Jewel Weed

“She’ll be all the better guide,” Lena retorted with one of her demure pouts. “You know she invited me to join the class she has gotten up for Swami Ram Juna. You needn’t grin in that horrid way, Dick. I shall be so wise very soon that you’ll be afraid of me.”

“Heaven forbid, you dear little inspirer of awe.”

“At any rate, she’s taken the greatest fancy to me, and I to her. She came here yesterday in the pouring rain, and we spent a long afternoon talking together. We feel the same way about everything. She says that with my beauty, I ought to make a great hit, and she’s going to give a big reception in my honor. Of course, with her experience, she can be a great help to me.”

“I see.” Dick forgot his breakfast entirely, and meditated.

“What is Mr. Appleton like?” Lena persisted.

“He has enough money to make me pale my ineffectual fires, and he adds to that the personality of the great American desert. But I suspect his wife is so wholly satisfied with the golden glow that the latter fact has never penetrated to her consciousness. I think Mrs. Appleton has not yet recovered from her astonishment at finding herself wedded to profusion. It appears to delight her afresh from day to day.”

“You can be very nasty about people when you choose.” Lena’s tone was unmistakably vexed.

“Frankly, Lena, I do not like Mrs. Appleton or her attitude toward life. She is the kind of woman who refuses to take the simplest thing simply, the kind that thinks subscription dances and clubs and private cars and family tombs were invented chiefly to show our exclusiveness.”

“Well, what are they for?”

Dick laughed. “Most of them to get all the fun there is in things, I should say; and the tombs, to show that love holds even after death.”

“I like her, anyway,” said Lena. “I like her better than the stuck-up kind of women.” The words sound bald. Lena’s lips made them seem humorous. It was so easy to avoid disapprobation just by that little smile and whimsical twist of the mouth.

“And whom do you mean by that!”

“You know whom I mean,” Lena answered defiantly. “And I consider Mrs. Appleton a great deal more of a society woman than Mrs. Lenox. At any rate she goes a great deal more. And she does not neglect her church duties or her charities, either. She has told me things that she is doing.”

“I should say she does not neglect them,” ejaculated Dick. “She has the art so to regild them that even philanthropy and religion become mere appendages to society. Does Mrs. Lenox belong to Ram Juna’s class, Lena?”

“No. Mrs. Appleton asked her, but she wrote that though she was interested in oriental thought, she, personally, found it more satisfactory to get it by reading. Now wasn’t that snobby, Dick?”

“Is it snobbish to choose what really suits you, instead of following a craze like a sheep woman?”

But Lena shut her lips tightly. If she had not will, she had obstinacy. She could be resolute in behalf of her realities, luxury, beauty and self. From the moment when Mrs. Appleton first dawned on her horizon, she had recognized her ideal. Here was a woman who was at once showy, fashionable and virtuous. The things that Mrs. Lenox took for granted or ignored were to her matters of absorbing importance. She magnified the office of every detail of social conduct and every minutia of society’s “functions”. It was worth while to spend a week of soul-fatiguing labor in order that a tea should be just right; and her preparations were not made in silence, but with an amount of discussion and red-tape that filled every crevice of life. She had learned the art of so cramming the days with trifles that there was no room for the big things and she could conveniently forget them.

Mrs. Appleton seemed to recognize in Lena the same curious mingling of deep-down barbaric egotism and love of display, with the longing to be civilizedly correct. The two were drawn together.

“I like her,” said Lena positively.

“I’m sorry,” Dick said gently. “I can’t say that I do, and I should be glad if you could find your friends among those I love and respect.”

“You needn’t try to dictate my friendships,” said Lena sharply.

“I did not think of dictating, sweetheart. But when we love each other, we naturally long for sympathy in all things.” Dick was making a brave effort.

But there was little use in making this appeal to Lena, to whom love was but a beneficent masculine idiosyncrasy. Dick glanced at her and at his watch.

“I must be off,” he said. “I have an engagement to meet Preston and plan out our campaign.”

“Ours!”

“I’m going to run for alderman of this ward,” Dick laughed as Lena flushed. “Don’t you approve?”

“How can you be interested in running for alderman?” she asked. “It is such a mean little ambition. I wish you would try for something big. It would be grand to have you a senator, so that we could go to Washington. I should love to be in all the gaieties and meet all the distinguished people.”

“Why, sweetheart, you don’t suppose I care for the great name of city father, do you?” Dick answered laughing. “That’s only the end of a lever. I do care immensely to be one of those who will clean up this city and keep it clean. Perhaps, if we do these near-by things, the big ones will come, by and by.”

“A sort of public housemaid,” said Lena scornfully.

“Exactly!” Dick laughed and nodded.

But Lena shrugged her shoulders and pouted as the door shut and she idly watched her husband’s final hand-wave.

He walked down town and the fresh northern air set his pulses quickening. He noted how few gray heads there were, how full everything seemed of the vitality of youth. On the piazzas were groups of happy well-kept children, bundled up for winter play and bubbling over with exuberance. To any passer-by they told that these were the homes of young married people. Everywhere life looked sweet and normal and vigorous. And he knew that for miles in every direction there were more such homes of more such people.

But when he reached the part of town whither his steps were bent, all this was reversed. Here was dirt, if not of body, then of spirit. Here were a thousand evil influences at work. Here was public plundering for private greed; here were wire-pullings and bargainings and selfishness reigning supreme. And these forces were the nominal rulers of a city, the greater part of whose life was good.

However, he was getting the ropes in his hands. These things were no longer vague generalities floating in his mind, as rosy clouds might be backed by thunder-heads on the horizon. They were growing definite. He began to know who were the evil-workers and how they did it. He had the art of making friends, and he made friends among publicans and sinners as well as—well, there weren’t any saints in St. Etienne to make friends with. At any rate some of the powers that were began to say that Dick Percival knew entirely too much. And some of the powers that ought to be, but still slept, namely the good citizens of St. Etienne, found their slumbers disturbed by his straight and convincing words.

But to-day all his labors seemed not worth while. There was a sour taste in his mouth. To do the little thing with a big heart was after all nothing but a sham. His ideals, he thought, had simmered down to petty things. He was spending his time in nosing out small evil-smelling scandals and in running for a mean inferior office. He felt nauseated with himself. Worse, he felt a horrible new doubt of his wife. Mrs. Appleton had been to him the type of woman he disliked, worldly, shallow, busy with the sticks and straws; yet now there would creep in a suspicion that some of the things he had forgiven to Lena’s beauty and lack of sophistication were close of kin to the older woman’s more blatant materialism. Materialism was the thing Dick had not learned to associate with his own women.

This radiant morning, then, he felt himself under the dominion of the grand inquisitors who invented the torture of little things. Life consisted in having slow drops of water fall on his head, one at a time. Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance, society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and uninspiring at the breakfast-table.

It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.

Dick began to analyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover’s state of mind, he must continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he find that the faults are the biggest ingredient.

Dick, however, was thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet, innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the world in general she was still the big-eyed ingenue, learning to take her place in society. To him alone, it seemed, to him whose love and reverence she ought to have desired, she was becoming indifferent as to the impression she made. Was the other side of her a pose? Dick found himself walking very fast, and he slackened his pace to a respectable gait. If Lena the lovable was a pose, then the inspiration and ideals and joy of his life were frauds. That thought was too appalling. He deliberately stopped thinking about it and turned his thoughts to frauds in city politics, which were easier to endure.

Lena, on the other hand, sitting idly by the window, indulged in a little reflection on her own part. She was revolving with some bitterness her disappointment and disillusionment. She remembered what a glorious gilded creature Dick had appeared to her at one time. Now he was sunk to be a very ordinary young man, with curious and stupid idiosyncrasies, and not nearly so rich and important as many of the people she came in contact with. Might she have done better if she had waited? She too stopped regretting and turned her attention to a novel. She was just beginning to discover the charms of “Gyp.” She looked up to see Mr. Early come up the pathway, and a moment later he stood beside her.

“Mrs. Percival,” he said, “I have brought you this little vase, the first of its kind that my artists have produced. I thought it so really beautiful that I could not resist laying one before you as a kind of tribute.”

“Oh, it is lovely. And am I really the only person in the world who has one?”

“You and Miss Elton.” A pang of small jealousy shot through Lena’s heart. It was always and everywhere Miss Elton. “I sent her another, but of slightly different shape. I am, as you know, a worshiper of beauty, but all these creations of man’s hands are but parodies, are they not, Mrs. Percival, on absolute beauty? They are like ourselves, the creatures of a day. Nature herself, in sea and air and woodland, produces exquisite loveliness, and yet even her achievements are dwarfed when one stands face to face with one of creation’s masterpieces—a woman.”

And Mr. Early made a ponderous bow as he presented his work of art. Lena was so impressed by this compliment that she wrote it out while it was fresh in her memory, and when Dick came home, she read it to him. He gave a great bellowing laugh that grated harshly on Lena’s nerves; and then at sight of her reproachful eyes, he drew himself together and gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, affectionate, to be sure, but quite different from Mr. Early’s chivalrous manner, and said:

“Thinks you better than his old straight-legged tables, does he? Well, I should say so! Serves him right for being an old bachelor, and having nothing but furniture and Ram Juna to illuminate existence. I should expect that combination to drive a man either to drink or to blank verse.”

“I don’t think it is nice of you to swear, Dick,” Lena answered severely, but on the verge of tears.

“Swear, sweetheart? Why, what do you mean?”

“Well, it’s almost the same thing to talk about ‘blank’ verse.” Dick laughed again and went directly to the library without even noticing the extremely lovely new dress which his wife had put on for his edification.

Dick’s limitations were becoming manifest to young Mrs. Percival. He might be a gentleman, but she feared that he would never be more. There was nothing imposing about him. He had lifted her out of sordid want, but he would not raise her to the pinnacle of greatness. The bland flat face of Mr. Early and his commanding slowness of movement impressed her imagination much as a great stone image might its votary. Here was indeed the truly illustrious. She devoured every floating newspaper paragraph that concerned Sebastian; for she was still under the dominion of the idea that greatness in the dailies constituted greatness indeed. She would have been proud to touch the hem of his frock-coat. How much greater her elation when, on public occasions, he singled her out and stalked across the room to utter in loud tones, intended for the ears of half a hundred, some well-rounded compliment. A conquest of Mr. Early would have been, for Lena, the consummation of achievement; but she could not help seeing that his eyes turned more frequently upon Miss Elton than upon Mrs. Percival—upon Miss Elton, of whom she felt constant jealousy and abnormal curiosity.

Jealousy rose to its height when, on a certain afternoon, from her favorite post beside a window, Lena watched a carriage drive up to Mr. Early’s door, and Miss Elton dismount and run up the steps. Mrs. Percival leaned forward to make sure of her eyes, and then she sat and eyed the hole where the mouse had disappeared.

Of course she could not know what was going on inside. When Madeline received a note from Mr. Early, asking her to come and see some very wonderful tapestries that he had just hung, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Sebastian’s house was always more like a museum than bachelor’s quarters. He was continually turning it inside out for public inspection, so Madeline went in all innocence, expecting to find a dozen or so of her friends sharing the private view. She was embarrassed, but hardly seriously, as Mr. Early came forward to welcome her.

“Am I all alone?” she said with a little laugh.

“Apparently you are. But I dare say some others will drop in on us in a moment,” Mr. Early made answer. “Meanwhile I am favored, for your opinion is what I particularly want. These queer old tapestries have been sent to me from France, but whether I keep them or not depends on whether they seem the right thing in the right place. Will you come this way?”

The big hall had a singularly impersonal aspect. Madeline had never before seen it except when thronged with people, and now that they two stood alone in its wide empty space, she was struck with a certain desolation in it.

“Well?” inquired Mr. Early.

“I can’t tell at once,” said Madeline slowly. “Beauty is a thing that takes time to unfold itself upon one, isn’t it? But I think they are beautiful. They are certainly strange and solemn, and they intensify the dignity of this big room; but they make it seem less homelike than ever. They seem to me things to look at rather than to live with. I suppose their appropriateness depends a little on what you want to make of this place. And you do want it only for a public room, do you not, Mr. Early?”

“I am afraid that is all I am capable of,” said Sebastian, looking pensively at her. “You see the home feeling is beyond my achievement. It needs the feminine touch to create that ideal atmosphere. That, Miss Madeline, is above art.”

“It is so common, are you sure it is not below art?” Madeline smiled.

“I am sure,” responded Mr. Early with conviction. “It is a subject on which I have thought much since you came home last year. Never until then did I wholly realize the lack in my home and in my life. If now, in all humbleness, I am consulting your taste, it is because I have sometimes dared to hope that you, my dear lady, would one day give that final grace to this which would make it indeed a home, instead of the mere abiding place that it is now.”

Madeline turned upon him sharply.

“Mr. Early,” she said, “it isn’t wholly courteous in you to take advantage of my being alone with you in your own domain to speak to me in this way.”

“I beg your pardon,” Sebastian answered. “It was a wholly unpremeditated expression of what has long been an ardent desire. I did not mean to speak, but your own words seemed to break down the barriers of my passion. I could wish that you would permit me to put it in the form which my heart prompts; but perhaps you are right. Your fine sense of the proprieties must be my rule of conduct. I shall only trust that I may soon find a time to speak when I shall not offend your delicacy, and when, I pray, I may not offend your heart.”

“Neither now nor at any other time should I advise you to go any further,” said Madeline laughingly, for it was hard to take the bombast of Mr. Early very seriously. He made her think now of a sort of pouter pigeon. And Sebastian remained only partly satisfied as to the effect which he wished to produce. He wanted to give her something to think about, and so make way for the more impassioned wooing that he was resolved should follow. He was convinced that to stand alone with him in the midst of his splendors would make a strong impression on the mind of any sensible girl. The great hall was certainly a place to capture the imagination—not only from its stately proportions and the mellow coloring that melted into shadow in the far-off roof, but from the multitude of smaller details, the intricate carvings, gathered abroad or made under Mr. Early’s own eye, the few priceless paintings, the great jars whose exquisite decorations blended their richer tones with the deeper shades around. In a wide alcove was gathered a collection of portraits of distinguished men and women, statesmen, artists and literati of this country and of Europe, and each picture was accompanied by an autograph letter to the well-beloved Sebastian Early. It could be no small thing to contemplate the possession of this house of notabilities and of the man who had built it up around himself. This, Mr. Early meant, should be the artistic opening of his campaign. And Miss Elton had laughed.

There was silence for a long minute, and Madeline, glancing nervously at her host, saw that his face was grave and that his eyes were fixed upon her in a melancholy way. She began to feel uncomfortable.

“I think I must be going now,” she said.

“You have not told me whether I am to keep the tapestries,” Mr. Early humbly objected.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly decide for you. But they seem to harmonize beautifully with this room.”

“I am grateful for your decision. Permit me to see you to your carriage, Miss Madeline.”

Lena, watching hungrily from her vantage post, noted Mr. Early’s obsequious courtesies, Madeline’s flushed face, and drew angry conclusions. Nevertheless, she leaned forward and bowed graciously as Madeline drove past.

“If she should marry Mr. Early, I shouldn’t feel as if I had triumphed a bit in getting Dick away from her,” she said to herself, with a bald comprehension of her true state of mind. For Lena made up for her pose toward others by a certain unimaginative frankness in her self-communings.

Then, catching a glimpse of another figure, she exclaimed, “Oh, there comes Miss Huntress!” and immediately settled herself with an air of elegant leisure to receive her former superior. Miss Huntress was a source of continual satisfaction to Lena, the opposite of a skeleton at the feast, a continual reminder of present prosperity as compared with past nonentity. To meet her gave Madame Cecropia the same thrill of satisfaction that it still did to draw her dainty skirts around her and step into her carriage, half hoping that some envious girl was viewing her perfections as she had once eyed those of others. On the other hand, Miss Huntress derived almost equal pleasure out of her acquaintance with Lena, whose littleness she measured, and whose small successes she looked upon with amusement, unflecked by envy. Emily Huntress was a plodding person, with much business on hand and an earnest necessity for earning money, and though her canons were not over fine, still she had her standards and lived up to them. She found Lena useful as a source of social information.

“You want to know what is going on?” inquired Mrs. Percival. “Well, of course you know it’s Lent, and there isn’t anything much. But if you will come up to my boudoir, I will look over my engagement book, and perhaps I can help you to a paragraph or two.”

The word boudoir was a sweetmeat to Lena’s palate, combined, as it was, with the knowledge that her visitor, with a sister, kept house in three rooms.

So they went up stairs, and Lena babbled and preened herself, while Miss Huntress frowned and pondered on the difficulties of making anything readable out of her small kernel of information. The arrival of a cup of tea, Miss Huntress, being a woman as well as a reporter, found mollifying to the hardness of life.

“I see,” she said with an acid little laugh, “you have the Chatterer up here in your unholy of unholies.” Her eyes fell on a small magazine which made a speciality of besmirching the good names of the entire country. “Everybody reads it, and everybody pretends to despise it.”

“It’s awfully interesting,” said Lena, and she went on with a little giggle, “I think I’ll just tuck it away before my husband comes in. He doesn’t approve of it, you know. Men don’t care for gossip. I think it is perfectly wonderful what an amount of scandal it gets hold of. I don’t see how they do it. And they’ve such a naughty way of writing it up, too.”

“Nothing very remarkable. In every town of importance they have some one always on the lookout for a promising piece of mud.” Miss Huntress eyed Lena speculatively for a moment. “I’ll tell you in confidence,” she went on, “and I trust you to keep mum about it, for the sake of the times when I helped you—I write for it here. I don’t exactly like it, but you know I can’t afford to despise dollars and cents. It’s just plain business, after all. There’s a demand for that kind of thing and it falls to my lot to supply it.”

“And did you write that awful thing about Mrs. Clarke?” cried Lena, sitting up with big blue eyes, and gazing earnestly at Miss Huntress with, awe as an arbiter of reputations.

“Yep,” replied that lady with a gulp of tea.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Percival. “I hope you’ll never send them anything about me.”

“Then you’d better never do anything indiscreet,” Miss Huntress laughed maliciously. “But I don’t think you would,” she went on speculatively. “You’re too clever and too ambitious for that. Do you know, I’ve rather come to the conclusion that it’s only rather simple-hearted people who do those things. Take that Mrs. Clarke, now. Of course her husband was a brute, and when the other man came along she fell so much in love with him that she didn’t even think of any one else in the world except their two selves. A woman who was incapable of whole-souled passion would have kept an eye on the world and walked the narrow path of virtue.”

“Why, you’re defending her!” exclaimed Lena.

“Not in the least,” said Miss Huntress grimly. “I helped to make her pay the price.”

“Oh, well,” Lena said with an air of greatness, “there are some of us who can combine the deepest love with decent behavior you know.”

“Of course,” answered Miss Huntress.

“Now Miss Elton is just that other kind. I believe she never thinks what people say about her,” Lena observed. “Not that she’d do anything out of the way, you understand.”

“Certainly not.” Miss Huntress began to prick up her professional ears. “She’s a particular friend of yours, isn’t she?”

“Intimate,” said Lena. “You know they used to say that Mr. Percival—but of course that was before he met me, and anyway there was nothing in it.”

“I know,” said Miss Huntress. “I sent a line to the Chatterer once about it.”

“Did you really? Well, of course, for form’s sake, she has to be as nice as ever to me and Mr. Percival. But she has reconciled herself. It’s all Mr. Early now.”

“You don’t say!” ejaculated Miss Huntress with interest.

“She’s regularly throwing herself at his head. Why only this afternoon I saw her do the most unconventional thing.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, I dare say she was just getting him to subscribe to some charity or something equally innocent. Still, it was queer. But I know her too well to suspect her of any impropriety. She’s really the dearest, sweetest girl, Miss Huntress, and I’m the last person in the world to criticize her.”

“But aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Well, she came, quite alone, you understand, to Mr. Early’s this afternoon, and was closeted there the longest time. I couldn’t help wondering what it was all about. What do you suppose?”

“That was funny,” meditated Miss Huntress.

“I’m certain there’s some perfectly natural explanation, if we only knew it,” Lena went on. “But she looked awfully flushed when she came out.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Huntress. “I must be going now.”

“Oh, won’t you have another cup of tea? Of course, I’m on very good terms with Miss Elton,” said Lena, fingering the tray cloth a little nervously. “I shouldn’t like her to think I’d criticized her behavior, even to you.”

“You needn’t be afraid,” rejoined Miss Huntress. “I never let on how I get my information. I’d lose my job if I did. Much obliged to you, Mrs. Percival. Things are so dull during Lent that we’re thankful for even a few crumbs. I guess that’s your husband’s step. It must be getting late.”

“Oh, good-by! Dick, you dear boy, how glad I am to see you,” cried Lena, fluttering to the door to meet her returning lord. “Miss Huntress, this is my husband. Good-by, again. Don’t you remember?” she went on, as Dick followed her back into her room. “She used to be my ‘boss’ when I was a poor little slavey in the Star office, before my best beloved prince came and rescued me from dragons and printers’ devils.”

“And are you so fond of her that you keep up the acquaintance?”

“Oh, I remember how hard it used to be to get ‘matter’; and I don’t mind helping her out a bit when she’s hard pressed.”

“You are a kind-hearted little soul, Lena,”—and her husband stooped and kissed her fondly, doing penance in his heart for his doubts of a day or two ago, thoughts cruel, unjust, unwarranted. Lena had never looked more delectable than now, with her head on one side, pouring his tea. She kissed each lump of sugar as she put it in and laughed at her own conceit; and she brought the cup over to his chair and rubbed her apple blossom of a cheek against his with a little purr.

“I’m afraid you think me very silly, Dick,” she laughed. “I do not seem to get a bit wiser or better behaved, do I, for all Mrs. Appleton and Ram Juna, and even your lovely high-bred mother? Dick, do you despise me!”

“Despise! Why I love and love you and love you all over,” said Dick.

On an April afternoon she came, like a dark-eyed Flora, her hands loaded with daffodils that might bring a glow of the beauty of spring even to an inartistic spirit. The front door stood open, and a flat has an unrelenting way of laying bare all the skeletons that find no closet room. Mrs. Lenox surprised a scene of domestic economy in the tiny parlor. The curtains had been taken down for fear they would fade, and a large piece of newspaper lay where the sunlight struck the carpet. In the middle of the room sat Mrs. Quincy, and before her on a kitchen chair stood a little tub of foamy soap-suds. A maid was stationed at hand with a bar of soap and a bottle of ammonia, and the steam of homely cleanliness filled the air.

“Good gracious, I declare!” ejaculated Mrs. Quincy, “if it ain’t Mrs. Lenox! Come right in. I’m just washin’ out my under-flannels and my stockin’s. I can’t bear the slovenly ways of servants, and it’s only myself as can do ’em to suit myself. There, Sarah, you take the things away, and I’ll let you rinse ’em out this once. And mind you do it good. Be sure to use four rinsin’s. And soft water, mind. And hand me a towel to wipe off my hands. It’s real good of you to come and see a forlorn old woman, that I know can’t be much pleasure to you, Mrs. Lenox. There ain’t many that takes the trouble. And yet time was when I was considered as good-lookin’ as that ungrateful daughter of mine, that I slaved for for years. Put them flowers in water, Sarah. I guess a butter jar’s the only thing I got that’s big enough to hold them.”

Mrs. Lenox sat down, wondering if time and life could ever transform the smooth beauty of Lena’s features to this semblance of failure which they so closely resembled. Mrs. Quincy’s face was like a grain field over which the storms had swept, changing what was its glory to a horror.

The scarlet-faced Sarah hustled tub and chair and dripping garments kitchen-ward. The visitor took up her task of cheerfulness, and Mrs. Quincy cackled and grumbled to her heart’s content.

“Lena’d be ’shamed to death if she knew you’d caught me doin’ my wash,” she whined. “I hope you won’t tell her. She can come down on me pretty hard sometimes, I tell you.”

“Oh, I won’t tell,” Mrs. Lenox laughed. “I only wish you had let me help. I was thinking what fun it must be—with a maid to hold the soap. It took me back to nursery days. I used to love to wash dolls’ clothes.”

“I don’t do it for fun,” Mrs. Quincy snapped. “But I ain’t provided with a servant that’s worth her salt. If anybody’s dependent, like I am, on a whipper-snapper son-inlaw, that ain’t got affection enough for me to spend an hour a week with me—why, I guess I have to pinch and scrape wherever I can. No knowin’ when I’ll git more. I’ve worked hard all my life for other folks, Mrs. Lenox. You can see by my hands how I’ve worked. And what do I get for it? A stranger like you is kinder to me than my own flesh and blood. And I know well enough that if Richard Percival throws me a crust, it’s only because he would be ashamed to have folks say his mother-in-law was starving. Oh, I let him know that I see through him whenever he comes near me—which ain’t very often. And Lena goes days and days and never comes to see me.” Her voice and her garrulity were rising, but here a sob gave pause, and Mrs. Lenox rushed in, repressing an impulse to say a word on the elementary laws of give and take in love.

“Well, I think you are very sensible to do the washing. One must have some occupation to fill the days, mustn’t one? And there aren’t many things, when one is tied to the house. If to-morrow is warm, I wonder if you would feel up to a little drive in the afternoon?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if I would.”

“And do you care for reading? I’ve brought you a rather clever little story. I see you have all the magazines.”

“Yes, Lena sends ’em. She thinks they’ll occupy me and save her the trouble of comin’ herself. But, good land, I don’t care for ’em beyond lookin’ at the pictures and the advertisements—except the Ladies’ Home Companion. That has good recipes in it; only Sarah can’t make nothin’ that’s fit to eat. But I did read that thing in the Chatterer about Miss Elton. You’ve seen it, of course!”—and she laughed with cheerful malice and licked her lips like a cat.

“About Miss Elton? In the Chatterer? I haven’t the least idea of what you are talking,” said Mrs. Lenox in a dazed way.

“It’s over there,” returned the lady, with a comprehensive wave of the thumb. “You can read it. Lena said it couldn’t be anybody else.” Mrs. Lenox rose and took the magazine from the table. She walked over to the window and deliberately turned her back on her hostess. Her hands shook a little as she turned page after page till her eyes fell on this little paragraph.

“In a certain western city which is famous for its flour and lumber interests, there lives a bachelor who has made it still more illustrious in the realms of art and literature. It is a standing insult to feminine humanity that a man both famous and wealthy should remain single, but, so far, all attacks upon the citadel of his heart have proved futile. Rumor now has it that a capitulation is imminent, but the besieging force has been driven to unusual measures to secure it. A college training gives a girl the advantage over her fellows, both in expedients and in determination. Not content with the extraordinary attractions conferred on her by her own beauty, the young lady who is ahead in the race for the gay bachelor’s heart has been carrying the war into Egypt. Gossip saith that there are quiet hours spent by these two in the seclusion of the bachelor’s stately home, when, doubtless, his masculine heart melteth within him, and the bonds of his servitude are tightened. Still, it is a dangerous game for a supposedly reputable girl to play, isn’t it? and a little—well, let us call it unconventional.”

Mrs. Lenox shut the magazine and her own teeth.

“It is inconceivable that such stuff should be printed, and that people should buy it,” she said. “But you see it is so vague that it might refer to any one at any place, and even if we knew who was meant, it is too insignificant a piece of small malice to receive anything but contempt. And now good-by, Mrs. Quincy. I hope these coming spring days are going to help you to better health.”

“Good-by. I always appreciate your visits,” whined Mrs. Quincy. “I’m sure, with all you have to do, I don’t wonder you don’t come oftener. I know there’s nothin’ to draw you.”

Mrs. Lenox went away with a deep breath and a longing for fresh air. She shook her head at the waiting coachman and said, “I am going to walk, Emil.”

She moved along in a cloud of conjectures, not that the small paragraph seemed to her very important, but she was a little sickened by the sudden glimpse of petty minds, who, being rich, stay by preference in the slums.

“Mrs. Quincy, like Mrs. Percival, makes me feel that life is not a big thing to be lived for some big reason, but an affair to be scrambled through day by day, grabbing everything you can, and hating those who have grabbed more. What a way to worry through seventy or eighty years!” she groaned to herself.

Almost at her own door she met Ram Juna, who turned with her to make one of his ponderous calls, while she sat and talked with him of emptiness and philosophy, with that vivacious patience that becomes a habit with women of the world; but when the door opened and her husband appeared, accompanied by Dick Percival and Ellery Norris she heaved a distinct sigh of relief.

“We know that the dinner hour is looming on the horizon, and we’re not going to stay,” said Dick. “But your husband has some civic reform monographs that I thought I would borrow while he was in the lending mood.”

“You needn’t apologize, Dick,” she laughed. “You are more than tolerated in this house.”

There came a sharp noise, and Madeline Elton, with pale face and eyes big, stood in the doorway. Every one knew that something had happened, and Mrs. Lenox, who saw the rolled magazine in the nervous hand, guessed its purport in a flash.

“My dear girl!” she cried, running forward, “you are not going to let such a pin-prick hurt you!”

“Oh, Vera,” exclaimed the girl, putting her face down on her friend’s shoulder, “you know! It does hurt. I can’t help it,” and she sobbed.

The three men looked on in puzzled helpless masculinity, and the Swami surveyed the scene as the two women clung to each other.

“Vera,” said Mr. Lenox, “are we permitted to know what this means?” Mrs. Lenox kept her arm around Madeline’s shoulder as she turned.

“It’s only an ugly little fling in the Chatterer, Frank,” she said, “and it sounds as though it might refer to Madeline. It is nothing, but I dare say my dear girl does not enjoy a bit of dirt even on her outer garment. And, Madeline, very likely it is not meant for you.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” cried the girl. “Some one sent me this marked copy. And I went there once when I thought he had invited a crowd to see some tapestries. There was no one else there. There is just so much truth in it.”

“Would you rather that we should not see it?” asked Mr. Lenox.

“I’m afraid every one will see it,” said Madeline shamefacedly, as she held out the guilty pages. The three men leaned their heads over the table with a curiosity that would have done credit to women, while Ram Juna still looked on.

“I have already beheld the writing,” he said suavely. “Mr. Early gave way to unwonted anger when he saw. The lady must have an enemy.”

“That is it,” cried Madeline, turning upon him swiftly. “I think I am not so much hurt by the scandal—every one who knows me will believe better of me—but what cuts is that there should be some one who wants to hurt me. I—I’ve always thought of the world as a friendly place. Who is it that hates me?”

“Bah, it is a very small enemy who seeks small revenge,” said the Swami, whose own heart was filled with contempt and irritation. This was not according to his plan. “In India, we do not so revenge.”

Mr. Lenox stepped back to the fireplace, from which point a man always surveys the world at an advantage.

“It isn’t worth an extra heart-beat, Miss Elton,” he said. “Ignore it and your world will promptly forget it.”

“But, Mr. Lenox, you do not understand. It is not the question of the truth or falsehood of the story that shakes me. As you say, that is too absurd. But I shall always wonder who is my enemy, and why.”

Norris was looking at her with awakened terror. With the intuition of love, he had read the processes of her self-conquest at the time of Dick’s marriage. But here was a new possibility. Could it be that this fair and delicate creature was now to be enwoofed by Sebastian Early, whom at this juncture Ellery characterized to himself as a “fat toad”? He made up his mind that it would not do to trust, as he had been doing, to time to stand his friend. He must also bestir himself.

“I wonder,” he said aloud, “I wonder if Miss Huntress knows anything about it. I have a dim idea that some one told me that she wrote things for the Chatterer. Our society editor, you know.”

“But even if she did dislike me—and I don’t know her from Adam—how could she know?” said Madeline, turning on him. “You see I was alone with Mr. Early, and I am sure, for certain reasons,” here Ellery was horrified to see a little flush creeping over her face, “that he would not be guilty of any attempt to besmirch me. And no one else knew that I was there—except—” A sudden startled look came over her face and she looked involuntarily at Dick. “Except—” she said, and her voice trailed off.

“Besides, these small acts are those of women,” said the Swami placidly. Dick had caught Madeline’s look of astonished comprehension and he turned pale as he saw. Now, with Ram Juna’s words, conviction flashed upon him. He remembered Lena’s dislike for Madeline, of which he had made light; he remembered the little insignificant woman whom he had met in his wife’s boudoir; the fact that he was Mr. Early’s nearest neighbor clapped assurance on suspicion, and his muddled mind was capable of only one idea. No one else, least of all, Madeline, must suspect her little meanness.

“Dick, you have an inkling,” said Mr. Lenox abruptly, but in all innocence.

“Not in the least,” said Dick hurriedly. “I assure you that if I had the slightest reason to suspect any one, I would be the first to speak. I—you know I think everything of you, Madeline.” He went toward her in a futile way, with outstretched hand, but Madeline’s eyes were down, and apparently she did not see the friendly overture. His face looked pale, strained and old as he stood for a moment before her, and the others surveyed them in silence.

“As you say,” said Dick, in sprightly fashion, “the best thing is to forget the whole incident. Lenox, if you will give me those papers, I must be off.”

“Our lines lie parallel,” said the Swami. “Will you permit that I walk with you?”

The four who remained stood awkwardly during the departure, and with the closing of the door, Mr. Lenox gave an inarticulate ejaculation.

“Miss Elton,” he said, “I think your problem is solved.”

“You mean it was Mrs. Percival?”

“You are as sure as I.”

“And Dick knew,” said Ellery. He blushed as he spoke.

“Oh no, Mr. Norris!” cried Madeline in sharp distress. “That would he unendurable. And besides, he said he didn’t.”

“Dick lied,” Ellery stated calmly.

“I will never believe that Dick would lie.”

“He certainly lied,” Ellery persisted. “Any man would lie to protect the woman he loves.”

“Never!” exploded Mrs. Lenox. “Frank, you would not lie for me!”

“Assuredly I would,” her husband answered quietly, “if you needed lying for.”

She looked at him with speechless dismay.

“Therefore,” Ellery went on, “it behooves a man to love a woman who demands truth and not untruth as her reasonable service. The responsibility rests with you women. You can not only make men lie, but you can make them believe that there is no such thing as truth in the universe. Isn’t it so, Lenox?”

Mr. Lenox smiled and nodded, Jove-like.

“Oh, yes, they pull some strings,” he said; “but don’t cocker them up too much. Don’t make them think we are nothing but clay in their hands.”

“You couldn’t, because, to our sorrow, we know better,” retorted his wife.

“Nevertheless, you’ve unsettled everything,” said Madeline dejectedly.

“But, Miss Elton,” Norris put in, “you must not think that I believe that a man is without responsibility for the kind of woman he loves. That is where the first turning up or down comes in. He’s no right to give his soul to the thing that is mean or base. He has the right to choose his road, but after he’s chosen, he has to travel wherever the road leads. Dick’s disintegration began from the moment that he met Miss Quincy. I’ve known it for a long time.”

“Poor little thing!” said Madeline. “She is so small. I hope she will grow to be something like a mate for Dick.”

“Do not flatter yourself with wishes,” cried Mrs. Lenox. “There’s only one soil in which the soul can grow, and that is love. Unless I misread her, there is no room in her for anything but Lena Quincy Percival.”

“And yet,” objected Ellery, “she is certainly not a person weighted with intellect. I should say she is all impulse and emotion.”

“Anomalous but by no means uncommon, Mr. Norris,” she rejoined. “All emotion, yet without emotion of the heart. In her little world, self lies at the equator, and every one else is pushed off to the frozen poles.”

The others looked at her doubtfully.

“Don’t you think I have studied her? She has been a bald revelation to me of things I have only half understood in better-bred women. She’s like a weed transplanted from her lean ground to a garden and grown more luxuriant in her weediness. Do you know what I think? I believe that when the last judgment shall strip her of her sweet pink flesh, there will be nothing found inside but a little dry kernel, too hard to bite, and labeled ‘self’.”

“You are positively vicious, Vera,” said her husband gravely.

The tears came to her eyes as she turned to him.

“I really loved Dick, and she has stung him.”

“But all this does not explain her hatred for Madeline.”

“Do you not understand that even petty people can see how dreary and stupid their lives are when a person like Madeline comes along? So they hate her.”

“It’s good of you to consider my feelings how they grow, and to try to bolster them up,” Madeline smiled. “But I am fearfully tired. I must go home. I hope that my father and mother will never hear of this.”

“Why should they?” said Mr. Lenox. “It’s only a trifle after all, though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it. It’s only a trifle.”

“Except for Dick,” Ellery exploded.

“Except for Dick,” Mr. Lenox echoed.

“It’s a great pity,” Mrs. Lenox meditated, “that Dick can’t knock her down and then they could start again on a proper basis.”

“It is a disadvantage to be a gentleman,” laughed her husband.

“Vera,” said Madeline impulsively, “you won’t let this make any difference between us and Mrs. Percival? If she is a little twisted, poor child, she has had a cruel training; and she needs decent women all the more. I—I really have quite got over my anger with her—and don’t let us lose Dick. Dick is like my brother. I mustn’t break with him. We must all be good to him.”

“I do not know that I feel any large philanthropy,” answered Mrs. Lenox, with something between a laugh and a wry face. “But as I have invited them as well as you to spend Easter with us in the country, I suppose the ordinary laws of society will require me to behave myself.” The older woman kissed Madeline warmly, and Ellery moved out with her. He had so entirely made up his mind to walk home with her that he quite forgot to ask her permission.

He began to talk to her about himself, for almost the first time in his reticent intimacy, and she forgot her own affairs, as he meant she should, in listening.

Afterward she could not remember his words because parallel with them she was reading her own interpretation. Already in a vague way she understood him, but his little story gave her the crystallized impression.

She had a picture of a lonely childhood, fatherless and motherless and pervaded with a longing for love that early learned to keep silence. That had been the first step in his self-possession. Education had been hard to get, and yet he had got what to the sons of rich men comes easily, and because to him it meant struggle, it had been the more treasured. Knowledge came hard because his mind worked slowly and painfully; therefore his grip was the tighter, and the habits of thought wrought out by exercise were now giving him a facility that cleverer men might envy. He could not know how the simple history gave her an impression of slow irresistible manhood, always, without drifting, moving toward its chosen end.

When they halted at her door, she had a feeling that she could not let him go, just yet.

“You’ll come in and dine with us, will you not?” she asked impulsively.

“I wish I might,” he answered with that longing tone one falls into when surveying an impossible and alluring temptation. “I simply have to work to-night. I’m already late for my engagement. May I come sometime soon?”

“I wish you would. Father is really very fond of you,” she went on, defending her warmth. “He likes young men. He has a sneaking longing for them that no mere girl satisfies. Dick used to be a great deal to him, but—Dick has drifted away. You have not been to see us for a long time.”

“Not since the day that Dick’s engagement was announced,” he answered, looking her boldly in the face. “I couldn’t. You made me feel then that you despised me.”

“I despised you?” she spoke with bland innocence but rising color.

“Yes.”

Madeline hesitated and looked down. She was scarlet.

“I’m not going to pretend to misunderstand you,” she said, and turned laughing eyes toward him. “I knew all the time that it was Dick who had done some shabby thing, and you were trying to shield him.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew.”

“But you told me I ought to get a mask,” Ellery fumbled.

“I meant when you try to tell lies. You don’t do it with the grace and conviction of an accomplished hand. Pooh, I can read you like an open book.”

“I am very glad you can,” he said deliberately. “I thank God you can, because on every page you will read the truth—that I love you—I love you. I’m wanting you to read it in your own way, but some time I am going to let the passion of it loosen this slow tongue of mine and tell you in my own fashion how much it is.”

He turned and strode abruptly away. Madeline went in to the firelight of home.

“Why, you look as bright as though you’d heard good news,” exclaimed Mr. Elton, peering over his newspaper in welcome.

“Do I, father?” Madeline stooped to rub her cheek softly against his and laughed to herself. “Why, I believe I have. That shows what a whirligig I am. I went out thinking life was a tragedy, and I come back thinking it—”

“What, little girl?”

“A divine comedy,” said Madeline and laughed again. “Just see what a walk in the open air will do for a body.”