The Alternative

"'I am Mrs. De Foe's secretary,' she said quietly."

"Secretary? I didn't dream of that, Miss Downing."

"Have I fallen in your estimation?" she asked, meeting his gaze steadily.

"I think you've risen," he said slowly.

"You may not remember me, but I crossed on the steamer with you from Liverpool when I was eight years old. You were eleven, I think you said. I was a very pretty little girl. You said that, too. Do you remember?"

He was cudgeling his brain. "I can't say that I do, to be perfectly candid. Still, I've been wondering where I've seen you. I recall the voyage, but as for little girls, I remember but one. Ah, she was a little beauty. I was so desperately in love with her that I dare say I had thoughts or eyes for no one else. I'm sorry."

"Do you remember her name?"

"Perfectly. It wasn't so long ago, you know. I'm twenty-five. She had a perfectly ungovernable nurse. I was obliged to do my worshiping from a distance. By Jove, that reminds me, her father was put down and out a few years ago in Wall Street. I think he had a stroke of paralysis, or something, poor devil, afterwards. Lost everything. I wonder what has become of her. I never saw her after we landed in New York."

"Was her name Pembroke?"

He started. "Yes,—Mary Pembroke! You knew her? Why, I believe—" He stared hard.

"I am Mary Pembroke," said she, leaning back and smiling. His astonishment was unqualified.

"You? Yes! I can see it now. All evening there has been some vague thing about you that has puzzled me. Why, it is wonderful—positively wonderful. I—" He stopped suddenly, a look of concern in his eyes. "I hope I didn't say anything just now to hurt you,—I mean, about your father."

"You spoke of him as the world speaks, Mr. Van Pycke. And you did say 'poor devil.' That was something. He is—still a helpless invalid. Perhaps you did not know that."

"I'm sorry—very sorry." He hesitated for a moment. "Is that why you are Mrs. De Foe's secretary?"

"We are quite poor, Mr. Van Pycke. So poor that I am unwilling to take from the slender annuity that keeps us together—my father, my two little sisters and me. There is enough for him to live on to the end of his poor, desolated life. I am strong, and I love him too well to take from that little store. Mine hasn't been such a trying position, after all. Mrs. Scoville is an old friend. I've known her since I was a little girl. She's been very kind and very generous. I don't mind the work. It's much better than marrying some one for his money, I'm sure. Have you ever read of Lily Bart? She had a very much harder time than I, poor thing, in her house of mirth. She did not deserve it, but she served as a warning to me."

"I dare say you remember that I told Mrs. Scoville I had come up here to-night to propose to her," he said ruefully. She nodded, and her eyes narrowed.

"You are not so brave as I am, Mr. Van Pycke," she said. "I thought you were very brave and very manly as a little boy."

"Well, I didn't ask her, after all," he said, resenting her tone. "I don't believe I could have done it, if it had actually come to the test. I couldn't do it now to save my very soul. I'm going to marry for love or not at all. Money be hanged."

"Oh, don't say that!" she cried. "You forget how rich you are!"

"Rich! I'm a pauper."

"On twelve thousand a year? I consider myself quite well off on the fifteen hundred Mrs. Scoville pays me. You are fabulously rich."

"You are laughing at me," he exclaimed, shamed.

"Who am I to laugh at the wonderful Buzzy Van Pycke, prince of the dandies in—"

"Please don't." He clenched his hands and set his jaw, leaning forward to gaze into the bed of coals. She studied his averted face.

"You have a strong face," she said at last, voicing her thoughts.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"You don't know how to work. Is that it, Mr. Van Pycke?" she asked.

"Oh, I fancy I could earn a living," he said, without looking up.

"And then you could save the twelve thousand intact," she observed. He looked up curiously. "In ten years you would have at least one hundred and twenty-five thousand. You could buy a yacht with that much money. Just think what fun it would be to spend it all in an hour."

"It may interest you to know that I am going to work," he said, conscious of a burning sensation in his face.

"Are you in earnest?"

"Certainly. I'm tired of this sort of thing."

"Splendid! And what are you going to do? Something gentlemanly, I hope, such as selling bonds on commission. Gentlemen who go to work always do that, don't they, whether they're qualified or not?"

"You're a bit sarcastic, aren't you? I was going to sell bonds, having been solicited to do so, but I've changed my mind. I'm going to get a job with an undertaker."

They laughed, at first rather half heartedly, then merrily. For ten minutes they talked of the past, the present, and the future. He gathered that she had assumed the name of Downing for secretarial purposes only; that she kept herself very much in the background in Mrs. Scoville's establishment; that she had watched his social career with unflagging interest; that she was returning to her own home on the following day, with a check for fifteen hundred in her possession; that she expected to marry if the right man came along; that Mrs. Scoville had made her a present of the gown—and so on and so forth. They discussed the wedding and the hullabaloo it was to create. They united in deprecating the impulse which robbed the marriage of its natural sanctity, but they agreed that she was a lovely bride.

"And now you must go home," she said at last. The clock chimed a quarter after two.

"That reminds me," he said. "You said you were going to your own home in the morning, early enough to avoid the reporters, who are to be managed by Stokes. May I inquire where your own home is, Miss Pembroke?"

"We live in Princeton, Mr. Van Pycke."

"Princeton? Why, I was there four years, you know. Strange I never saw you."

"You forget we were living in Fifth Avenue or Mayfair until two years ago. The house in Princeton is all that is left of the Pembroke millions. It was my mother's."

"By Jove, I remember you came out three years ago. I—I was asked, wasn't I?"

"You were. And you didn't come."

"I'd like to come to Princeton, if it isn't too late."

"If it doesn't interfere with your work, you mean."

"Oh, come now!" he protested.

"We have to consider everything," she said.

"I'll try to get a job in the faculty. I remember distinctly that I knew more than any man in the faculty at one time. That would simplify matters, wouldn't it?"

"Do you really feel the need of that eyeglass, Mr. Van Pycke?" she asked, again veering off, much to his annoyance.

"Not at all." He calmly tossed the monocle upon the coals. She cried out.

"Oh, I didn't mean you to do that. I love monocles!"

"The deuce! Why didn't you say so?" he lamented.

"It's too bad," she sighed. "You would have needed it so much, too, looking for work."

"By Jove, I like you!" he cried. "You're a plucky girl and a philosopher. You do something toward the support of a whole family, while I—well, look at me! What good have I done? I have not earned ten dollars in my whole life by honest toil. I'm ashamed. I am—"

"Please, please," she interposed despairingly. "Don't go into that again. It's too late. I am really very sleepy now. I hate to turn you out in the storm, but you must go. If the servants should—heavens, please go!"

"You're right! I'm off. I'll be as quiet as a mouse, so don't worry. This has been the most gallant night of my life. I'll live it over a hundred times in my dreams. By the way, what train do you take in the morning?" He was shaking hands with her, standing beside her chair. There was a new light in his eyes.

"The ten-fifteen, if it isn't snowbound. Why?"

"Never mind. I just asked," he said. He was thinking of violets and a trip to the ferry.

"Don't do anything so absurd, Mr. Van Pycke," she said severely, trying to read his thoughts. He laughed blithely, full of certain early morning enterprise. "Good-bye. Oh, just listen to the wind!"

She shuddered.

"Don't leave the fire," he said. "And do go to bed! Remember, you are to catch the ten-fifteen."

He tiptoed into the hall. There was not a sound in the house. A minute later the outer doors closed behind him, gently. He was out in the cold, bitter night, plowing his way through snowdrifts three and four feet deep, bound for the hotel next door, the nearest place of refuge.

In the office he left a call for seven o'clock. Not in ten years had he done anything so amazing.

"She helps to support a family—a helpless father and two small sisters," he said to himself as he crept into bed. "But, it wouldn't be the same thing supporting my governor. I should say not!" Later on, very drowsily: "I was sure I had seen her before. Little Mary Pembroke! How I adored her! But it seems to me her hair was yellow then. It's black now. Still, I dare say that's better than if it had been black then and yellow now. Seven o'clock! What an ungodly hour to get up. But I'll have to get used to it."

Miss Pembroke resisted the desire to look after him from the front window. She couldn't bear the thought of scraping the frost from the window pane with her fingernails, for one thing; for another, he might take it into his head to look back.

So she went to bed, thinking of him—as she had been doing for an hour or more before his amazing second appearance.

"He was such a shy boy," she reflected. "But he was the best looking thing. Dear me, how long ago it seems! And those silly love letters I wrote to him and never mailed. What funny things children are!"

At nine o'clock the next morning she was called to the telephone. She was at breakfast, and her bag was ready for the train. An early glance from the window had filled her with misgivings. The street was absolutely impassable, it seemed to her.

"I won't talk to the reporters," she said to Stokes.

"It isn't a reporter, Miss. It's a gentleman."

"Don't be a snob, Stokes. Who is it?"

"It's Mr. Van Pycke, Miss."

She started. Then she flushed warmly.

"Say to him, Stokes, that I have gone," she said, after a moment.

"Very good, Miss. Anything else?"

She pondered. "Yes, Stokes. Ask him to hold the wire."

"Hold the wire, Miss?"

"Yes, while you run to the door to call me back."

A moment later she was in the telephone room, quite out of breath.

"Who is it?" she called. She compelled him to repeat the name four times. Eventually he got her serious attention.

"No trains until this afternoon?" she cried despairingly. "Why, the children will be at the station to meet me."

"Trains all snowbound," he announced quite cheerfully. "I've been telephoning."

"It's awfully good of you. I'll call up the Pennsylvania—"

"Don't bother," he called. "I've seen to all that. There's only one thing to do. Go to the ferry at one o'clock and wait. They'll get a train out as soon as possible. I'm glad it's to be no earlier than one. This is my busy day, you see."

"What has that to do with it?"

"I think I can be at liberty at one o'clock, that's all. I'm at my rooms now, writing letters of resignation to eleven clubs and declining invitations to four Christmas house parties on Long Island. I'm going down to see Thrush and Wrenn, the publishers, at eleven."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. I'm thinking of writing a book exposing New York society. They're all the rage now. This will be the literary remains of a fizzle."

"Are you jesting?"

"It depends," he said. "At ten I am to see George P. Krosson, the capital king. You see I have been telephoning. I got him out of bed at seven-thirty. He says he didn't know I had it in me to be so energetic. He's an old friend, however, so it's all right. He—"

"Please tell me what it's all about. I know who he is, so don't enlighten me. He once was an old friend of ours."

"Well, he's always said he'd take me as a secretary, if I'd agree to buckle down to it. I'm going to try it on."

"You—to be a secretary?"

"Don't be so surprised, please! It's only a starter, you know. His last secretary owns a bank now, and the present one is going to Congress. But I'll tell you about it—at the ferry."

She tried not to appear to be looking for him when her fretting taxicab finally struggled up to the ferry building at Twenty-third Street, just before one o'clock. Nearly an hour had been spent in the trip from the Scoville home to the ferry. There were times when she thought the effort would have to be abandoned.

He was there. In fact he opened the door and assisted her to alight from the vehicle. There was a brief discussion with the driver over the register's showing. Then they hurried into the ferry building, pursued by three bags and a "Much obliged, Miss," from the surprised chauffeur.

"He was there. In fact he opened the door and assisted her to alight."

"You were very reckless, giving him a dollar," he criticised severely, but not forgetting that he had given five the night before. He had been wondering all the morning if she had noticed the cocktails.

"It is so good of you to come down," she said, a color in her cheeks that was not from the cold. He was marveling. Never, in all his life, had he seen any one so pretty as this trim, proud young person in the Persian lamb coat and ermine stole and muff. She gauged his thoughts. "Presents from Mrs. Scoville—in advance of Christmas," she said dryly. He was properly embarrassed. "Now, I must ask about the trains."

"It's all attended to, Miss Pembroke," he said. "I got here at half-past twelve, lunchless. Boat in ten minutes, train out of Jersey City at two o'clock, positively. We can have luncheon on the train." He seemed a bit embarrassed, as he ought to have been, in truth.

She stood still and looked at him. "On the train?" she murmured.

"Yes, Miss Pembroke. I have an afternoon off. I'm going to Princeton. Oh, by the way, don't bother about the tickets. I have them. Come along, please, or we'll miss the boat."

Of course she protested. She was very much annoyed—or, at least, that is what she meant to be.

He explained, in a burst of confidence meant to cover the unique trepidation he felt, that he was not to assume his duties as secretary to Mr. Krosson until the following Monday. "This is my last free week. Don't begrudge me an excursion. It's to take the place of four house parties."

She held out stubbornly, for appearance's sake; it was not until they were in the middle of the Hudson that she said it would be very nice, and he could catch the five o'clock train back to New York.

It would be difficult to relate all that they said during the tortuous trip to Princeton. Naturally they discussed his prospects.

"I'm not sure that I know what a secretary has to do," he confessed. "But," with a determined gleam in his eyes, "whatever it is, I'm going to do it. I don't expect Mr. Krosson to give me a year's vacation on full pay, and I'm not looking for furs in my stocking at this or any other Christmas, but I do mean to live on what I earn. I'm to have twenty-five hundred a year, in the beginning."

"Goodness, that is a lot of money," she said. They were at luncheon in the private dining car.

"I'll retain my membership in two clubs. I'm starting out to-morrow to find a couple of cozy rooms in a genteel apartment hotel."

"Have you broken the news to your father?"

He laughed. "No. I stopped at his room to see if he had pneumonia. He said he was asleep and couldn't tell—and for me to go to the devil."

From the car window they watched the great white sea through which they were gliding. Their hearts were free and their hearts were sparkling. Constantly recurring in their thoughts were the little forgotten things of that memorable voyage across the Atlantic. It was he, however, who presumed to steal surreptitious glances in which wonder was uppermost; she steadfastly declined to be led by her impulses.

"You've never heard anything particularly terrible about me, have you?" he demanded, rather anxiously, once in course of a duet of personalities.

"Only that a great many women are in love with you."

"It's funny I've never heard that," he said dolefully.

"Men say that you are an exceptionally decent chap and it's too bad you'll never amount to anything."

"Oh, they do, do they?" indignantly.

"I think they'll be stunned when they hear of your latest move."

"Well, I'll show 'em what I'm made of."

"Splendid! I like to hear you speak in that way."

"You do?" he asked eagerly. "You do think I'll make good, don't you?"

"What station is this?" she asked deliberately.

"Rahway," he said, leaning close to her in order to see the name on the station.

"I think I'll have a holiday on Christmas," he ventured carefully. "That's next week, you know. May I come down to Princeton for the afternoon and evening?"

"To see me?" She seemed surprised.

"Yes," he said simply. She had expected some frivolous reply. Her gaze wavered ever so slightly as it met his.

"It will be a very dull way to spend Christmas," she said.

"Christmas is always a dull day," he said, so imploringly that she laughed. He came very near to adding, irrelevantly, that she was prettier than ever when she smiled.

"When there are no children about," he succeeded in saying, as an amend for his slip.

"There are two in our house, besides myself," she said gayly.

"Splendid!" he cried enthusiastically. "Can't we have a tree?"

On the platform at Princeton he was introduced to two small and very pretty young ladies, six and eight, and to a resentful gallant aged nine, who seemed to look upon him with disfavor. It afterwards developed that he was the characteristic neighbor boy who loves beyond his years. He adored Miss Pembroke.

"Mr. Van Pycke is coming down for Christmas," announced Miss Pembroke, in course of time, drawing her little sisters close to her side and smiling upon the dazzled gallant, aged nine.

"Will you play bear for me?" asked the young lady aged six, after a sly look at her nurse.

"The whole menagerie," said Mr. Van Pycke, most obligingly. Then, having occupied a perilously long time in shaking hands with the girl in the Persian lamb, he rushed off in response to the station master's satirical warning that last night's train was just pulling out for New York.

"I know just what's going to happen to me," he said to himself, jubilantly, as he waved to her from the window. "I can feel it coming."

HIS FIRST HOLIDAY

Two days passed before Mr. Van Pycke, senior, in diligent and somewhat wrathful quest of his son, came to know that the young man had accepted a position as secretary to Mr. Krosson.

"I can't believe it," said Mr. Van Pycke, a sudden pallor almost retrieving the lost complexion at the end of his nose. He then went about the search in earnest, ultimately discovering his son in his room at the club, busily engaged in superintending the packing of cherished Penates.

"Is what I hear true, Bosworth?" demanded the old gentleman, without preliminaries.

"Sit down, dad. Try that trunk. The chairs seem to be occupied by odds and ends." Bosworth was in his shirt sleeves. His hands were dirty, and there was a long dark streak across his brow. "I'm moving."

"Moving? What the devil's the meaning of all this?" sputtered his father, kicking a package of rugs out of the way.

"I can't afford to live here on twenty-five hundred a year," said his son, genially. The perspiring porters retired to the hall.

"But you have twelve thou—"

"And I have decided to save that twelve thousand. My salary will have to do for a few years, dad."

"Your salary? Then it is true?" It was almost a wail.

"It does seem too good to be true, doesn't it? I am like you, dad. I didn't believe any one would hire me. But Mr. Krosson seems to think I've got it in me to—"

"Bosworth," interrupted his father, sternly, "I won't permit you to make an ass of yourself. I forbid you—"

"Hold on, dad," said Bosworth, rather shortly. "We won't discuss it unless we can do so agreeably. I'm going into this thing with all my heart, and I mean to stick to it. There's an end to that. I'm tired of leading an absolutely useless, butterfly life."

"But, my boy, my boy," groaned the other, "this step will blast every prospect of a suitable marriage. Demmit all, no one will marry you."

"I'm not so sure of that," said his son, sticking his hands into his pockets and breathing deeply. "I think, if I'm careful, I can make a very suitable marriage."

"Rubbish! Who'd marry a secretary?" sniffed Mr. Van Pycke, jabbing a chair-back with his cane.

Bosworth radiated joy. "I would!" he cried so emphatically that Mr. Van Pycke almost rose to his toes.

"That's not the point, sir," said he, a little bewildered. "You can't marry yourself."

Bosworth laughed softly, but ventured no explanation to the odd remark. If, during the next ten minutes, his father noticed a detached, far-away look in the young man's eyes, he attributed it to the force of his own arguments. Just as he was beginning to feel that he had succeeded in turning the thoughtful young man from his suicidal course, Bosworth came to himself with a start.

"Beg pardon, dad; my mind must have been wandering. What were you saying?"

"Do—do you mean to tell me you haven't heard what I've been saying to you?" roared the old gentleman, coming to his feet.

"I'm sorry; but, you see, this new undertaking is on my mind all the time. It's a rather serious step I'm taking and I can't help giving it a good deal of thought. Mr. Krosson says he'll raise my salary at the end of—"

But Mr. Van Pycke was standing over him, his face red with anger.

"I brought you up as a gentleman, sir, and this is what comes of it. What would your poor mother say? She, too, expected you to be a gentleman, sir. Your grandfather expected it. All Van Pyckes are gentlemen. You are the first to forget yourself, sir. By Gad, sir, I suppose you'll marry a shop girl or a stenographer. That's what you'll do! After the way in which I've brought you up and educated you and all that. And with the Van Pycke name and traditions at your command! It's so demmed preposterous that I can't express myself adequately. It's—"

"It's no use, dad," said Bosworth, simply. "I'm lost."

"You could marry that little Hebbins girl next week if you—"

"I'm going to marry for love, dad," said his son.

Mr. Van Pycke opened his lips to say something, thought better of it, and stalked majestically out of the room. In the hall he encountered the two porters.

"Is Mr. Bosworth ready for us now, Mr.—" began one of the men, very deferentially, for Mr. Van Pycke was very well known in the club.

"Get out of my way!" roared Mr. Van Pycke.

The next morning, it being a Sunday at that, Bosworth sustained a blow that shook him mightily. In his box he found a curt letter from his father.

"My dear son," it read, "I neglected to announce my coming marriage to you at our last meeting. I dare say it was because I was so upset. I am to be married to Mrs. Scoville on the third of January. If you can get away from the shop, or the office, or whatever it is, at three o'clock on that day, I will be very much gratified to see you at the ceremony. Your loving father."

Bosworth clapped his hand to his brow, glaring at the note.

"He's gone clean daffy!" he groaned. "Scoville? Why, he must know she's already—Great Scott! He means the old one!—the pelican!—that's who he means. The good Lord deliver us!"

He was genuinely distressed. The dowager Mrs. Scoville, of all women! For a long time he stood in the window, staring out over the housetops, his heart full of pity for his wayward parent.

"Poor old dad!" he said over and over again. "He's paying an awful price for the privilege of remaining a gentleman to the end. Hang it all! I would have taken care of him. I'd have given him half of my income—yes, two thirds of it—sooner than see him sell out to that old tigress. I'll see him at once. I'll make the proposition to him. He may be able to crawl out of it."

He soon discovered that an appeal of any sort was out of the question. The Sunday papers announced the approaching marriage of the venerable society leaders. As a man of honor, Van Dieman Van Pycke could not now retreat.

"Poor dad!" said Bosworth a hundred times that day. He could not banish the calamity from his mind. Thoughts of Mary Pembroke crept in frequently to chasten his ill humor, but even a developing interest in that adorable creature failed to overcome the shock he had received.

He ended by writing a long, boyish letter of congratulation and well wishes to his father, closing with the ingenuous hope that he might live long to enjoy the fruits of his folly.

The next day, bright and early, he was at the office of the great Mr. Krosson, a bit nervous, but withal full of the confidence that will not be gainsaid. Every man in the club, on that momentous Sunday, had congratulated him on the step he was taking. Somehow, he was beginning to feel that he was no longer "Buzzy" Van Pycke. He was almost a stranger to himself.

Christmas came on Friday. By that time he was fairly well acquainted with the inner offices of Mr. Krosson. The novelty was wearing off, but his ambition was being constantly whetted by signs of achievement that met him, no matter which way he looked in contemplation of his new environment. To his surprise and gratification—and also to his consternation—society was not ready to drop him. As a matter of fact, he was more sought after than ever. Most of his time as secretary to Mr. Krosson was spent in declining the invitations that poured in upon him from admiring hostesses who, far from disdaining him, frankly intimated that they liked him the better for the step he had taken. Old Mrs. Beeker, society's leader, halted him in Fifth Avenue the day before Christmas and leaned from her carriage window to tell him that she was proud of him.

"Women despise idlers and dawdlers, my dear boy," she said. "Make something of yourself. If you should happen to get a wife, beat her occasionally."

His personal effects had been removed to less conspicuous rooms in Seventy-seventh Street. He was at home there every evening.

"I wonder if this will last," he said to himself more than once in those first days.

He was off to Princeton on the noon train, more pleasurably excited than he had been in many a day. He had asked Mr. Krosson if his services were necessary at the office on Christmas day.

"If not, I think I will run down to Princeton to spend the holiday with friends."

"I thought you were going to drop out of society, Bosworth," said the capitalist, putting his hand on the young man's shoulder.

Bosworth flushed. "I expect to, Mr. Krosson, but I'm not going into a monastery," he said.

"I'm glad you were not one of the guests at that ridiculous De Foe-Scoville wedding," said his old friend and new master. "That was the limit in outrages."

"It was very daring," said Bosworth, swallowing hard.

He had seven bundles and a suit case on the seat in front of him when the train pulled out of Jersey City. In his pocket was a great bunch of newspaper clippings, intended for the private eye of the new Mrs. De Foe's one-time secretary. He wondered how she would take the caustic, sometimes scurrilous things the editors were saying about the now historic wedding. Few if any of them left a shred on which the bride could depend for support if she ever presumed to apply to New York society for reestablishment. He was distressed by the fear that Mary Pembroke would take to heart the bitter things that were being said of her benefactress. He discovered, later on, that Mrs. De Foe had quite fully prepared the girl for the avalanche of criticism. And so it was that Mary was able to smile when he showed her the clippings.

"I'm still her private secretary, Mr. Van Pycke," she said, "and therefore I cannot discuss her private affairs with any one. As Mr. Krosson's secretary, you wouldn't think of discussing his affairs, would you?"

But we are getting ahead of the story, or, more properly speaking, ahead of the train. When he got down at Princeton, with his bundles and his bag, he was surprised and not a little mortified by the half-checked shriek of laughter that greeted him from the shelter of the station building. She had come down to meet him. He had not expected it. But it was most unkind of her to laugh at him. The bundles contained Christmas presents for the children, he had lugged them about at great inconvenience, and—He was thinking these things, but not venturing to express them aloud.

"Forgive me," she cried, hurrying over to him. "You are so funny with all those packages."

He promptly set them down, regardless, and shook hands with her. His ears were a bit red. On second thoughts, he didn't blame her for laughing. He now recalled that other people had smiled as he crowded through the aisle of the car, but he had not noticed it at the time on account of a certain abstractedness that had to do with the future and not the present.

"I didn't expect you," he said. "It's awfully good of you to meet me. Merry Christmas!"

"To you the same," she cried, meeting his gaze with one in which happiness shone brightly. "I had a dark purpose in meeting you here, Mr. Van Pycke. It's very mysterious."

"Splendid!" he said. "I've always wanted to be a conspirator."

"Let me take some of the packages—yes, do! I insist! You are ridiculous, carrying all these things. I have a cab around the corner. We'll—"

"A cab!" he exclaimed, dropping a picture puzzle with considerable effect. "My dear Miss Pembroke, we can't afford cabs! They're luxuries."

"You won't say so when you see this one," she said gayly. Together they collected the bundles, large and small, and hurried off to the waiting cab. There was some doubt as to which should go in first, the passengers or the parcels.

"If we get in first, there will be no room for the bundles," said he. "And if we put them in first, there'll be no room for us." The venerable driver scratched his head in perplexity.

"We could make two loads of it, sir," he said. "I c'n take your wife and half the bundles up first and come back—"

"It isn't to be thought off," interrupted Bosworth, quickly. "Don't you remember me, Tobias?"

"It—it ain't Mr. Van Pycke? Well, by gracious! It beats the—"

Bosworth checked him in time. To Miss Pembroke he said: "Tobias drove me all the way from the freshman class to the senior."

"I knew it, Mr. Van Pycke. That's why I engaged him."

Tobias was suddenly confused. "Excuse me, I was thinking of another gentleman when I said wife, sir. My mistake, sir. It sha'n't happen again."

"Don't make rash statements like that, Tobias," said Bosworth, boldly. "You can't tell what will happen."

"Put the bundles in, Tobias," said Miss Pembroke quietly, far from amused. "Mr. Van Pycke must ride on the seat with you. He has done it a great many times, if tradition is to be trusted."

"My dear Miss Pembroke—"

"Drive us into the alley at the rear of Mr. Pembroke's house, please. We're going in through the kitchen, Mr. Van Pycke. There's to be a Christmas tree at three o'clock. You are to be Santa Claus. I'll secrete you in the butler's pantry until it is time for you to appear. Now, please don't object. We have the fur coat and the whiskers and the red cap. All you have to do is to come in and play you're delighted. You will read off the names and—now, do be nice! You know it will be great fun."

He could not resist the appeal in her eyes. It seemed to him that to be disagreeable about it—or even reluctant—would be the most dastardly crime imaginable. He caught the spirit.

"Great fun? It will be gorgeous!"

"Oh, lovely," she cried. "Hurry up, please. It's after two, and I still have to put some things on the tree."

She squeezed into the decrepit little hack, laughing joyously. He scrambled up beside Tobias, clinging manfully to less than ten inches of seat, a splendid grin on his face all the way across town, utterly oblivious to the curious stares of Christmas pedestrians who passed them by.

He was thinking only of her smile of delight and of the amazing change it had wrought in him—like a flash, so to speak. Already Christmas was beginning to mean a great deal to him.

The chatty Tobias, reminiscent and more or less paternal, swung into an alley entrance in course of time,—not without a smug uplifting of his left eyebrow,—and trotted his venerable nag onward until a sharp rapping on the window-glass from within brought him to a rather heroic stop between two widely separated back gates.

"Drive on to the next gate," called out the young lady, partly opening the door. Bosworth almost fell off in his valiant attempt to catch a glimpse of her face.

With a great deal of stealth and no small amount of suppressed, eager laughter, they made their way into the kitchen of the quaint old house.

Half an hour later Mr. Bosworth Van Pycke, suffering somewhat from stage fright but buoyed by the promise of unequivocal success in his new rôle, bounded from the pantry into the dining-room, befurred and bewhiskered, with nothing showing but his nose, greatly to the delight and consternation of a dozen small children who shrieked with excitement.

He had appeared with some success in amateur theatricals and had led cotillions under the most nerve-racking conditions, but never before had he come plump against an audience of children. It was rather terrifying. He halted in the middle of the room, to the left of the brilliantly lighted, tinselled tree with its load of presents, and there he stuck, spellbound, until the shrill voice of one less awed than the rest broke the hush that had fallen upon the expectant group in the row of chairs beyond.

"Hello, Santy!" piped up this small, confident voice. Bosworth could not afford to be outdone in politeness. He responded:

"Hello, Mr. What's-your-name!"

"What a pretty voice you have," called out a pink little girl.

Right there Bosworth forgot his lines. He was to say something about Christmas coming but once a year and that Santa Claus loved nice little girls and boys, after which he was to appeal to Miss Pembroke for assistance in distributing the presents. But the ingenuous compliment upset him. He made his appeal to Miss Pembroke first, and it was rather a piteous one at that. She flew at once to his relief. In two minutes he was talking volubly, even brilliantly, shouting back at the children and making himself so generously noisy that he would have been very much shocked if he could have stepped outside and heard himself.

Four or five nurses in the background giggled and simpered; the housemaid and the cook grinned so amiably that Miss Pembroke had real hopes that she could keep them in Princeton for the rest of the winter.

"The Pembroke infants are the only poor man's blessings in the crowd, Mr. Van Pycke," said Mary in a gay aside. "The others have everything. But they are having a good time, aren't they?"

"They're not having half so good a time as I am," he said eagerly. By this time he was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the hour. "I never knew Christmas could be so good to grown-ups. Why, it's—it's ripping!"

Once at the top of a stepladder, he burst into uncontrollable laughter, seemingly for no reason on earth. It had just occurred to him to wonder what his friends in New York would say if they could see him now! Miss Pembroke looked up in some surprise.

"What is it?" she called rather anxiously.

"Nothing," he replied hastily. "A hang-over laugh from my youth, that's all. This is the first chance it's had to escape."

At last the tree was completely shorn of its wealth; nothing but the tinsel, the pop-corn, and the tin candlesticks were left. In front of each child stretched a new panorama of possessions. Each little one was a person of vast and suddenly acquired wealth; arrogantly wealthy was each, at that, for no one admitted the superiority of another's acquisitions. We were all wealthy on the Christmas days of long ago.

Bosworth had the satisfaction of knowing that his own presents to the small Pembrokes were received with wild acclaim. He could not help recalling certain presents he had bestowed on former Christmases, upon more mature ladies, who received them as a matter of tribute and with hardly so much as a sigh of pleasure.

Then the children were herded into the library with their toys and their sweetmeats, pursued by anxious, colic-fearing nurses. Bosworth, very hot and very happy, retired to the pantry to remove his great coat, his whiskers, and his cotton wig (the latter the handiwork of Miss Pembroke, who, whatever else she might have been proficient in, was not a successful wig-maker).

She appeared in the swinging door, her face flushed and her eyes glowing.

"Wasn't it fun?" she cried.

He was picking cotton from his hair. He paused in this operation to stare at her, entranced.

"By Jove!" he murmured, his soul leaping to his eyes. As if fascinated, he advanced slowly, his hands extended to clasp hers. She drew back ever so slightly, confused by the look in his eyes. She gave him her hands, however,—warm, firm little hands that hesitated a long time before responding to the grip he gave them.

"Do you know," he said, irrelevant but serious to the point of perplexing her, "I believe I've never had you out of my mind during all these years? I haven't realized it before, but now I honestly believe it's true. You've been here—in my brain—all this time. That's why no one else ever really got in. Mary Pembroke, you are still the loveliest girl I've ever seen—just as you were fourteen years ago. You are just as wonderful to me now as you were then—even though you were eight and yellow-haired and lived in the cabin de luxe. It's—it's marvelous. You've been lying dormant in my memory—in my heart—all these years. Now you are suddenly revived. It's a terribly queer sensation. I—I don't believe I'll get over it."

She withdrew her hands; her lids wavered before his steady gaze. Something ineffably sweet crept into the dark eyes; a quick, almost imperceptible quiver flashed over her chin, and her lips parted in tremulous protest against the possibility of jest.

"I'm—I 'm glad that you do remember me," she said, with a vague little smile.

"I loved you—oh, how I loved you on that long-ago voyage," he said recklessly. "I used to lie awake half the night in my berth, lamenting the fact that I was so ungainly and so homely, and so utterly unfit to be a story-book hero to you. I had a terrible fear that my legs would always be beanpoles and that my chest would never grow to even respectable proportions. I thought my ears were big and—"

"They were big," she interposed, the mysterious quaver still in her voice.

"They were like bat's ears, only bigger," he agreed dismally. "And I hated my freckles and despaired of my hair, which would curl up at the back of my neck. All this time you were so lovely, so perfect, so adorable—"

"What a rhapsodist you are!" she cried.

"You didn't possess a single flaw—not one," he announced firmly. "Every boy on the boat was perishing of love for you. By Jove, you knew it, too."

"Oh, you forget how young I was!"

"At any rate, you knew I was sick over you. And for months after we landed in New York—yes, until long after I went away to boarding-school—you were the princess of my dreams, the treasure of my heart. Then I thought I had forgotten you. You slipped back into my memory and hid yourself completely away. There you stayed snugly, serenely, quite as if I had stored you in a safety deposit box, all the while growing more beautiful, more lovely, more valuable. Last week I opened the box and took you out. I was amazed to find that you had always been there. I had put you there as a little girl, and when I came to take you out, you were a beautiful lady. I'd been treasuring you up through all these years without really knowing it. I never knew I was so rich."

A sudden panic assailed her. She realized, without warning, that she was being made love to, and that underneath his fanciful declarations there was something real, and strong, and earnest. She might have laughed at him and chided him for his gallantry had it not been for one distressing obstacle: he, Bosworth Van Pycke, had been lying just as snugly all these years in the deepest recesses of her heart. Unlike him, however, she had never quite forgotten the flaxen-haired lad of the steamship.

"It's so very nice of you to say—" she began.

"I mean it all, too—every word of it," he said gently. "It's all come back to me—"

"Don't you think we'd better go in where the children are?" she asked nervously, backing toward the door, the light in her eyes very bright. "This—this, Mr. Van Pycke, is the pantry."

He flushed. "I—I dare say it does seem rather like backstairs gallantry," he said, in genuine humility.

"I didn't mean it in that way," she cried instantly. "It was the most beautiful thought I've ever heard expressed." She stopped suddenly. "Are you coming?"

"Not until I've said the rest of it," he said, looking over his shoulder. Then, with fierce eagerness, drawing closer to her: "I adored you when you were eight. You may call it boyish impulse or whatever you like. Be that as it may, I've never loved any one else. A hundred times I've tried to picture the face, the form, the character of the girl I'd really come to love. Always there came to my mind a face—not a child's face, but a child's face grown to a woman's. It was always the same. The face of the little girl who grew up in my brain without being observed—without a sign that she was there. When she was fifteen, she was fifteen to my dreams; when she was twenty, I imagined her as such. She grew up with me. Every year I saw the change in the girl I pictured as the one I could love. No other came up to that ideal. There could be no other, for there was a real girl there all the time. I loved you years ago, Mary Pembroke, and I must tell you that—"

"Oh, you mustn't say it—you mustn't!" she cried, tremulously, putting out her hand. "It—it doesn't seem real—it wouldn't seem honest. Please, please don't treat it lightly. Don't spoil it all by—"

"I never was so serious," he said. "I—I didn't mean to shock you. It must sound foolish to you. Of course, I've never meant anything to you. It's all on my side. I've been too abrupt. I've been an awful ass to blurt it out to you so soon. Why, you can't help looking upon me as a total stranger. You haven't thought of me in years and years."

"Oh, I haven't forgotten the spindle-shanked boy," she said in a very low voice. "You may not have known it, my friend, but I was very deeply in love with you in the days of the old Campania. I was—"

"You were! You really were?" he cried, with difficulty reducing it to a half whisper.

"I was a very impressionable child," she said, regaining all of her lost ground as only a woman can when carried to the last extremity.

"And—and I may have a chance even now?" he cried, his eyes gleaming.

She pushed the swing-door open with her elbow and demurely held it ajar for him, a soft smile on her lips that he did not then understand and never was to understand, being a male.

"You are Santa Claus, not Romeo," she said. He also missed the flutter in her voice and entirely overlooked the fact that she was breathing quickly.

He followed her into the dining-room, strangely subdued. They came by the light of a window. There, with an impulsive gesture and a quick laugh, she halted him. Her amused eyes were taking in his tumbled hair.

"Wait," she said. "Do you mind if I pick some of the cotton out of your hair?"

"Not at all," he said with alacrity.

"Lean over," she said. He did so. Very daintily, very deftly she pulled the stray wisps of cotton from his hair, so deftly, in fact, that he scarcely felt the touch of her fingers, although his whole being thrilled with the delicious sensation of contact. For years he was to remember that infinite minute and a half. He knew how pleased Samson must have been while his strength was being shorn, even though the parable says he slept.

A trifle dazed by exaltation, he followed her into the library. The children who had greeted him vociferously as Santa Claus were now strangely silent and tongue-tied in the presence of a mere human,—but only for a moment.

"Oh, it's Mr. Pycke!" screamed the pinkest one of them all. "I know him!"

Whereupon she announced that he had come down from New York to see her sister Mary and was going to stay for dinner and play bear.

"Do you mind being left alone with them for a few minutes?" asked Mary. "I must go up to father's room. He is quite helpless, you know."

"I'd forgotten to ask how he's feeling to-day," he murmured contritely.

The tears suddenly rushed to her eyes. A very pathetic smile and a shake of her head was the only answer he received. She left him standing there, surrounded by glad, expectant revelers, prey to a most unusual depression—as swift as it was surprising. His heart, overflowing with a new sensation of tenderness and pity, followed the slender figure up the stairs; there was but little of it left below to encourage the gleeful spirits of the care-free lads and lassies.

For some unexplained reason, which he afterward sought to attribute to hysteria, he hugged the pink little Pembroke girl with unnecessary ardor, and would have kissed her older sister if he could have caught her.

When Miss Pembroke came downstairs half an hour later, she found him playing bear, with tiny Miss Florence leading him about the room at the end of a long red ribbon. His hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, and it seemed that he was gasping for breath—whether from exertion or because the ribbon was choking him, she could not tell. She rescued him at once.

"I like it," he cried. "It's fun to be a kiddie once more. As a matter of fact, you know, I never really had a kid's life. I'm having the time of my life."

"Why, they 're wearing you out," she cried. "May I ask what you were representing?"

"A bear!" shouted eleven voices. Bosworth gravely nodded.

"He was going to be a trained seal, only we couldn't get a tub for him to lie on," said Mary's nine-year-old worshiper.

Miss Pembroke laughed gayly. "I understood you to say last week, Mr. Van Pycke, that you were through with menagerie performances for all time." There was a witchery in her eyes that enthralled him.

"This is different," he protested in some confusion. "I draw the line at grown-up tomfoolery. It may interest you to know that I was a horse just before you came in. They've all had a ride on my back. This chap here, when I wasn't looking, took those cavalry spurs from the mantelpiece over there and, by Jove! he did get me moving!"

The children shrieked with glee.

"You poor man!" Mary cried, genuinely troubled over his experiences. "You've had a dreadful time. I'll save you before it grows any worse. Come upstairs, won't you, please? Father is very eager to meet you."

"But I've promised to be another horse," he said loyally.

"It wasn't a horse," corrected one of the boys. "You have been that. You said you'd be a jackass. None of us ever saw a jackass."

"You said you could be a jackass without half trying, Mr. Van Pycke," said the little pink Pembroke.

Mr. Van Pycke fled. His charming hostess overtook him in the hall, where, in dire humility, he had paused to wait for her. She was having immense difficulty to keep her face straight and serene.

"I—I wonder if the little beggars think I am such an idiot as I seem," was his unhappy lamentation.

"They adore you!" she cried. "You have been too splendid for anything. I am so afraid you have been bored by—"

"If you don't banish that pathetic droop from the corners of your—your adorable mouth, I'll do something positively desperate," he interrupted, folding' his arms resolutely so that he couldn't, by any chance, do it.

She smiled at him, quite confidingly,—greatly to his disappointment, for he had rather hoped for consternation,—and said:

"It is banished." Then she started up the stairs. "Come. I'll show you to your room first. You may come into father's room when you have brushed your hair. It looks positively savage."

"My room?" he murmured, coming close behind her.

"Yes. Don't you expect to dress for dinner, sir?"

"Oh, I can't put you to the trouble of—"

"You are to stop here—in this house, Mr. Van Pycke. Your room is all ready for you. I was compelled to turn you out in the cold the other night and I was so sorry. Now you are in my own home, you must stay—to make up for the other time. My father expects you to stay."

"Over night?" he said unbelievingly.

"Unless, of course, you've something else you'd rather do," she said quickly.

"Why—why," he stammered, his head swimming with delight, "there's nothing in the world I'd rather do than to stay here. It seems incredible."

"There's a train up at eight in the morning," she announced calmly. "You'll be called at six-thirty. Breakfast at seven. Bacon and eggs and popovers. Is that all right?"

"There's only one thing lacking," he cried, his heart leaping. They were standing quite close to each other at the head of the stairs.

"If our home isn't—"

"If you'll promise to come down to breakfast, I'll never get over the joy of this visit," he said.

"I always have breakfast with the children." He looked askance. "At seven o'clock," she vouchsafed.

"By Jove!" was all he could gasp in his delirium.

"That's father's door at the end of the hall. Come in there when you are ready. I'll be with him. Don't be long. Your room is here."

He watched her until she closed her father's door behind her. Then he went into the sweet little bedroom across the hall, sat down rather heavily upon the edge of a couch, pulled his collar away from his throat as if that act were necessary to let the blood back from his head, and murmured over and over again, in the haziest manner imaginable:

"Who would have thought it could come like this? Who would have dreamed it?"

Eleven o'clock that night. A fire in the library grate; logs crackling and the sap singing; the smell of live wood burning; the musketry of popping sparks; the swirl of smoke into the drafty chimney. New logs had just found their place of duty upon the half-starved fire behind the ancient "dogs." A sturdy poking had put life into the lazy embers. It was high time, indeed. For an hour the fire had gone neglected, unheeded. The chill of a bitter night had come creeping into the room, slowly conquering the warmth that had reigned supreme. Outside the wind had begun to whistle with a wilder glee; the creeking of wagon-wheels on the frozen roadway grew louder and more angrily insistent; a desolate cornet, far off in the Christmas air, sobbed its pathetic song to the fickle ear of the night.

Two sentinels had stood watch over the fire for hours. It died as they watched it, and yet they did not see.

Not unlike another fire, a week old and long since dead, was this one, and not unlike the soft glow of another fire-light was that which played on the serene faces of the two sentinels who sat side by side and watched their charge eke out its life. But on that other night these sentinels were not lovers.

She shivered. He had been telling her of the world that was ahead of them and of all the joys it was to hold for him. He had told her that he would care for her all his life—that he would take care of her to the end of hers.

It was then that she smiled fairly, a dear little pucker coming between her eyes.

"I know, Bosworth, dear," she said quaintly, "but would you mind taking a little care of me now? I am freezing. Please poke up the fire."

It was not until then that the fireplace renewed its roar of gladness, supported by his tardy but vigorous conscience.

Together they stood before the resulting blaze. Her hands were in his, clasped close to his breast. Her eyes were closed. He kissed the lids.