast as she could. William automatically locked the doors and windows, turned out the lights, and followed.
He paused in the upper hall to listen. Prue was explaining at last.
"It's that Orton Hippisley," Prue sobbed.
"What—what has he done?" Serina pleaded, and Prue sobbed on:
"Oh, he got fresh! Some of these fellas in this town think that because a girl likes to have a good time and knows how to dance they can get fresh with her. I didn't like the way Ort Hippisley held me and I told him. Finally I wouldn't dance any more with him. I gave his dances to Grant Beadle till the last; then Ort begged so hard I said all right. And he danced like a gentleman. But on the way home he—he put his arm round me. And when I told him to take it away he wouldn't. He said I had been in his arms half the evening before folks, and if I hadn't minded then I oughtn't to mind now. And I said: 'Is that so? Well, it's mighty different when you're dancing.' And he said, 'Oh no, it isn't,' and I said, 'Oh yes, it is.' And he tried to kiss me and I hauled off and smashed him right in the nose. It bloodied all over his dress soot, and I'm glad of it."
Somehow Papa Pepperall felt such an impulse to give three cheers that he had to put his own hand over his mouth. He tiptoed to his room, and when mamma appeared to announce with triumph, "I guess Prue hasn't gone to the bad yet," papa said: "Who said she had? Prue is the finest girl in America!"
"I thought you were saying—"
"Why can't you ever once get me right? I was saying that Prue is too fine a girl to be allowed to mingle with that tango set. I'm going to cowhide that Hippisley cub. And Prue's not going to another one of those dances."
But he didn't. And she did.
VI
Ollie was up betimes the next morning to get breakfast and make haste to her office. She was so excited that she dropped a stove-lid on the coalscuttle just as her mother appeared.
"For mercy's sake, less noise!" Serina whispered. "You'll wake poor Prue!"
Ollie next dropped the tray she had just unloaded on the table. Serina was furious. Ollie whispered:
"I'm so nervous for fear I've lost my job at Judge Hippisley's, now that Prue had to go and slap Orton."
"Always thinking of yourself," was Serina's rebuke. "Don't be so selfish!"
But Ollie's fears were wasted. Orton Hippisley might have boasted of kisses he did not get, but not of the slaps that he did. He had gained a new respect for Prue, and at the first opportunity pleaded for forgiveness, eying her little fist the while. He begged her to go with him to a dance at his home that evening.
She forgave him for the sake of the invitation—and she glided and dipped at the judge's house while Ollie spent the evening in his office trying to finish the day's work. Her speed was not yet up to requirements. Prue's speed was.
Other girls watched Prue manipulating her members in the intricate mechanisms of the latest dances. They begged her to teach them, but she laughed and said: "It's easy. Just watch what I do and do the same."
So Raphael told his pupils and Napoleon his subordinates.
That night Ollie and Prue reached home at nearly the same time. Ollie told how well she was getting along in the judge's office. Prue told how she had made wall-flowers of everybody else in Mrs. Hippisley's parlor. Let those who know a mother's heart decide which daughter Serina was the prouder of, the good or the bad.
She told William about it—how Ollie had learned to type letters with both hands and how Prue got there with both feet. And papa said, "She's a great girl!"
And that was singular.
VII
A few mornings later Judge Hippisley stopped William on the street and spoke in his best bench manner:
"Will, I hate to speak about your daughter, but I've got to."
"Why, Judge, what's Ollie done? Isn't she fast enough?"
"Ollie's all right. I'm speaking of Prue. She's entirely too fast. I want you to tell her to let my son alone."
"Why, I—you—he—"
"My boy was clerking in Beadle's hardware-store, learning the business and earning twelve dollars a week. And now he spends half his time dancing with that dam—daughter of yours. And Beadle is going to fire him if he doesn't 'tend to business better."
"I—I'll speak to Prue," was all Pepperall dared to say. The judge had too many powers over him to be talked back to.
Papa spoke to Prue and it amused her very much. She said that old Mr. Beadle had better speak to his own boy, who was Orton's fiercest rival at the dances. And as for the fat old judge, he'd better take up dancing himself.
The following Sunday three of the Carthage preachers attacked the tango. One of them used for his text Matthew xiv:6, and the other used Mark vi:22. Both told how John the Baptist had lost his head over Salome's dancing. Doctor Brearley chose Isaiah lix:7 "Their feet run to evil ... their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths."
Mr. and Mrs. Pepperall and Ollie sat under Doctor Brearley. Prue had slept too late to be present. Doctor Brearley blamed so many of the evils of the world on the tango craze that if a visitor from Mars had dropped into a pew he might have judged that the world had been an Eden till the tango came. But then Doctor Brearley had always blamed old things on new things.
It was a ferocious sermon, however, and the wincing Pepperalls felt that it was aimed directly at them. When Doctor Brearley denounced modern parents for their own godlessness and the irreligion of their homes, William took the blame to himself. On his way home he announced his determination to resume the long-neglected family custom of reading from the Bible.
After the heavy Sabbath dinner had been eaten—Prue was up in time for this rite—he gathered his little flock in the parlor for a solemn while. It had been his habit to choose the reading of the day at random—he called it "letting the Lord decide." The big rusty-hinged Bible fell open with a loud puff of dust several years old. Papa adjusted his spectacles and read what he found before him:
"Nehemiah x: 'Now those that sealed were, Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush ...'" He began to breathe hard. He was lost in an impenetrable forest of names, and he could not pronounce one of them. He sneaked a peek ahead, dimly made out "Bunni, Hizkijah, Magpiash and Hashub," and choked.
It looked like sacrilege, but he ventured to close the Book and open it once more.
This time he happened on the last chapter of the Book of Judges, wherein is the chronicle of the plight of the tribe of Benjamin, which could not get women to marry into it. The wife famine of the Benjamites was not in the least interesting to Mr. Pepperall, but he would not tempt the Lord again. So he read on, while the children yawned and shuffled, Prue especially.
Suddenly Prue sat still and listened, and papa's cough grew worse. He was reading about the "feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly," and how the elders of the congregation ordered the children of Benjamin to go and lie in wait in the vineyards.
"'And see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh....
"'And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them....
"'In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
He closed the Book and stole a glance at Prue. Her eyes were so bright with triumph that he had to say:
"Of course that proves nothing about dancing. It doesn't say that the Shiloh girls made good wives."
Prue had the impudence to add, "And it doesn't say that the sons of Benjamin were good dancers."
Her father silenced her with a scowl of horror. Then he made a long prayer, directed more at his family than at the Lord. It apparently had an equal effect on each. After a hymn had been mumbled through the family dispersed.
Prue lingered just long enough to capture the Bible and carry it off to her room in a double embrace. Serina and William tried to be glad to see her sudden interest, but they were a little afraid of her exact motive.
She made no noise at all and did not come down in time to help get supper—the sad, cold supper of a Sunday evening. She slipped into the dining-room just before the family was called. Papa found at his plate a neat little stack of cards, bearing each a carefully lettered legend in Prue's writing. He picked them up, glanced at them, and flushed.
"I dare you to read them," said Prue.
So he read: "'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven ... a time to mourn and a time to dance.... He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.' Ecclesiastes iii.
"'Let them praise his name in the dance ... for the Lord taketh pleasure in his people.... Praise him with the timbrel and dance.... Praise him upon the loud cymbals.' Psalms cxlix, cl.
"'O virgin of Israel ... thou shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.... Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together.' Jeremiah xxxi.
"'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.' Matthew xi: 17.
"'Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.... Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.' II Samuel vi: 16, 23."
Papa did not fall back upon the Shakesperean defense that the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose. He choked a little and filled his hand with the apple-butter he was spreading on his cold biscuit. Then he said:
"It's not that I don't believe in dancing. I don't say all dances are immor'l."
"You better not," said Serina, darkly. "You met me at a dance. We used to dance all the time till you got so's you wouldn't take me to parties any more. And you got so clumsy and I began to take on flesh, and ran short of breath like."
"Oh, there's mor'l dances as well as immor'l dances," William confessed, not knowing the history of the opposition every dance has encountered in its younger days. "The waltz now, or the lancers or the Virginia reel. Even the two-step was all right. But this turkey-trot-tango business—it's goin' to be the ruination of the home. It isn't fit for decent folks to look at, let alone let their daughters do. I want you should quit it, Prue. If you need exercise help your mother with the housework. You go and tango round with a broom awhile. I don't see why you don't try to help your sister, too, and make something useful of yourself. I tell you, in these days a woman ought to be able to earn her own living same's a man. You could get a good position in Shillaber's dry-goods store if you only would."
Prue wriggled her shoulders impatiently and said: "I guess I'm one of those Shiloh girls. I'll just dance round awhile, and maybe some rich Benjamin gent'man will grab me and take me off your hands."
VIII
One evening Prue came home late to supper after a session at Bertha Appleby's. An informal gathering had convened under the disguise of a church-society meeting, only to degenerate into a dancing-bee after a few perfunctory formalities.
Prue had just time to seize a bite before she went to dress for a frankly confessed dancing-bout at Eliza Erf's. As she ate with angry voracity she complained:
"I guess I'll just quit going to dances. I don't have a bit of fun any more."
Her father started from his chair to embrace the returned prodigal, but he dropped into Ollie's place as Prue exclaimed:
"Everybody is always at me for help. 'Prue, is this right?' 'Prue, teach me that.' 'Oh, what did you do then?' 'Is it the inside foot or the outside you start on?' 'Do you drop on the front knee or the hind?' 'Do you do the Innovation?' Why, it's worse than teaching school!"
"Why don't you teach school?" said William, feebly. "There's going to be a vacancy in the kindergarten."
Prue sniffed. "I see myself!" And went to her room to dress.
Her father sank back discouraged. What ailed the girl? She simply would not take life seriously. She would not lift her hand to help. When they were so poor and the future so dour, how could she keep from earning a little money? Was she condemned to be altogether useless, shiftless, unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could shift her to the neck of some unhappy husband?
He remembered the fable of the ant and the locust. Prue was the locust, frivoling away the summer. At the first cold blast she would be pleading with the industrious ant, Ollie, to take her in. In the fable the locust was turned away to freeze, but you couldn't do that with a human locust. The ants just have to feed them. Poor Ollie!
Munching this quinine cud of thought, he went up to bed. He was footsore from tramping the town for work. He had covered almost as much distance as Prue had danced. He was all in. She was just going out.
She kissed him good night, but he would not answer. She went to kiss her mother and Ollie and Horace. Ollie was practising shorthand, and kissed Prue with sorrowing patience. Horace dodged the kiss, but called her attention to an article in the evening paper: