Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

“Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all”

—JOHNSON

STORIES OF

NEW YORK

STORIES FROM SCRIBNER

❦

STORIES OF
NEW YORK

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1894

Copyright, 1893, by

Charles Scribner’s Sons

Trow Print

STORIES OF NEW YORK

❦

[From Four to Six]

A COMEDIETTA BY ANNIE ELIOT

[The Commonest Possible Story]

BY BLISS PERRY

[The End of the Beginning]

BY GEORGE A. HIBBARD

[A Puritan Ingénue]

BY JOHN S. WOOD

[Mrs. Manstey’s View]

BY EDITH WHARTON

FROM FOUR TO SIX

By Annie Eliot

A COMEDIETTA IN ONE ACT

Esther Van Dyke. Harold Whitney. A Maid.

Esther discovered seated in a New York drawing-room. She has been reading and tearing old letters.

E. I am sure one might ask anyone to an afternoon tea, even if anyone were one’s old lover; and I am sure one might come to anyone’s afternoon tea, even if anyone were one’s quondam sweetheart. From both Harold’s stand-point and mine, it seems to me perfectly safe. Certainly the vainest man could not believe that a woman wished to rake up the leaves of a dead past because she sent him an At-home from four to six card, for a day when she is to be at home for two hundred people besides. If it were an evening party, now—in summer with the lawn, or in winter with a conservatory—or if there is not a conservatory there are always stairs; and it’s daily more and more the fashion to build them curved. Another generation may find discreet recesses at every landing. When people are really thoughtful there will be a temporary addition where people can go up and down. Oh, if it was an evening party I could not blame Harold for staying away. Or if it was private theatricals—the stage is itself one grand opportunity! Or a picnic—what innumerable openings for raking up the dry leaves of a dead past on a picnic! But an afternoon tea! Nothing stronger or dryer than tea-leaves to be had. Harold need not be in the least afraid. Besides, it would have been really unfriendly not to send him a card. Everybody knows he is at home again, and from a four years’ trip. Even after all that has passed I would not wish to be unfriendly. Four years, and they say that he is engaged to Mattie Montgomery—and just before he went away he was engaged to me. (A little sadly.) Perhaps he was foolish. Perhaps—I was. Undoubtedly we both were. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that he waited four years—but somehow I don’t—altogether; “flattered” does not seem to be the word. Well, it makes little difference now, and it will make less when I tell him to-morrow that I am engaged to Dr. Tennant. I thought I might as well look over his letters. I have burned all but the last. (Takes up letter from the table.) Here it is. (Takes up a second letter.) And here is Dr. Tennant’s first. Two models of epistolary communication—but of different orders. (Reads.)

“My Dear Miss Van Dyke: I shall give myself the pleasure of calling upon you this afternoon at five o’clock. It rests with you whether or not this pleasure is to be intensified a hundredfold, or attended with lasting pain. I remain always,

“Yours most cordially,

“Edward Tennant.”

What could be better suited to the circumstances than that? Not too impassioned, but sufficiently interested. I am always affected by well-turned phrases—I think this is charming. And here is Harold’s. (Reads other letter.)

“You have made it plain enough. There is no necessity for more words. Heaven forgive you—and good-by.”

(Thoughtfully.) He was in a pretty passion when he wrote that—and I have not seen him since. I hope he will come to-morrow. He used to think Mattie Montgomery was a doll of a thing. Perhaps he will tell her that I am a—no, he won’t. Whatever I am, I’m not a doll of a thing, and he knows it. (Looks at the two letters side by side.) How amusing one’s old flirtations look in the light of a new and serious reality—for I have made up my mind what to say to Dr. Tennant. It will be rather good fun to tell Harold of it confidentially to-morrow. I will drop it in his tea with a lump of sugar. (Glances at clock.) After four o’clock. Well, I must go and make myself fascinating and give orders that Dr. Tennant and I are not to be disturbed. We may as well begin to get used to tête-à-têtes. (Exit after putting the letters under a book, out of sight.)

Enter Harold Whitney. He seems disturbed.

H. This is certainly confoundedly odd. I expected to find fifty other people here at least, and Esther in her best gown receiving them. I can’t have mistaken the hour. It is some time after four. There is certainly a mistake somewhere, however, and under the circumstances it is likely to be a particularly awkward one. I would walk a good mile and a half to avoid a tête-à-tête with Esther Van Dyke. Because I have been fool enough after four years to remember the color of her eyes, I don’t care to have her know it and see it. I would leave now, like the historic Arab, if I hadn’t been such an ass as to give my card to the servant, and Esther has seen it by this time. I would rather face the music than give her the pleasure of laughing at me for running away. But what does it mean? I must—the blood curdles in my veins at the thought—I must have mistaken the day! The Fate which I have felt dogging my footsteps from the cradle has at last laid hold upon me! I have dreamed of getting to a place the day before I was asked. I have loitered irresolutely on door-mats. I have gone slowly by and watched until I saw another carriage go in, but I have never done it before. And to have come to Esther Van Dyke’s after four years, and such a parting, a day too soon! My bitterest foe would find it in his heart to pity me now. What can I do? (Walks around the room and fingers things restlessly.) I might go off with the spoons to divert suspicion. I would rather be arrested as a professional burglar, entering the house under false pretences, than witness Esther’s smile when she comes to a realizing sense of what I have done. Professional burglars probably retain their self-respect. There is no reason why they shouldn’t. The date of their visit is not fixed by invitation. But, confound it! there won’t be any spoons until to-morrow. Perhaps she won’t know I have come a day too soon—but she always did know things—that was the kind of person she was. (Takes up a book from the table.) I might read to compose my mind. “Familiar Quotations,”—I wish I could find an elegant and appropriate one for the occasion. I can think of several, entirely familiar to the most unlearned, but too forcible for a lady’s drawing-room. “Too late I stayed” would hardly do. I wonder what the fellow would have sung if “Too soon he’d come.” (Throws down book.) I thought I could accept an invitation to an afternoon tea, because I need only say a word to her, see if she had changed, and leave. That seemed safe enough. Besides, Miss Montgomery chaffed me about coming, and wouldn’t have hesitated to make the most of it if I had stayed away. (Looks about.) The room has not changed much. I wonder—here she is. Now, for all I have learned in four years, I would like to conceal myself in the scrap-basket, but it is out of the question.

Enter Esther.

E. How do you do, Mr. Whitney? I am very glad to see you. (They shake hands.)

H. It is very good of you to say so, Esth—Miss Van Dyke. (Aside.) I never felt so fresh in my life.

E. It was nice of you to think of coming this afternoon instead of waiting until the crush to-morrow, when I should have an opportunity for no more than a word with you.

H. (aside). She does not look satirical. Why didn’t I bring some flowers or something? (They sit. Aloud, with somewhat exaggerated ease of manner.) When one’s hostess receives all the world, one’s own reception cannot be a personal one. After four years I wished for something more positive. Perhaps I have been too bold, but an afternoon tea is so very impersonal, you know.

E. (a little embarrassed by his manner, aside). Can it be that he does not wish our relations to be impersonal? Of course not! (Aloud.) Yes, I know. Very impersonal indeed. I was thinking the same thing before you came.

H. (aside). Yes, and I was thinking the same thing before I came. We haven’t either of us gotten on much. (Aloud.) I was always an exacting sort of fellow, you know, so you will not be surprised at my coming to get a reception on my own account.

E. (aside). I should think I did know. (Aloud.) No, I am not surprised. (A moment’s pause—with a slight effort.) So you are an exacting sort of fellow still? I am looking for the changes of four years, you see.

H. (significantly). You may not find many, after all (Somewhat gloomily.) The rose-color wears off one’s glasses somewhat in four years, to be sure, but I don’t think the perspective changes much.

E. Don’t you? It strikes me that time reverses the glasses—that we find ourselves suddenly looking through the other end, and things that once were so large are a long way off, and have become extremely small.

H. (aside). Which means, I suppose, that I have taken a back seat, and must keep at opera-glass distance. (Aloud.) Things have no importance of their own, then? I suppose it is a good deal a matter of which way you look at it.

E. Yes, education does everything for us—which is something of a platitude. But I am sorry about the rose-color. I’d much rather you should look at me through tinted glasses. I said the other day to a confidential friend that my complexion is no longer what it was.

H. (refusing to be diverted). No, I do not think one’s views of persons change—or perhaps I should say one’s attitude toward persons—as do those of abstractions. One does not expect to find truth—trust—honor—love, growing so large.

E. (soberly). In other words, truth is a hot-house, and one’s ideas are tropical. Well, it is perhaps as well to come out into the open air, even if things do seem a little—stunted—at first.

H. Undoubtedly. Yet the comfort of the human frame demands something in the way of a temperate zone between. A sudden plunge into the arctic regions is apt to convey a chill—quite a serious one sometimes.

E. (aside). I wonder if that is meant for a veiled allusion. (Aloud.) But nature generally provides a way of softening matters, and makes such changes not chilling, but bracing.

H. (carelessly). Yes—Nature has been much maligned in her time, but, after all she is kinder than humanity in certain of even its most attractive forms. She is impartial and she contrives to let one down easily. I am sometimes astonished that Nature should be personified as a woman.

E. (looking away from him). I see you have become a cynic.

H. (with intention). I have, perhaps, lived up to my opportunities. They have not been unfavorable to cynicism. (Laughing.) Do you know, Esther, this is very much the way we used to talk? We were continually dealing in the most artistic abstractions. How easily one drops into old fashions!

E. (aside). How can he speak so lightly of “the way we used to talk,” or is it only I that remember? (Aloud, coldly.) Possibly, but old fashions are very readily seen not to belong to the present day. And yet—I may be mistaken—but it seems to me that we used to talk in a way that bordered on—on the concrete.

H. (a little nonplussed). Yes—that is true—but we were not so successful there. (Aside.) Decidedly we did. On the very concrete, indeed! And that was where she always had the better of me. She is quite capable of doing it again—but she does not wish to.

E. (calmly). But where were we in our abstractions? Ah, with Nature. I always get beyond my depth when Nature is introduced into the conversation. Human nature I do not mind at all, you know, but Nature by itself frightens me. I think it is the capital N. I feel that I ought to go out-of-doors and appreciate her.

H. I remember you were always afraid of getting beyond your depth. I was less prudent, however, which was sometimes unfortunate. (Aside.) I shall be floundering again if I go on with this remembering. (Aloud.) So you are still cautious? I have not had the four years to myself. Have they not changed you at all, Esth—Miss Van Dyke?

E. (pensively). Yes.

H. (with attention). You are not quite the same, then? I should not have known it.

E. (with emphasis). Wouldn’t you, really?

H. Unfortunately for me—no.

E. No, I am not the same.

H. (in a low tone). Will you tell me how you have changed?

E. (after a pause). I have grown stout! Yes, I have. I have gained twenty pounds in the four years you have been away.

H. (laughing). The inference pains me deeply. But twenty pounds can be judiciously distributed without actual injury to the possessor. Is there anything else?

E. (sentimentally). Ah, yes, when I am introduced to a new man I no longer expect to find him a mine of entertainment. I used to. Now I am surprised if I have not to be clever for both of us.

H. Is that so new? (Thoughtfully.) I sometimes think I was stupid for both of us—or—could it have been only that you were too wise? (Aside.) Oh, this fatal tendency to reminiscence—and I know better!

E. (with a slight effort). You are carrying me too far back. I am marking my progress since I saw you. (Aside.) Certainly this is too much like burrowing in the leaves of a dead past. No wonder he did not wait until to-morrow.

H. Forgive me, and go on with the disillusionments.

E. Sadder yet, I no longer care when a younger and a fairer girl “cuts me out,” to put it boldly. I think I shall, you know, but I don’t. I sigh—but I forget them—both!

H. This shows a callousness really alarming. You might at least reserve the guiltier party for future punishment. Perfidy merits at least remembrance. It is sometimes a man’s last hold.

E. (carelessly). A man should risk little on so commonplace a resource—if one wishes to be remembered, one should be unusual. Besides, you would imply that the man is the guiltier party?

H. Only as far as his lights are taken into consideration, of course. Man is a poor creature at his best—in comparison.

E. And sometimes a comparatively innocent one. To find another woman more attractive is blamable, but to be a more attractive woman ought to be unpardonable.

H. “To err is human—fiendish to outshine.” I understand. (With marked politeness.) Permit me to suggest that it is rarely——

E. (laughing). But I have said I have lost my capacity for feeling thrusts of this kind. (In a lower tone.) At least, I believed that I had.

H. (dryly). I was always a little unfortunate in my attempts to make amends—always too late, perhaps.

E. (meeting his eyes). Yes, making amends was never your forte.

H. Any more than cherishing illusions is yours. But, pray, go on with your revelations. I must improve the unexpected pleasure of finding you alone.

E. (a little embarrassed). Whom, then, did you expect to find here? (Aside.) He cannot have known that Dr. Tennant is coming. (Aloud.) Who would interfere, did you think, with the personal welcome you so desired?

H. (aside). I was getting on so well. (Lightly.) Oh, party calls, you know, and——

E. (dryly). You will find that customs have not changed so much in four years. It is still unusual to pay party calls in advance.

H. (aside). That was a brilliant way to recoup my falling fortunes! (Boldly.) Is this an indirect way of blaming me for coming this afternoon? (Rising.) I suppose it was unwise. (Aside.) I should rather think it was. (Aloud.) I will go now—Esther.

E. (quickly). You know, Harold, I did not mean anything so rude. Do not go—unless you must.

H. (aside). I must—theoretically. But I sha’nt—not after that “Harold.” If I hadn’t prided myself for years on its being inalienable property, I should say I was losing my head. (Aloud.) Will you tell me more of your four years?

E. (seriously). Yes. I have grown wise. I have grown hard—a little.

H. (softly). You were hard before—a little.

E. Are they not the same—wisdom and hardness? I have learned to believe that they are.

H. (impulsively). Not always.

E. And I, too, have acquired the sense of proportion. I have seen that—that—Love is not all the world. I have learned that the comfortable is more to be desired than gold—yea, than fine gold.

H. Yes; Gold and Love must both be tried in the furnace, which is seldom a comfortable operation.

E. And you—do you not agree with me? Is it not better to look on?

H. So long as it is not at another’s happiness that one has desired for one’s self—yes.

E. (aside). How if it be another’s unhappiness, I wonder. Poor Dr. Tennant. (Sighs.)

H. (aside). I shall make an ass of myself in a moment. She is not changed an atom. (Aloud.) But what leaves of wisdom have you steeped for me? I expected a cup of tea, and you have given me a decoction that should heal all disappointments.

E. (half sadly). If I had known I possessed such a secret I should have brewed some for myself before this. But (rising) if you expected a cup of tea you shall have it.

H. (eagerly). By Jove! Esther! I beg pardon—but Miss Van Dyke, I beg of you—— (Stops helplessly.)

E. I was just about to send for it for myself. (She rings. Aside.) I see it all. He has come a day too soon. And he would have had me believe that he cared to see me alone. And I was actually growing sentimental. He shall pay for it. (Enter a maid.) Tea, Mary Ann.

H. (who has been fidgeting about the room—aside). If only I had gone half an hour ago—in the flush of triumph, as it were! It was unnecessary, in order to avoid making a sentimental spectacle of myself, to fall back upon the larder!

E. (going back to table and taking up a letter). Do you know what I was doing when you came this afternoon?

H. Learning a new Kensington stitch? Studying a receipt-book? Putting a man out of his misery by letter? These are, I believe, some departments of “woman’s work.”

E. No, I was reading an old letter—one by which a man put himself out of misery. Your last letter, in fact.

H. My last letter?

E. Yes.

Mary Ann brings in the tea, and as Esther moves things on the table, she hands him Dr. Tennant’s letter by mistake. Harold glances at it and looks up surprised, but Esther does not see him.

H. Am I to read this?

E. Certainly.

Mary Ann leaves the room. Esther busies herself with the tea-things.

H. (having read the letter—stiffly). Very elegant penmanship.

E. (surprised but indifferently). I had not thought of that. (A pause.)

H. (glancing at the letter again). I fancy the writer did.

E. (coldly). Possibly. (Aside.) Oh, why did I show it to him? I would not have believed he would be so hard. (Aloud.) Rather a forcible style, I think.

H. Stiff, rather than forcible, I would suggest.

E. (with suppressed feeling). Your criticisms are less pointed than usual. If you had said unnatural it might express your meaning still better.

H. (a little irritated). He is a fortunate man who is able to express himself with such justness and freedom from exaggeration.

E. It seemed to me exaggerated at the time.

H. (with mock admiration). Oh, how can you say so! It is positively Grandisonian—almost Chesterfieldian. (Aside.) And utterly detestable.

E. (almost with tears). I was wrong to fancy you would be interested in such a trifle. Please give it back.

H. (politely, handing it to her). Not at all. Certainly, the writer deserves the lasting happiness he refers to. (Aside.) And I wish it were nothing to me—if he gets it or not.

E. What do you mean? Is this what I gave you? Oh, dear! (Much embarrassed.) It was the wrong one! Never mind. Here is your tea.

H. (takes the cup, after a short pause). I feel as if I had forced myself into your confidence.

E. You need not. It was my own stupidity, of course.

H. (tastes his tea). Might I see the other one?

E. Yes. (Gives it to him.)

H. (reads it while Esther watches him). Yes; well, I might have said more. But that was enough.

E. Yes, that was, as the children say, a great plenty. Oh, I neglected your tea! One lump, or two?

H. (thoughtfully). One. I wonder if it has?

E. What has?

H. Heaven.

E. Heaven has what?

H. Forgiven you.

E. I think so, by this time. It doesn’t bear malice. Cream?

H. Yes—prussic acid—anything. Thank you. You do not ask whether I have or not.

E. No. I understood you shifted the responsibility once for all. (Sipping her tea.)

H. Perhaps I did. It is generally once for all with me.

E. Is it? It is better to have all—for once. It is broader. It is more liberal. It is my motto.

H. Yes. So it was then. I have heard there is safety in numbers. (Aside.) If I believed that, I should begin to repeat the multiplication-table. I shall never be in greater need of it.

E. Not always.

H. (with an effort). Possibly Sir Charles Grand—I mean Mr. Edward Tennant—may have a narrowing influence. (Aside.) It is no use. I can’t be discreet. Confound Mr. Edward Tennant!

E. (innocently). Perhaps. (Drinks tea.) And so you are engaged to Mattie Montgomery?

H. (formally). You do me too much honor.

E. Really! (More coolly.) That is a pity. I hoped we might proffer mutual congratulations. An exchange of compliments is such a promoter of good feeling.

H. (more stiffly). I see I have been remiss. But I did not understand.

E. No, it is not yet time—but I have betrayed his confidence inadvertently. To-morrow you must congratulate me. To-morrow I shall tell you that I am engaged. Let me give you another cup.

H. (rising). No, one is enough. Once ought always to be enough! But it seems I am fated to have it twice! I know I am incoherent—but never mind! It’s the tea!

E. (playing with her teaspoon a little nervously). And you have forgiven me?

H. I do not know that I have. But (coldly) whether I have or not is of course only a personal matter.

E. (feebly). Of course.

H. And so you are to tell me to-morrow that you are engaged? Might I ask you if, in taking this step, you were actuated by a wish to obtain my forgiveness?

E. (laughing). I expected you to ask mine—for being engaged to Mattie Montgomery.

H. (sits). Suppose this afternoon you tell me about the—to be colloquial—the happy man. And I will have some more tea.

E. (looking into the sugar-bowl). Well, to tell the truth this afternoon—he doesn’t happen—to be—colloquially—the happy man.

H. (aside; walking about). So that note was written to-day. I did not see the date. It is not yet five o’clock, and it is not yet too late. I shall gain nothing by getting rattled and making a fool of myself. (Aloud, coming back and holding out his cup, into which Esther drops sugar as they speak.) Have I then taken his place?

E. (gravely). No. He is (lump) conservative (lump) in his (lump) tastes (lump). He takes (lump) no sugar (lump) at all (lump) in his.

H. (who has been watching Esther’s face, and not her fingers, sets down his cup hastily). Seven lumps is a little radical. Then you have forgotten all in four years? (Pacing the floor.) Forgotten what I, Esther, have been fool enough to remember as if it had happened yesterday! Who is it talks about woman’s constancy?

E. (aside). Not I. But I am very much afraid I shall begin to. Has the tea gone to my head too?

H. (with much feeling). The bitterest lesson the four years have taught me, Esther, is that one’s earliest lessons are never unlearned. They have been kinder to you.

E. (in a low tone). Have they? Perhaps. They have taught us both, however, that it is not necessary to unlearn them; one can go on as if one had never studied—old lessons.

H. Or old letters? (Coming nearer and taking up the letter.) But you did care for me enough to keep this letter—to read it over to-day—to give one thought to old happiness in the presence of new?

E. (recovering herself with an effort). I thought enough of myself to keep it. It is a mistaken theory that a woman keeps old love-letters for the sake of the sender. She keeps them because they are flattering—because they—they sound nice. I have lots more.

H. (offended). And you were only weeding them out to-day? Very well. That is enough. No further words are necessary.

E. Yes—so you said before (glancing at letter), or something very like it (Looking into the teapot.) There is no more tea for us, and the lamp has gone out. (Looking about.) And no matches—unless you have one in your pocket.

H. (who has been thinking, moodily feels in all his pockets). I am very sorry—but I cannot supply you with even the necessaries of life.

E. Never mind, I can light it from the fire.

H. (pushes the letters toward her). Make a lamplighter of one of these, and I will light it for you.

Esther hesitates an instant, takes up one letter, and then the other.

H. Oh, use mine. It has failed to rekindle a passion, but it may do for a teakettle. It may as well be reduced to ashes along with the rest of the poor little love-story.

Esther turns her head a little away and slowly twists both letters into lamp-lighters.

H. (aside). I shall let all my hopes burn in the flame with my letter. If she uses that, I give her up. I shall know she is not mine to give up. I have come to the pass where folly is my only reason. She is twisting Dr. Tennant’s! But now she is twisting mine. (She rises to go to the fire and he rises to do it for her.)

E. I prefer to do it myself.

She returns with one burning, with which she lights the lamp, and lays the other down on the table. He takes it up eagerly.

H. So, Esther, you did not burn it, after all? (Rising and coming toward her.) You did not care that the last of it should go out in ashes?

E. (speaking lightly). It was not that so much, but I was afraid it was better suited for an—extinguisher. I think that was more what you meant it for.

Harold goes back to his seat gloomily and tastes his tea. Esther plays with the teaspoon—a pause.

E. How do you like your tea?

H. It is a little—cloying.

E. (rising and moving about the room). A bad fault.

H. (dryly). But fortunately an uncommon one.

E. (with feeling). I have made a great many mistakes in my life—suffered a great deal of unhappiness—because I have been afraid of being cloying. (Aside.) Am I mad, that I should tell him the foolish truth!

H. (rising). I should say it was a fault to which you were not constitutionally inclined. (Aside.) That sounds much firmer than I feel.

E. No, but on that very account people should have borne with me more than they have! (Still with feeling.) Things might have been different.

H. (going toward her). Esther! (A bell.)

E. (hurriedly). Never mind! There is the door-bell! Things are going to be different! (With a faint smile.) I told you he did not like any sweet at all in his.

H. (impetuously). And have I not had my full allowance of bitter? It is time you began dispensing sweets—so let him stay away.

E. (laughing nervously). But—but it wasn’t my idea to get rid of him.

H. The plan is ready for your acceptance. You were going to tell me you were engaged to-morrow—tell him so to-day, instead!

E. (glancing at clock). I cannot. His engagement was made with me a week ago.

H. And mine five years ago. (She hesitates.) Besides, he is late—half an hour late. What is it about a lover who is late? He has divided his time into more than “the thousandth part of a minute.”

E. (laughing). And are you not later—by four years?

H. (firmly). I am twenty-four hours ahead of time.

A knock. Enter maid with a card.

E. Show him into the reception-room. I will come in a moment. (Exit maid.) It is he, Harold. I must go.

H. (taking her hands). Esther, think one moment. Forget the four years. I have come a day too soon. I have swallowed two cups of tea and eight lumps of sugar and made a general ass of myself—but—I love you.

E. But—but this is so shameless! I thought I should have to say—something like that—to him.

H. (coolly). And I am in time to save you from so unfortunate a mistake. You had much better tell it to me.

E. But I must give him an answer.

H. Give me one first! Adopt my plan, it is so simple. Send word—or tell him, if you like—that you are engaged. But come back!

E. Indeed, he shall have his answer first. His right demands precedence at least. But (opening the door) I will come back.

H. To five years ago?

E. Perhaps. (Returns just as she is leaving the room.) But, Harold, Harold, I thought an afternoon tea was so safe, or I should never have asked you.

H. And so did I—or I should never have come.

Curtain.

THE COMMONEST POSSIBLE STORY

By Bliss Perry

Philander Atkinson, bachelor of law and writer of light verse, sat one murky August evening in his hall-bedroom, with the gas turned low, wondering whether the night would be too hot for sleep. At a quarter before ten a loitering messenger-boy brought him a line from his friend Darnel: Come around at once. Just back. The very greatest news. Thereupon Atkinson discarded his smoking-jacket, reluctantly exchanged his slippers for shoes, and took the car down to Twelfth Street, remembering meanwhile that Darnel’s brief vacation from the Broadway Bank expired that day, and speculating as to the nature of the great news which the clerk had brought back from Vermont. The lawyer was a Vermonter too, and it was this fact, as well as a common literary ambition, that had drawn the young fellows together at first, long before Philander, on the strength of having two triolets paid for, had moved up to Thirty-first Street. Philander Atkinson liked Darnel, admired his feverish energy and his pluck, envied his acquaintance with books. He had always persisted in thinking that Darnel’s stories would sell, if only some magazine would print one for a starter; and he had patiently listened to most of these stories, and to some of them several times over. Yet Darnel had never had any luck; had never had even his deserts; and the sincerity of his congratulations whenever Atkinson’s verses saw the light always caused Philander to feel a trifle awkward. He knew that the indefatigable clerk had two or three manuscripts “out”—out in the mails—when the vacation began, and as he turned in at Darnel’s boarding-house he had almost persuaded himself that The Æon had accepted “Laki,” his friend’s Egyptian story. It was a long climb up to Darnel’s room, and the writer of light verse mounted deliberately, being fat with overmuch sitting in his office chair. On the third floor the air was heavy with orange-flowers and Bonsilene roses, and a caterer was carrying away ice-boxes. A whimsical rhyme came into Philander’s head, and he made a mental note of it. Just then Darnel appeared, leaning over the balustrade of the fourth-floor landing, his coat off, his collar visibly the worse for the railway journey, and an eager smile upon his thin, homely face.

“Hullo, D.,” said Philander. “Here I am. Been having a wedding here?” he added in a low voice, as he grasped Darnel’s hand.

“I believe so. I’m just back. Come in, Phil. You got my message?”

“Why else should I be here, old fellow? Is it ‘Laki,’ sure?”

Without answering, Darnel led the way into his tiny room. His trunk lay upon the floor, half-unpacked, the folding-bed was down, for the better accommodation of some of the trunk’s contents, and the desk in the corner, under the single jet of gas, was covered with piles of finely torn paper. Darnel’s manner, usually nervous and somewhat conscious, betrayed a certain exhilaration, but he was under perfect self-control.

“‘Laki?’” he said, seating himself in his revolving chair and whirling around to the desk, while Atkinson threw himself upon the bed, “‘Laki?’ Oh, I had forgotten. It’s probably here.” He pulled over the mail accumulated during his absence. “Yes.” He tore open the big envelope. “‘The editor of The Æon regrets to say,’ etc.;” and he tossed the printed slip, with the manuscript, into his waste-basket, with a laugh.

Atkinson’s heart sank. Poor Darnel; it was not a cheerful welcome home. But Darnel was busied with his letters.

“And here are the others,” he went on. “I thank the Lord none of them were accepted.”

“What!” exclaimed Philander, turning upon his elbow.

Darnel looked at him with a puzzling smile.

“That’s why I sent for you,” said he. “Phil, all that I’ve been writing here for three years is stuff, and I’ve only just found it out. I can do something different now.”

Atkinson stared. Darnel had rarely talked about his own work, and then in a scarcely suppressed fever of excitement and anxiety. Many a time had Atkinson noticed his big hollow eyes turn darker, and his sallow face grow ashy, even in reading over with a shaking voice some of that same “stuff.”

“I have learned the great secret,” Darnel added, quietly.

“You have Aladdin’s ring?” said Atkinson. “Or are you in love?”

“Both,” replied Darnel. “It is the same thing.”

Philander flung himself back upon the pillow, with a little laugh. “Go ahead, D.”

“I have found her, and myself. Let me turn down the gas a little; I see it hurts your eyes. I belong in the world now; I am in the heart of it—I said to myself coming down the river this afternoon—in the heart of the world.” He lingered over the words. “Phil,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “all the time I was trying to write I was really trying to lift myself by the boot-straps. I was laboring to imagine things and people, and to get them on paper. It was all wrong. Do you remember that French poem you read me last winter, about the idol and the Eastern princess—how she lay on her couch sleeping—the night was hot—with the bronze idol gazing at her with its porphyry eyes, while her brown bosom rose and sank in her sleep, and the porphyry eyes kept staring at her—staring—but they never saw? Well, I believe my eyes have been like that. In ‘Laki,’ now, you know I wanted to describe the exact color of the stone in the quarry, and asked the Egyptologist up at the Museum to tell me what it was? He laughed at me. Very well. It was a dull-red stone, with bright-red streaks across it; I saw the same thing in Troy this afternoon, when a hod-carrier fell five stories and they picked him up from a pile of bricks.”

“You’re getting rather realistic,” muttered Philander. Darnel was not looking at him, and went on unheeding.

“I have but to tell what I see. I have stopped imagining; my head has ached—Phil, you don’t know how it has ached—trying to imagine things. I am past that now; if you only shut your eyes and look, it is all easy. Take that old Edda story that I tried to work up, about the fellow who fought all day long against his bride’s father, and when night came the bride stole out and raised all the dead men on both sides, by magic, so that the next day, and every day, the battle raged on as before. I used to plan about the magic she used, and tried to invent a charm. Why, all she did was to pass over the battle-field at night, where the dead lay twisted in the frost, and while the wolves snarled around her and the spray from the fiord wet her cheek, she stooped to touch the dead men’s wrists; and they loosed their grip upon broken sword and split linden shield, their breath came again, soft and low like a baby’s, and so they slept till the red dawn.”

“Look here,” said Atkinson, sitting up very straight, “you’ve been reading ‘The Finest Story in the World,’ and it has turned your head.”

“Oh, the London clerk who was conscious of pre-existences, and forgot them all when he fell in love? I could have told Rudyard Kipling better than that myself.” Darnel gave an impatient whirl to the revolving chair.

“You mean you think you can,” replied Atkinson, sharply.

“As you like.” He spoke dreamily, and Atkinson dropped back on the pillow again, watching his friend as narrowly as the dim light would allow. Hard work and unearthly hours had told on Darnel; he certainly seemed light-headed.

“Sickening heat—black frost—” he was murmuring; “marching, stealing, fighting, toiling—joy, pain—the life of the race—is a man to grow unconscious of these things in the moment that he really enters the life of the race, that he feels himself a part of it? What do you think, Phil?”

“I think,” was the slow reply, “that whatever has happened to you in Vermont has shaken you up pretty well, old fellow. They say that when someone asked Rachel how she could play Phèdre so devilishly well, she just opened her black Jewish eyes and said, ‘I have seen her.’ And I think, in the mood you’re in now, you can see as far back as Rachel or anybody else. It’s like being opium-drunk; if you could keep so, and put on paper what you see, you could beat Kipling and all the rest of them. But you can’t keep drunk, and you can’t write prose or verse on love-delirium. It’s been tried.”

“Suppose Rachel had said, ‘I am Phèdre?’”

Atkinson lifted his stout shoulders, laughing uneasily. “So much the worse. I should say, the less pre-existence of that sort the better. You might as well tell me the whole story, D. What is her name?”

“In a moment. She loves me, Phil. She is waiting for me in her little house among the hills. I left her only this morning, and soon I shall go back and leave New York forever. I can write the story up there—the story I have dreamed of writing—for I shall always have the secret of it. I have but to shut my eyes and tell what I see; and it is because she loves me. All the life of all the past—I can call that ‘A Story of the Road.’ Then there will be the future to write of—the men and women that are to come; for we shall have children, Phil, and in them——”

“You’re making rapid progress,” ejaculated Philander.

“——I shall know the story of the future. Even now I know it; I do not simply foresee it, I see it. Why not ‘A Story of the Goal!’ For I belong to it—do you not understand? Yet, after all, what is that compared with the present? It shall be ‘A Story of the March!’ Look there!”

He threw his eyes up to the ceiling, which was brightened for an instant by the headlight of an elevated train as it rushed past.

“Do you know what that engineer was really thinking of as he went by? That would be story enough. Or what was in the heart of the bride to-night, down on the third landing—you smelled the orange-flowers as you came up? To feel that your heart is in them, and theirs in you——”

But Philander Atkinson was not listening to the lover’s rhapsody. He was thinking of a certain summer when he, too, had had strange fancies in his head; when his thoughts played backward and forward with swift certainty; when he had grown suddenly conscious of great desires and deep affinities, and for a space of some three months he had dreamed of being something more than a mere verse-maker, a master of the file. Then—whether it was that she grew tired of him, or they both realized that some dull mistake had been made—it was all over. There was still in his drawer a package of manuscript he had written that summer; in blank verse, none too noble a form for the high thoughts which then filled him; in a queer new rhythm, too, the secret of whose beat he had caught at and then lost, for the lines read harshly to him now. He looked these things over occasionally, as a sort of awful example of himself to himself; though he had gone so far as to borrow some of their imagery, not without a certain shame, to adorn his light verse. His card-house had fallen, but some of the colored pasteboard was pretty enough to be used again. Curiously, he found that he could cut pasteboard into more ingenious shapes than ever since his brief experience in piling it; fancy served him better after imagination left him; his triolets were admirably turned, and his luck with the magazines began. Altogether it had been an odd experience; half those crazy ideas of Darnel had been his two years before, but he was quite over them—yes, quite—and now it was D.’s turn. He listened again to something that Darnel was murmuring.

“And she is an ordinary woman, one would say; a common woman. That is the mystery and the glory of it. I do not know that she is even beautiful. There must be thousands of women like her; I can see it plainly enough, that there must be thousands of women in the world like her.” There was a reverent hush in his voice.

Atkinson choked back an exclamation. Was D.’s head really turned? “A common woman”—“not know whether she is beautiful?” A face rose before him, unlike any face in all the world: eyes with the blue of Ascutney, when you look at it through ten miles of autumn haze; hair brown as the chestnut leaf in late October; mouth——

Philander trembled slightly, and rising to his feet, stood looking down at Darnel, haggardly. It was quite over, that experience of two summers before, but while it lasted he had at least never dreamed that there were thousands of women in the world like her.

“Sit down, Phil, I am almost through. A woman like other women, and the story, when I write it, a common story. It will be the commonest possible story; common as a rose, common as a child. I am going back to Vermont, where I was born, and where I have been born anew. There will be plenty of time for the story—years, and years, and years. I have only to close my eyes some day, and she will write down all I tell her, and I shall call the story hers and mine.”

But Atkinson still stood, his hands in his pockets, his heavy figure stooping, the lines hardening in his face, while he watched the rapt gaze of Darnel, and drearily reflected how strange it was that a woman should open all the gates of the wonder-world to one man’s imagination, and that some other woman should close those secret gates, quietly, inexorably, upon that man’s friend.

“Wait,” said Darnel. “Must you go back to your triolets? Let me show you her picture first.” He turned the gas up to its fullest height, and held out a photograph.

It was the same woman.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

By George A. Hibbard

City of New York,

April 10, 1887.

Dear Sir: It is with some hesitation that I venture to trespass upon your valuable time, knowing as I do that the demands of clients, of constituents, of friends, are so exacting. Still, as what I am about to ask relates to a matter lying very near my heart, I hope you will forgive me. A young man in whom, in spite of the usual extravagances and follies of youth, I discern some promise, and whom I hope, for his own sake and from my friendship for his excellent father, dead long ago, to see occupying a respectable position in the community, has, with the heedlessness peculiar to his age, involved himself in certain difficulties which, although at present of a sufficiently distressing nature, may, I hope, be satisfactorily overcome. Knowing so well your distinguished abilities, ripe judgment, and great experience, I can think of no one to whom I can, in this critical period of his life, more confidently send him for counsel, instruction, and aid, and I accordingly commend him to you, trusting to our old friendship to account for and excuse my somewhat unusual act. Though what I ask of you is something not usually required of a lawyer, I think you will understand my reason for thus troubling you. No one can have a more thorough knowledge of the world than an old practitioner like yourself, and what you may say must fall upon the ears of youth with weighty authority. Talk to him as you would to your son, if you had one, not as to a client, and I will be inexpressibly indebted to you, for I know you will lead him to appreciate the serious realities of life, which, at present, he is so disposed to disregard.

I need only add that he is a young man of some fortune, and, certainly, by birth worthy of much consideration. He will call upon you in person and himself explain his present embarrassments.

I remain, now as always,

Your obedient servant,

Richard Bevington.

The Hon. Jacob Maskelyne,

Counsellor at law,

Number — William Street,

City of New York.

This was the letter that the Honorable Jacob Maskelyne read, reread, and read yet again. Indeed, not content with its repeated perusal, he turned it this way and that, looked at it upside and down, and finally, laying it upon the table, he held up its envelope in curious study, as people so often do when thus perplexed. It bore the common, dull-red two-cent stamp and was post-marked the day before. Both it and the letter were apparently as much matters of the every-day world as a jostle on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, the old lawyer was more than puzzled—more than puzzled, although he, of all men in the great, wideawake city, would in popular opinion have been thought perhaps the very last to be thus at fault. If millstones were to be worn as monocles—if there was any seeing what the future might bring forth—the chances of a project, the risks of rise or fall in a stock, the hazards of a corner in a staple, the prospects of a party or of a partisan, Jacob Maskelyne would be regarded as the man of men for the work. But, under the circumstances, even to him this letter was more than perplexing. Here, on this spring morning, with floods of well-authenticated sunshine pouring into every nook and corner, dissipating every mystery of shadow and, it might seem, every shadow of mystery—here, in his office, bricked in by the unimaginative octavos of the law—those hide-bound volumes, heavy literature of all things most amazingly matter of fact; here, in the eighteen hundred and eighty-seventh year of the Christian era, in the one hundred and eleventh year of the Republic, he had received a letter from his old guardian, whom, when he himself was not more than twenty, he remembered walking about a feeble old man with many an almost Revolutionary peculiarity in speech and manner, and whose funeral he, with the heads and scions of most of the first families of the town, had attended full twenty-five years ago. It certainly was enough to bewilder anyone. He again took up the letter. It was unquestionably in old Bevington’s best style, courtly enough, but a trifle pompous. Had it not been for its true tone he would undoubtedly have thought the thing a hoax and immediately have dismissed it from his mind. He touched a hand-bell, and in response a young man—a very prosaic young man—over whose black clothes the gray of age had begun to gather, appeared.

“Bring me the letters received of the year eighteen sixty—letter B,” said the lawyer, sharply.

That was the year in which his father’s estate had been finally settled, and he knew that there would be many examples of his guardian’s handwriting in the correspondence of that time.

The clerk soon returned with a tin case, and laid it on the table. Mr. Maskelyne took one from among the many papers therein, and, striking it sharply against the arm of his chair, to scatter the dust that invests all things in the garment the outfitter Time warrants such a perfect fit, he spread it out beside the letter he had just read with such blank wonder.

“Identically the same,” he muttered. “No other man ever made an e like that.”

The clerk had vanished and the lawyer was again alone.

He glanced once more at the mysterious missive, and then, with the purposelessness of abstraction, he rose and went to the window. Nothing caught his eye but the sign-bedecked front of the opposite building and one small patch of blue sky—near, gritty, limestone fact and a faraway something without confine. Still, amazed as he was the contagious joy of the time sensibly affected him.

The sparrows, quarrelsome gamins of the air, for the time reformed by honest labor into respectable artisans, upon an opposite entablature, in garrulous amity plied their small, nest-making joinery. The sunlight falling through a haze of wires, wrought into something bright with its own glow a tuft of grass which clumped its spears in its fortalice, taken in assault, on the opposite frieze. Of even these small things, and of much more, Mr. Maskelyne was partially conscious. But the letter! Clear-sighted as he was, he knew but little—so forthright was his look, so fixed toward mere gain—of the wonderful country which lies beneath every man’s nose, less even of the vanishing tracts which retrospection sometimes sees over either shoulder. But the letter! It peopled his vision with things long gone. It brought into view old Bevington—“Dick Bevington,” as he was called to the last day of his life—and a nickname at fifty indicates much of character; brought up before him Dick Bevington as he was before age had stiffened his easy but dignified carriage or taught his once polished but positive utterance to veer and haul in sudden change; brought up old Bevington, as he himself, in childhood, had seen him, stately but debonair, the perfection of aristocratic exclusiveness, affable, however, in the genial kindliness of a kind-hearted man secure in every position—a genuine Knickerbocker in every practice and in every principle—a well-born, well-bred gentleman. And that once active and once ebullient life had long ago gone out! It almost seemed that such vitality, so held in self-contained management, so wisely put forth, so well invested, so to speak, should have lasted forever. But now there was nothing left to bring him to mind but a portrait in the rooms of the Historical Society, or a name in the list of directors when the history of some bank was given, or in the pamphlet in which the story of some charitable institution was told from the beginning—really there was nothing more than this to recall Dick Bevington, foremost among the city’s fathers, the leader of the ton. When he had last seen his guardian he had thought him of patriarchal age. And was not he himself now nearly as old? In spite of the blithesome aspects of the morning, Jacob Maskelyne turned away from the window with an unwonted weight at his heart and a new wrinkle on his brow. The whole world seemed to be going from him, losing charm and significance in a sort of blurring dissatisfaction, as upon a globe, when swiftly turned, lines of longitude and of latitude, and even continents and seas, vanish from sight, and all because his own life suddenly seemed but vexed nothingness. He had not even mellowed into age as had Bevington. He was as sharp and as rough-edged as an Indian’s flint arrow-head, and he knew it.

He seated himself at his table. Automatically he was about to take up the first of several bundles of law-papers, when he was startled by the entrance of the clerk. He leaned back in his chair, and his reawakened wonder grew the more when a card was placed before him upon which was written, in a dashing hand, “From Mr. Bevington.”

“A gentleman to see you,” said the clerk.

“What does he look like?” asked Mr. Maskelyne, suspiciously.

“Nobody I ever saw before,” answered the clerk; “and he seems rather strange about his clothes,” he added, in a rather doubtful, tentative manner.

“Let him come in,” said Mr. Maskelyne, after a moment’s pause.

The door had hardly closed upon the vanishing messenger when it again swung upon its hinges, and a new figure stood in relief against the clearer light from without. In his eagerness to see of what nature a being so introduced might be, Mr. Maskelyne turned his chair completely around, and silently gazed at the new-comer as he entered. His eyes fell upon a slim, graceful young man dressed in the mode of at least forty-five years ago—a mode not without its own good tone undoubtedly, but with a tendency toward gorgeousness which an exquisite of these days of assertive unobtrusiveness might think almost vulgar. His whole attire was touched in every detail with that nameless something which really makes the consummate result unattainable by any not born to such excellence; but in the bright intelligence shining in his dark eyes and the clear intellectual lines of his face, even Maskelyne could see that if he had given much thought to his dress it was only from a proper self-respect, and not because dress was the ultimate or the best expression of what he was. Few could look into the luminous countenance and not feel a glow of sudden sympathy with the high aspirations, the pure disinterestedness, the clear intellect, that lit up and strengthened his features. Even the old lawyer, disciplined as he was by years of hard experience to disregard all such misleading impulses, felt his heart warm toward the young man.

“I hope,” said the new-comer, with a smile so pleasant, so ingenuous, so confiding, that all Maskelyne’s ideas of deception—had he had time to recognize them in the moment before a strange, unquestioning acquiescence took complete possession of him—were at once dissipated, “that I do not intrude too greatly on your time.”

Won really in spite of himself by the appearance of his visitor, the famous counsellor waved his hand toward a chair.

“I suppose,” continued the stranger, with an almost boyish sweetness, as he seated himself, “that Mr. Bevington has already told you why I am here.”

Mr. Maskelyne might very well have answered that Mr. Bevington was hardly to be looked to for any information on any subject, but he did not—the wonderful circumstances of the interview had been so driven from his mind by the potent charm of the young man’s personality.

“Mr.”—and he paused as if waiting for enlightenment as to the name of the stranger.

“I’m in a devil of a scrape,” continued the young man, apparently imagining that the letter had made all necessary explanations, and mentioning the devil as though he was an every-day acquaintance, a pleasant fellow whom he had just left at the door awaiting his return.

“Ah!” murmured the lawyer.

“I did not wish to see you,” continued the other, his singularly trustful smile breaking again over lip and cheek.

“Indeed,” said Maskelyne, his wits and perceptions in most confusing entanglement.