Transcriber’s Note:

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

“So they marched away to the tune of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’”

HEIMWEH
THE SIREN ✳ ✳ ✳ THE
LOADED GUN ✳ ✳ LIEBEREICH.
✳ “IUPITER
TONANS” ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ “SIS”.
THOR’S EMERALD ✳ ✳
GUILE ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳ ✳

By

JOHN LUTHER LONG

Author of “Madame Butterfly” “Naughty Nan” “Miss Cherry Blossom” “The Fox Woman” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK      MCMV

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.

Copyright, 1905,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1905.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

WHETHER YOU BE SICK WITH

LONGING FOR THESE SQUALID

HOMES ON EARTH WHERE LOVE

IS NEVER SURE—OR FOR THOSE

SPLENDID MANSIONS IN OUR

FATHER’S HOUSE WHERE IT

WAITS ALWAYS—THESE ARE FOR

YOU ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈ ❈

THE CONTENTS

HEIMWEH

THE SIREN

THE LOADED GUN

LIEBEREICH

“IUPITER TONANS”

“SIS”

THOR’S EMERALD

GUILE

ILLUSTRATIONS

HEIMWEH[^[1]]

I  LIFE HAS NO FUTURE AT TWENTY-ONE

The neighbors called them “Betsy and John”—her name first, always. Perhaps because she was short and aggressive, he tall and inclined to “lazy.” Only inclined to lazy, understand. For, no one had ever caught him at it. Indeed, with a certain rustic intuition and much experience of his kind, they knew it was “in him”—that he had been “born to it”—and they liked him better for his constant vanquishment of the infirmity. They would have liked him anyhow—he was a very likable fellow. But Betsy they loved. Once in a while some zealous friend of John would contend that he was the very incarnation of industry. John, when he came to know of that sort of thing, always discouraged it—and did it firmly. He would point to the nimble fingers of his wife—a thing he was always glad to do—and say, sighing:

“It is that—she—it—makes me ashamed—to lazy.”

She was twenty, he barely twenty-one, when they were married. She was a basket-maker, he a laborer. They lived in a little town on “the Border.” Differing with the utmost good nature in everything but one—in that they were exactly alike. They had no future—absolutely none! They refused to have one. Strong with the vigor of youth—happy with the unreason of happiness—content with what came—wishing for nothing they had not—ambitious for nothing but a home—they lived but from day to day again—sleeping soundly, working gayly, thinking not. Why should they be vexed about a future—at twenty—twenty-one?

Once in a while they went hungry—and laughed about it. But, usually, there was sufficient demand for her dainty wares; and he was digging trenches in the streets of the adjoining town for the pipes of the new gas company. He made as much as forty cents a day when he worked, while she averaged nearly twice as much. You can see that there was no reason why they should go hungry very often. And, indeed, once, when he felt particularly opulent, John bought Betsy a gold-plated brooch for her birthday. It was in 1835.

But did I say that there was one thing upon which they agreed—in that rejected future? Yes. A home—they wanted a home—a roof over their heads, they called it—that was all. But, even this was forgotten as the happy years went by.

“Home is wherever we are!” laughed Betsy.

Then came the children, and John began to talk and act and think like a very proper father—even though Betsy laughed at him.

“Betsy,” said John, once upon a time, pulling down his face, “we’d ought to begin thinking of the—” Betsy began to smile, but John went on, like a husband and father doing his duty—“er—think of the—er—roof!”

He almost shouted the last word—it seemed so ridiculous when he came to it.

“At twenty-two?” said Betsy.

John was rocking the cradle.

“But when a man gits to be a father—”

“Papa!” laughed Betsy at him, and John blushed and stopped.

But that wasn’t Betsy’s way—to chill John with an argument so irrefutable—and at such a distance! She flung her basket away, snatched the baby from the cradle, and, next, John had his whole family in his lap. His wife was laughing, the baby was blinking, and John was very happy.

“Roof!”—she was talking to the baby “do you know what that is? I don’t. You haven’t any yet—neither have I. I’ve forgotten it. We are going to have one, of course—after a while—if your papa wants one—now—if he can’t wait—a minute—”

John put his hand on her mouth. She bit it and he kissed her. Then they were tangled in an embrace for a moment—the baby getting the worst of it.

“Look here,” said Betsy, then, “don’t you think you’ve got enough with us? Roof!”

“Yes,” confessed John, shamefacedly, “I don’t want you to bother no more about it.”

“I won’t,” said Betsy.

“We’ll have it—some day!” declared John, in his lazy way, “without any bothering!”

II
HAPPINESS IS BETTER THAN CHURCH

Four more were born—boys all—goodly and ruddy—like their little mother. But, one and all, they surprised and delighted her by growing tall like their father.

“You see, John,” said Betsy, “they are going to be big like you, and good like me.”

Well, one by one, they went out into the world—but never very far from the romping comrade-mother. Away from her the world was neither so gay nor so tender. They never found another woman so altogether lovely.

There was no work for any of them on Sunday, so they would all come home. Indeed, in the country of the Germans of Pennsylvania, no one ever worked on Sunday in that day and generation. And such Sundays as they were! No going to church, I fear—a heinous omission perhaps. But how could they? There was gentle revelry in the little house from the first moment—not a soul of them would have missed that for any church on earth—and no church on earth would have done them so much good—then a feast. Sometimes—when all had work and wages were good—a stewed turkey! And, after it all, kisses and hugs and good-nights—till one thought it would never end.

And, after they were gone, Betsy would cry—and John would take her in his lap and say never a word—leaving her to fall asleep there.

But once, instead of sleeping, she sat up and took John by the throat.

“John! I’m glad they’re not girls—any of them.” For this used to be a complaint of Betsy’s—that none of them were girls.

“Yes,” said John, meekly.

She gripped his throat a little tighter and shook him.

“They’d git married if they were. Girls always do. But boys often have better sense. Ours have, anyhow.”

“We got married,” ventured John.

“Well—of course!” said Betsy, choking him.

But the thing was in her mind all the week. There seemed danger. The next Sunday, at the table, she said:

“Look here! Why don’t some of yous git—git—married?”

Her hand shook as she dealt out the gravy and waited for their answer.

They looked from one to the other. No one knew.

“Funny,” laughed Ben, “but I never thought of it.”

“Nor I,” said Bart.

“Hanged if I know,” piped Fred. “Don’t see no girls like you—”

“Can I marry you, mammy?” laughed Tom, putting his arm around her as she came over to him. It was Tom she was most afraid of. For he was the youngest—and to her he was little short of a god. He had rebellious yellow hair and blue eyes—and little patches of whiskers were beginning to grow on his face.

“Yes,” said his mother, sweeping his girlish lips with a kiss.

“Me, too,” said “old” Ben—and he got it.

And so on all around while John smiled in ecstasy.

“Boys,” said the little mother, “there ain’t no girl I ever saw that’s fit for any of yous—ain’t so, John?”

John, of course, said yes.

Tom got up, and, after turning her back to the rest wiped the tears from his mother’s eyes.

“Boys,” announced the mother, “next Sunday there will be a turkey—and oyster stuffing!”

As she said it she went over and let her arms glide gently around the neck of Will, who had not spoken on the subject of marriage. He caught her hands and drew her arms closer while he smiled up at her—a little sadly. She kissed him on the great forehead, and he understood. There had been a brief love affair for him, but it was over. Simply a successful rival. He never spoke of it—nor did any one else. But at least two—understood.

III
OPEN THE DOOR TO JOY—ALWAYS

But Betsy had caught John surreptitiously saving—to buy the roof, he explained!

“We—we’re gitting old, you know,” he excused.

“Old!—”

Betsy caught up her dainty skirts—very high—and pirouetted before him.

“Ein’, tswei, drei’, un’ fier. Dass macht sivve’—”

She stopped a moment.

“John! Don’t you remember Eisenkrantz’s husking—where I first saw you? Oh, John, what a gawk you were! And yit—and yit—John, do you remember how you danced that night? Come!”

She pulled him about with her in a very clumsy attempt at waltzing. Then she pushed him off.

“Oh, you are gitting old. But me—”

A few more mad whirls and she flung herself into his arms.

“Say, John, that’s better than any roof.”

“Er—what?” asked John, whose wits were often left behind by his wife’s.

She came close and shouted in his ear:

“Joy!”

“Oh!” said John, patting her pretty hair.

She slipped her arm about him. And then her voice was very soft and loving.

“And our five boys! Such boys! Where is there another such five! If we should get old—if we should need a roof—why, John—there are our five handsome boys!”

She cried a little, and John asked her for the thousandth time why she did it.

“Why does a woman cry? For joy and sorrow—life and death—good and evil!”

“Oh!” said John, once more.

“John!” His wife woke up and gripped his throat again. “Ben needs a new horse,”—Ben was a huckster,—“Tom wants a drill,”—Tom was a farmer,—“and Fred must have a new Sunday suit. How much money have you saved, you rascal?”

John told her. And Ben got his horse, Tom got his drill, and Fred got his Sunday suit—and John saved no more.

But it was so—they were brave and loving fellows—all. And every Sunday—when they were gone—it was a game of hide-and-seek for Betsy and John—to find the money and presents they had left. Of course, they were all at places where she might easily discover them. But she always went shy of the most likely places at first—thus prolonging the search—sometimes until she was quite tired. In the pocket of her second-best dress (she always wore her best on Sunday)—in the frame of her warped toilet mirror—in the drawers of her scratched dressing bureau—in the loaves of her new bread!

Finally, when the boys all became prosperous, they made her stop weaving baskets, and him stop laboring in the streets; all of them dressed well, and they became quite a company of ladies and gentlemen. Neither John nor Betsy was precisely happy afterward. Sunday was longer in coming. But they sighed for their idleness, laughed for their happiness—and did as the boys told them to do: sat still and looked pretty.

But there is such a thing as getting used even to idleness, and joy comes whether we work or not—if we are wise enough to let it come. And no one in that little cheap house ever shut the door on joy. So Betsy, after a while, learned to wear her Sunday clothes all the week, and John to shave every morning. And the door was kept open always to joy.

IV
WAR IS GLORIOUS AT THE BEGINNING BUT NOT AT THE END

Then, one day, in ’61, they formed in the town a “soldier company” to go to the “front.” No one knew much about it—nor where the front was. No one doubted that it was to be a great frolic—no one but Betsy. And there, in the front rank, all together, as brothers should be, stood Betsy’s five boys. And, as if this were not enough, there was John, too! With yellow chevrons on his sleeves—and a sword at his side—brave as a lion and proud as a major-general. Company corporal! Alas! perhaps the privates, too, might have carried swords had there been enough to go around.

John stood it as long as he could. For more than a week he swore that he would stay at home and take care of Betsy. He was too old to frolic. But he went to the drill ground every day. Once or twice he drilled with them when some one was absent. He finally developed such a genius for military affairs that the captain went to Betsy and voiced John’s yearnings—it was for his country that he wanted to fight—it was his duty to fight—it was a privilege to fight—it was a wife’s duty to let him fight.

She let John go, too. For, after all, it was only a great frolic—they told her!

So they marched away to the tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the little mother went home to wait. It was very lonely from the first hour, and she willingly took up her work again. They scolded her when she wept, so she tried not to weep. They told her she ought not only to be willing to let them go, but be glad. She tried to think that she was glad. But in her heart she rebelled dismally. “We are coming, Father Abraham!” had been the cry—and her boys, too, had said, with a new light in their faces, which she, a woman, did not, could not, would not, understand, that they were going to fight for their country! Go and fight for their country when they might work for her—when they might have those Sunday feasts—when she could darn their stockings—mend their clothes—have her arms about them—theirs about her—give them warm beds—plenty of food—while the country would give them poor food—poor clothes—the ground to sleep on—and no Sundays at home! She could not understand it. No woman who is a mother can. She thought of possible wounds on their splendid bodies—of them lying stark in the night upon some shot-torn battle-field—of burial unknown in some vast trench—of fever—and terrors—of hospitals—and even of the coming home—no more her boys—no more! Soldiers, then, soldiers with rough beards and rough voices. She never once thought of them coming home dead.

Alas! her country was bounded by the Rhine. This was their country!

But still, as they went, she prayed blindly:

“God bless you and keep you, my boys, and send you back to me as you go—good boys. Father Abraham, they are my all—everything on earth I love. Send them back as you receive them.”

V
WE GO OUT TO FIGHT UNDER THE FLAG; WE RETURN—UNDER IT

It seemed cruel—it was cruel—that her prayer should be so utterly denied her—that they should all be killed. But so it fell out.

One by one they came home to her and were laid away in the churchyard of Saint Michael’s, in their pine coffins and faded uniforms, with the honors of war. It was heart-breaking to have to follow them, one by one, to their graves—to the same Dead March in Saul—to the same muffled drums—to the cadenced tramp of soldiers—with the Stars and Stripes for shroud—with all the solemn pomp of war.

She thought only of the beautiful thing in the coffin to which she had given life. And each time she prayed dizzily—iterating it—so that God might perhaps the better hear:

“Our Father, who art in heaven—keep the rest—keep the rest—keep John.”

The last of them died at Gettysburg—in the first day’s fight.

It was only a few miles away, and on the third of July he came home. On the fourth, while cannons were bursting for joy, she was following once more the soldiers to the tune of the Dead March. It was the last. She had grown afraid to pray. But once more, at the open grave, she raised her hands:

“Our Father, who art in heaven—keep John,” she begged, in whispers.

When she got home there was a letter for her. It spoke of the devotion of her dead boys. It was almost as if the writer knew them—as she did. This letter was signed “A. Lincoln,” and read:

“Dear Madam:

“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Pennsylvania that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

“But they are dead!” cried Betsy to the letter. She cared nothing for the “cause” or for “freedom.” They were dead.

VI
GROWING OLD IS ONLY AN IDEA—UNTIL WE KNOW

And then, when the war was quite over, that last pitiful prayer was answered, and John came marching home—from the grand review—with a captain’s straps on his shoulders—a minié ball in his thigh—and a perfectly proper sword—the gift of the United States of America! It is quite certain that John was very proud of the sword—and perhaps even of his limp.

And Betsy was as proud as he—quite. But not of the sword and limp. These, in secret, she hated as much as she could hate. Perhaps I had better say that she was only glad. You may be sure that his glory did not keep her off.

“I don’t care if you were in twenty-one battles. You are only my dear old John.”

“Only your old John,” said the soldier.

“Dear, I said! And—and—you’ve got to make up for all the rest—one multiplied by five, you know—that dear.”

She suddenly sobbed.

“Eh?” said John. Then—“Oh!”

He sobbed, too.

“And, as for that limp—I will cure that, or my name is not Betsy.”

And more sobs.

But for all her trying, he limped the more.

So that long afterward she said:

“John—I haven’t done it, and my name’s still Betsy.”

But there was no more sobbing about it.

“It’s better,” prevaricated John.

“No,” said Betsy, “it ain’t. Something is gone. I can’t do things any more.”

John thought a moment.

“Like when you reach out in the dark for something you know is there and it ain’t and you shiver,” he said then. “I used to do that at night on the ground—reach out for—you!”

“John!” cried Betsy, in her old manner, “I never heard you say so much at one time before—nor so nice. What’s the matter?”

“You don’t say so much,” said John. “I’m evening up now.”

“Yes—yes—yes—dear John!” said Betsy, with a tear, she did not know for what—quite. “I must talk more.”

“We’ve lost something and we’ve gained something—at another place,” John went on. “I don’t know what it is—but it’s something.”

“John, I know, and I’ll tell you.”

She came and knelt at his side and tried to reach his neck with her short arms.

“We’re falling in love again!”

John suddenly held her off and stared.

“By jiminy!”

“Yes. It was so long to wait—and there is nobody but you and me now—and we have got to begin all over again. Don’t you see?” And the tears fell again.

“No! I was always in love with you. No!”

And he was quite stubborn about it.

“Yes!” she cried.

“Yes,” John agreed.

“No!” she laughed.

“No,” laughed John.

After a moment she released herself, and, taking John by the throat in the old fashion, said:

“And, John, we will begin all over again. We’re not old! So there!”

She spread her skirts and whirled around on her toes.

“Not a day older than in ’35,” said John, with glistening eyes.

She flew upon him and took him again by the throat.

“John!” she cried, “that’s a little too much!”

But John was not convinced—though she lifted her yellow hair and showed him where the gray was creeping in.

“But it’s mighty sweet,” she conceded.

They did exactly as they had planned—began all over again. John was as tender with her as he had been after that night of the husking. And Betsy was as devoted to John as she had been in that halcyon time.

“Growing old is just an idea,” said the happy John, one day.

“Oh, of course,” agreed Betsy, busily plaiting withes, “until you know!”

“Why, everything is just as it was thirty years ago—ain’t it, Betsy?”

“John,” laughed Betsy, trying to plunge upon him from her work, “did it ever occur to you that your love-making nowadays consists largely of recalling those other love-makings—in ’35, you know?”

John thought a moment.

“Why, so it is, Betsy—so it is.”

“All imagination.”

“That’s just as good—just as good,” said John, stubbornly. “It’s always new.”

“Just as good,” laughed his wife, “when you don’t know no better—and we don’t, John, do we?”

“No, thank God,” said John, “and I don’t want to.”

“So don’t I,” said his wife, laughing.

“Betsy,” asked John, “do you ever think of that roof any more?”

“Yes,” answered Betsy, trying to be serious, “and we’ll have it some of these days—never fear.”

VII
MAKING BELIEVE BRINGS THINGS

For the next twenty years Betsy made baskets and John went in and out with his pick and shovel. But they earned less and less. And then the owner of their house died and left them to the tender mercy of his heirs. These promptly began to inquire about the arrears of rent.

“I don’t know how much we are back, but I guess it’s a good deal,” smiled Betsy.

John was troubled. “If we’d only kep’ on saving, we might own the house by now, and—”

Betsy put her hand on his mouth—and some of the fingers into it.

“We made better use of it, John, ten thousand times better use of it! John—we bought happiness with it! And they are all dead, now, back there at Saint Michael’s. And there is not a thing to regret—not one. Oh, thank God—thank God! If we had saved that money, there would be something to regret. We would have to remember that one was denied this—the other—that. But we’ll have the roof yet.”

John sniffled and let his arm go gently around her.

“Betsy—forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“Why, John, dear,” said Betsy, smiling again, “in a little while we will not need a house. John! ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’!”

“Yes,” answered John, with a caress, awed by the light in his wife’s pretty face. “Yes—yes.”

“Who would we leave it to when we die?”

“Just so!” cried John.

“And in the mansions our boys will be! And it will be Sunday always.”

When fall came the new owners turned them out—and Betsy’s dainty house-things were given to the new tenant. They went to live in the abandoned out-kitchen of a neighbor, and Betsy made John believe that she had never been quite so happy. And, from making believe, it after a while came to be true. She cried once or twice when John was away—the little place was so bare and ugly. There did not seem any way to make a home of it. But Betsy set to work to try—with only her small hands—and occasionally John’s big ones—and almost no money—and surprised herself. When it was done, she found that she had, somehow, sewn and woven her own happiness into the curtains and carpets and furniture.

It took years to do it. Yet she was happy every hour of the time.

Betsy determined, one day, to celebrate the completion of her work. So when John came home he was met by a glare of light from several borrowed lamps, the smell of flowers gathered by Betsy herself in the fields, and a “dinner!”—as Betsy proudly announced—instead of their usual supper.

John took off his old hat in the midst of it and gazed speechlessly. Then he went back—outside—and wiped again the soles of his boots on the door-mat Betsy had woven. Betsy laughed like a girl and pulled him inside.

“Come! You have got to dance!”

Well—John never could dance. But she managed to make him whirl with her dizzily through the two tiny rooms she had made.

“John! It’s beginning all over again! Going to housekeeping! I’m the little bride. You can be the groom—if you like?”

“Yes,” mused John, very happily, “beginning all over again—going to housekeeping—again. But something—is not—”

The cradle was there—they had always kept it—and John looked at that and laughed guiltily.

“Not that, John—not that, John,” cried Betsy, plunging into his arms with sobs. “Not that—not that—talk about the roof—if you like—anything—but—not—that!”

VIII
THE END OF LIFE IS AS ITS BEGINNING—SIMPLE

Afterward life was again to them much the same. Only they learned to go more and more to the churchyard on Sundays with homely garden flowers in their hands. But, again, they were very happy. John still maintained that they were renewing their youth. Betsy retorted that it was second childhood. For there was now a quaver in John’s voice which Betsy heard but never spoke of, and a tremor in Betsy’s hands which John saw and never mentioned.

The next winter Betsy slipped on the ice and fell. To her surprise she could not get up again. John carried her in and went for the doctor. She had broken her thigh.

She smiled up at the physician very placidly when he shook his head.

“Doctor, you must—must patch me up. John needs me.”

“John!” The doctor turned upon him where he slunk into a corner. John hung his head. Betsy laughed almost joyously.

It was she who answered the doctor’s look.

“He couldn’t git along without me.”

She smiled at John, and John smiled back. The doctor caught them at this.

“In the army?” he asked John.

“Yes,” came from the corner.

“Private?”

“Captain.”

“Oh!—”

He remembered him then. He turned and looked at him.

“You fought!”

John was silent. But Betsy’s face glowed. It was she who answered for him. All about him and the five. It made John blush.

“Hum—wounded?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Three times.”

“Where?”

“Leg—thigh—arm.”

“That what makes you limp?”

“Guess so.”

“Let me look.”

John uncovered.

“Hum—why didn’t you see me long ago?”

“Dunno,” said John.

“Army surgeon. No charge to you.”

John said nothing.

“Ever apply for a pension?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Volunteered.”

“Hell of a reason—hum!” ended the surgeon, turning his back to him and his face to the patient on the bed.

Presently he pulled on his gloves and started for the door. He stopped and looked at John once more.

“Bullet in leg myself. Going to patch you both up. Army surgeon. Entitled to my services. Didn’t apply for pension? You and I are the only two who didn’t. By.”

The doctor did patch them up. But for Betsy there was to be no more work—nor any dancing. The chubby hands could only lie quietly within each other and wither. The agile feet could not lift themselves from the floor unless John helped them.

John put away his pick and shovel.

“I’ll have to learn to make baskets,” said he.

Betsy raised her head from the pillow on her chair to laugh.

“Don’t you think I kin?”

She looked at his hands and laughed again.

“But we’ll have to try—if you’re willing. We got to do something.”

“Oh, I’m willing,” said John, hopefully.

“John!”

Two tears started down her face. John dried them and stroked the soft, withered hands.

“Dear old John—to be my ’prentice!”

IX
GOOD BASKETS MUST KEEP THEIR BOTTOMS

It was true that his wits were dull and his hands clumsy, but there was such pleasure in the learning that John did it very rapidly. And whatever had gone before, and whatever was to come after, they were certain that no part of their lives had been happier than this of John’s apprenticeship at eighty to the trade of basket-making.

But his baskets were certainly clumsy as such hands were likely to make them, and had, besides, a way of losing their handles and bottoms at critical moments, which was, at least, unfortunate.

John discovered, after a while, that every purchase was simply so much charity. And, thus far, they had lived proudly—with the wage-earner’s terror of dependence. One day one of his customers told him, brutally, about the insecurity of the baskets—and John decided at once that he must do something else.

“No, John,” said Betsy, “make baskets. But make them for play—not for use. For the school children. Their baskets do not need strong bottoms.”

John wanted to shout.

“I kin—I kin do that! They like me. The children like me.”

So John entered another phase of his strange life. And none that had preceded it had been more beautiful. The house was always full of children. And he could never be seen on the streets of the town without two or more of them clinging to his hands and the skirts of his old uniform coat. If he happened to meet them coming from school, they would flock after him to his door—one or two—very carefully chosen—to sit on either side of the little invalid’s chair and hear stories the most wonderful outside of story-books. But for the sake of old times Betsy would often have them all in—so that the little rooms were jammed with them—and then they might romp about her as they pleased till John saw that she was tired. Then he would put them all out.

These were the best friends they ever had—the children. But as customers for his wares they were soon supplied and John was idle again. And it was winter—and there was nothing to do and John had never asked for charity and, he had often said, never would.

So there came a day when there was nothing in the house for the white little wife to eat. As for John, he could not have told exactly when he had broken his fast. They said nothing about it to each other—both understood. Betsy even tried to lighten John’s grimness by a pitiful little joke. She thought it would show John how brave she was.

“A drink, John, please. There is plenty of water, is there not?”

“Plenty of water—yes, plenty of water!” said John, in a way that made Betsy tremble. For the first time John was terrible.

She sent him out that afternoon to hunt for work. He came back unsuccessful and with a certain wildness in his eyes.

But there was a supper for them. A stew of meat steamed on the table. John brought it and fed Betsy—wondering without question.

“You, too, John, dearest; you, too.”

Well—John was very hungry and he began to eat. Presently he noticed that Betsy was crying softly. It was a long time before she succumbed to his coaxing. But then she confessed:

“She said I ought to go to the poor-house.”

“Who?” shouted John, rising angrily.

“Mrs. Morrell, who brought the meat.”

John flung the bowl and its contents out of the window. Betsy was awed. She had never seen him like that.

“John!” she coaxed softly.

“That’s what Miller told me. God! Said I wasn’t worth nothing to work no more. I’ll show ’em—I’ll show ’em!”

But he didn’t show them—he could not. Age had come at last, and at last he knew this. He earned nothing—and their hunger went on.

And, one evening, Betsy timidly resumed the hated subject.

“I’ve been thinking about it, John, dear, and she meant it very kind. It is warm there, John, and there is plenty of food. John—”

“My God, Betsy, do you want to go—live on charity—do you at last want to leave me—and live on charity—do you want to separate after sixty years—and live on charity?—Oh, my God!”

“No—no—no! John, let us stay together now until—the end,” said Betsy. “Forgive me. Only I’m such a burden to you—and it is so cold—”

John had another period of savage activity. It brought no work. But the agitation shattered him. He went to bed, and when he rose again his spirit was broken.

“John,” said Betsy to him then, with an angelic light on her face, “when you get a little better we—will go.”

John only looked stern.

“I have thought it all over—it is best.”

“I will not go,” said John, quietly. “I am a soldier!”

“Yes, John, dear, but—”

“Betsy,” asked John, solemnly, “do you want to go?”

He never knew what a hero she became before she answered:

“Yes—John—I—I want—to go. I’m so cold—and so hungry—”

“Very—well,” said John. But his hand shook so that he could not put it to his eyes.

“Just till you get right on your feet again, John, darling, just till you’re quite well. I’m such a burden to you now. We’re such a burden to each other. Just till things are better with you. That will be soon, I know it. Then, John, dear John, you shall come for me! Think of that! It will be another home-coming! Another beginning! Another bride and groom!”

John listened avidly. A new and more youthful light flashed into his face.

“Betsy—do you mean that?”

“Mean it? Every word, John, every word!”

He savagely caught her hands.

“You will come back to me?”

“No,” said Betsy, “you shall bring me back!”

X
THINGS FEEL HEAVIER IN AGE

So, one day, a farm wagon, piled high with straw and pillows, came and took her away. The last thing she said was:

“Dear John! we have lived together sixty years and you never gave me an unkind word. Kiss me! And again! Oh, it’s like ’35, ain’t it? And, John, come for me as soon as things are better with you. And if I can’t do without you that long and send for you—will you come before?”

“Yes,” said John, chokingly. It was all he could say.

Betsy kept her face toward John—then toward the house—then the tallest tree—then the steeple of the church—long after each had successively disappeared from view. Then she bravely turned it toward the poor-house.

And John watched the wagon as it climbed hill after hill and disappeared in valley after valley till it was lost to view.

John tried his pick and shovel again. But they were thick with rust and very heavy. And the wounded doctor had just brought him a crutch—saying that as he was having one made for himself he had also had one made for John—though he could do without it. He smiled a little then and put away forever his old and faithful tools. For a living he did what he could. It was not much, and he and hunger came to be rare intimates.

But that youthful hope which Betsy’s last words had wrought, and its almost savage vigor to do for her, did not depart from John.

After a while something went wrong with his head. He fancied that she was still with him in the little house and always had been. Her dainty old clothing was about everywhere to foster this. One night he dreamed of her—that she was by his side. The dream was so real that he reached out his arms—only to close them on the air. Then he understood for a little that it had all been but a fancy. He lay for a long time shuddering and passing now and then his arms through the empty air—thinking that might have been real and this the fancy. Toward morning a wondrous thought came to him. He remembered that she had said he was to come for her. He was to bring her back. There was to be another beginning—another home-coming—another bride and groom. He did not remember the rest—that he was to wait until his affairs had improved, or until she sent for him.

He pictured it all in the vivid darkness—how he would suddenly appear before her in his Sunday clothes—which meant his best uniform—and say “Come!”

A wondrous voice echoed his own “Come!”

He flung himself out of the bed like a youth. He shaved with great care—he wore no beard and had a clean fresh face—set everything in order in the tiny rooms—pulled down the blinds, locked the door, and, taking up his crutch, started away over the road the wagon had gone to the poor-house.

He paused on the hills and looked backward as Betsy had done. The blinking windows seemed to beckon him back. But he bravely said no to them:

“I ain’t no deserter! I’m coming back—with her—with her. Don’t you understand? With her! Bride and groom again.”

The windows seemed to understand, and stopped beckoning. He waved them a farewell and went on.

It was a long road—forty dusty miles—and hilly. Each hill growing higher and steeper as he approached the city—itself set upon a hill—where the poor-house was. His progress was very slow—sometimes not more than half a mile a day. But he never faltered.

“It’s like climbing Zion’s hill,” said John to himself. “Oh, when she sees me! I shan’t care how many hills there were!”

His bundle was made up in a great red handkerchief, from which his sword protruded, within which was his best uniform. Farm-houses were his sleeping places—but that only. No more than one night for each, though he might have stayed anywhere as long as he wished.

“‘It’s like climbing Zion’s hill,’ said John to himself”

“I’m going to bring her—her, you know, home. Bride and groom. She said it. I heard her voice in the night.”

And this was always sufficient reason for refusing the dear, insidious hospitality pressed everywhere upon him.

If night came and there was no farm-house near, he would nestle in the straw of a wayside stack, under the stars, damp with the dew, to rise with the sun in his face. He liked that, and could go on without breakfast. It was all very beautiful.

His great climax grew upon him mile by mile, until it was the only thing he had in his poor old head.

“She will be sitting this way—with her hands in her lap, like she always sits now,” he would say to himself, “thinking of me. I expect she’s thinking of me all the time. I’ll shave and put on my uniform and my sword, and suddenly appear before her. Attention!—you know. Only I’ll not say that—so’s not to frighten her. Mebby she’ll be reading her Bible. Then she’ll not see me till I’m right on top of her. Then I’ll say, soft, so’s not to frighten her—about this a—way—‘B—E—T—S—Y!’” He whispered it lovingly. “And she’ll just say ‘John!’” This was a sharp cry of joy.

He never got further than this. It did not seem necessary. What could be better? What could be beyond that?

His journey came to an end suddenly—as it seemed to John. It made him gulp on something in his throat. One morning the spires of the city lay close before him as if they had been conjured out of a dream. There it was against the pink clouds, within the morning mists, glowing, like the City of God as he had fancied it. He stood and gazed upon it, awed and bewildered. He had not thought of it as beautiful. To him it was only the city of the poor-house. Perhaps Betsy would not wish to leave a place so beautiful.

He bravely cast out the unworthy thought. She would leave any place for him. Heaven itself. With his faith renewed he went up into the city of the spires.

XI
BUT THE POOR-HOUSE MAY BE ONE OF THE MANSIONS IN OUR FATHER’S HOUSE

And there he found the first unkindness of his long journey. No one offered him a place to sleep or a bite to eat. And there he could not see the sun when it rose in the morning. And what had become of the glories of the city he had seen against the clouds? This one was not glorious.

On the third day he found the poor-house. It was a splendid building on the top of a hill. Before he quite reached it he did as he had planned. There was a beautiful wood back of the place. Here, under the trees, he shaved and put on his uniform. There was a spot of rust on the sword. He smiled as he thought how Betsy would have chided him for that. He found some soft earth and rubbed it off. The old clothing, and everything else, he put back into the red handkerchief and hid the bundle under the roots of the tree. Then he marched up to the great and beautiful door—without his crutch—every inch a soldier once more.

A uniformed official led him in, and at last he was in the presence of his wife. She was dead. Her hands were folded within each other as he himself had often folded them. There were—on head and breast—the dainty cap and kerchief which she herself had long provided against her burial. On her dear face was the peace that passeth understanding. Indeed, she smiled up at him as he looked.

Then John’s heart stopped. At Betsy’s side he died. And so quietly that they who stood near never heard the sound of his gentle old voice.

They sleep together—Betsy and John. Not at Saint Michael’s with their five boys. Of them nothing was known at the poor-house. Their graves are in the burying-ground of the poor. There is a cheap stone upon which somebody has carved only their names and this text:

“IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS”

because Betsy’s Bible, when they took it up, fell open at that scripture—and her trembling finger had deeply marked the words as it followed them day after day to aid her dimming sight.

THE SIREN[^[2]]

I  BRASSID

They tell yet, on the porches of the Crazy-Quilt House,—though it is two years,—how savage Brassid met the laughing Sea-Lady, and how, at last, he adored her laughter more the more she laughed at him, and how she loved his savagery more the more savage he was to her.

And, then, on to the consequences of that laughter and that savagery, which you are to know at the end.

Mrs. Mouthon—the lady who uses snuff—insists that it was all pretence: that Brassid was not savage—in his room, and that Miss Princeps never laughed—in her room. Mrs. Mouthon’s room was between theirs.

Nevertheless, Miss Carat, who has the one deaf ear, contends that it is absurd, absolutely absurd. For, she argues, why should they have pretended, in the first place, and why should they not, if they had liked, in the last place? But, then, Miss Carat, the other five first-class boarders whisper, always opposes anything which proceeds from Mrs. Mouthon.

It seems that Brassid, weary and seeking seclusion, arrived on the last train of a Wednesday night. The man who carried his bag up from the little station told him that the Crazy-Quilt House was a sanatorium for women with head-trouble. It appeared that Brassid and the porter, who was also many other things at the hotel, would be the only men in the house—a state of affairs which immediately created a subtle camaraderie between the two men, though the porter was colored.

“Call me in time for the first train up to-morrow morning,” said Brassid, as the friendly porter dragged himself out of his room.

“It goes at six o’clock, sir,” warned the porter, perhaps wishing to detain him a little longer, for already the porter liked Brassid amazingly. Did I mention that every one did this, in spite of his ferocity?

“No matter,” said Brassid, shivering at the thought of the unearthly hour—and of the ladies with head-trouble—Brassid, who composed poems in bed until ten in the morning!

“All right, sir,” said the porter, as if warning Brassid that he would regret it.

However, that was why Brassid appeared at the dinner-table in a dinner-coat—because he knew that the invalid ladies would be there—and that thus it would be easier for him.

There were six, and one vacant place—opposite. The lady on his left put up her lorgnon in haste. The one at the top of the table put something like a pepper-box into her ear and leaned to listen.

“Lovely weather!” said Brassid.

“Rheumatic weather!” said the lady with the pepper-box.

“It’s no such thing!” said the lady who took snuff. “It’s asthmatic!”

Something dropped with a small clatter into Brassid’s plate. The lady on his left flung her lorgnon to her eyes. Miss Carat jammed her pepper-box to her ear. Some one laughed, then checked it.

An old locket, in the fashion of a heart, lay in Brassid’s plate. A bit of ribbon gave evidence of some severed attachment. Brassid was hopelessly fitting back to its place a flake of blue enamel.

He tried to discourage the interest in his keepsake by covering it with his napkin. Then he looked up. The vacant seat was occupied, and the lady was trying to smother her laughter.

Brassid got red and crunched the napkin in a way which said plainly, “So it was you who laughed!”

She did it again.

He restored the piece of napery with a brave nonchalance, and took up the locket.

The lady’s eyes retorted as plainly as her lips could have done, “Too late!”

He remembered precisely how they did it,—out of the tops of their firm white lids,—with a movement which was personal, a fascination which was irresistible. He was to read other speeches of these eyes, often repeated. But he was to read this one only once more.

Well, Brassid broke his guard and laughed with her.

“It is no laughing matter,” said the lady with the lorgnon, fixing the lady who had laughed with its stare.

It was a critical moment: the lady who laughed might have retorted. But nothing further happened—except to Brassid. He was falling in love.

“I think it is,” he said in her defence. And he said it with all Brassid’s savagery.

“Oh, well, it’s your souvenir,” said Mrs. Mouthon, odiously.

“It is,” said Brassid.

He sprung the little case open and showed them a savage face much like his own. But there was a uniform with a high collar.

“My grandfather, the Indian-fighter. I wear it around my neck.”

And the lady opposite guiltily put her head down, permitting Brassid to see the loveliest of blond crowns, and, now and then, the edge of her smile; again, almost a laugh.

And so Brassid fell in love.

They cross-examined him with the precision and directness of barristers. He informed them that he came from the city, and who his parents were, and their parents, and theirs, all of whom seemed to be known to some of the six. The lady opposite kept her head down, but the smile came and went, nearer and nearer to laughter.

“Do you intend making some stay with us, sir?” inquired the lady with the one deaf ear.

“It is quite possible,” said Brassid, and the lady opposite barely restrained her inclination to look up. “It is such a delightful little place, and the swimming must be fine.”

Now Miss Princeps did look up. She seemed a little startled, and, then, did Brassid detect a bit of pleasure for her in his announcement? At the same moment all of the six looked toward Miss Princeps and detected her. Perhaps they more than detected her.

“Bill” (that was the porter) “said that you were going up on the morning train.”

Brassid laughed.

“Do you, then, swim?” asked Mrs. Mouthon.

“I am a very good swimmer,” declared Brassid.

Again Miss Princeps looked up, sharply now, not caring that the six again stared at her. She inspected Brassid with some care. She seemed satisfied.

“Miss Princeps swims,” said Miss Carat.

Now the eyes of the lady opposite met the eyes of Brassid in a frank stare. Brassid blushed, as we do when we think we have overstated our accomplishments in the presence of some one who knows.

“There is nothing the matter with her,” one of the invalids said, referring to head-troubles, and Brassid answered with tremendous conviction:

“No!”

Before the meal was over the lady with the pepper-box asked Brassid’s first name, and formally presented him, including the lady opposite. But it was only as she rose to go and swept the table with a little smiling bow that Brassid really saw her superbness.

When she had left the room he found himself still on his feet staring out of the door whence she had vanished. They caught him in a sigh.

“Sit down!” commanded the lady who took snuff.

And they kept Brassid there and bullied him till he wanted to get up and fight the lot of them man-fashion.

They informed him severally that she was an actress; that she was a widow with a deformed child of which she was ashamed; that she was a deserted wife; that she had once been married to a very wicked man of title; that she was “strange”—sat for hours on the beach alone, sang, swam, walked, did everything but flock with them.

“God bless her!” said Brassid.

The lady who snuffed arose.

“Lord help you!” she said grimly.

“Eh?” said Brassid.

“What were those women who lured a man into a cave and made a swine of him?”

Her appeal was to Brassid.

“I suppose you mean the sirens.”

“Yes, that was their name. That woman is a siren!”

“And you’re in love with her!” charged the lady who was deaf, in a thick voice.

“In love!” laughed Brassid. “Ha, ha, ha!”

“Yes, ha, ha, ha!” mimicked the lady who snuffed.

“I never saw her till to-day,” said Brassid.

“Neither did that other man see the sirens until he passed them on his way home.”

This convicted him before the six.

And, in the solitude of his room, it went far toward convicting him before himself, though he still laughed his hollow ha, ha, ha!

“Love at first sight! You! Old Brassid! Ha, ha, ha!”

He was speaking to the gentleman who faced him in the mirror.

At that moment she passed his door. She was softly singing:

“They sailed away

In a gallant bark.”

He had seen her but once, yet he knew the rustle of her silken skirts!

The next morning at ten Brassid was composing poems in bed, quite as he did at home—about her! He hummed and sang the things he fetched from within in a fashion which lent color to Mrs. Mouthon’s theory.

Some one knocked on his door.

“Come in!” sang Brassid, happily.

But it was only the colored porter.

He was winking his eyes rapidly, fancying that in that way he looked penitent while he did not feel so. The rumor of Brassid’s infatuation had reached the porter.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the porter.

“Oh! What for, Bill?” So, suddenly had their comradeship grown to first names! “Everybody is sorry now and then. Brace up!”

The porter stared.

“The six-o’clock train, sir.”

Now Brassid stared.

“I forgot it, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Brassid, and he gave the porter a dollar for forgetting the six-o’clock train! He had forgotten it more than the porter.

II
ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

They met more formally, presently, on the bottom of the sea. Brassid plunged in the moment he arrived at the surf, and went out and under with a long, strong push. He saw a face on the bottom. It stared uncannily up at him through the wavering green water. Brassid followed it and dragged it breathlessly to the surface. There she laughed at him.

“I—I—thought you were d-dead!” gasped Brassid.

“Not at all,” smiled the Sea-Lady.

“Why, how long were you under?”

“Not long.”

“It seemed as if you had been there all day!”

“My grandfather was a whaler,” said the Sea-Lady, winking the water out of her eyes solemnly, as if that explained her.

“My grandfather was an Indian-fighter,” cried Brassid, joyously, which was his way of saying that the one was as intelligible as the other.

Her laughter broke loose.

“Look at me!” commanded Brassid, suddenly, with that savagery which he had from his grandfather. “You are shamming—and doing it beautifully. You were in distress down there! And if I hadn’t come along—”

But by that time she was doing exactly what Brassid had asked—looking at him with the most wonderful eyes of blue Brassid had seen since his mother died. Brassid funked ingloriously. Think of it!

“The lady with the lorgnon has seen us, and is coming,” she warned.

“Yes!”

He was frightened, too.

“Let us swim a little.”

“Yes.”

They plunged in.

“Be careful,” said Brassid.

“My grandfather was a whaler,” she laughed back as she raced away to sea.

“Oh, you can swim!” he exclaimed joyously.

“Can you?” she laughed.

“A little,” he answered—more carefully now.

“Come!”

After that she admitted Brassid to a precarious intimacy, based upon swimming. In the sea she was everything Brassid could wish. On the land she was not.

“She’s like a fish out of water,” jested the lady who took snuff.

“Do not be discouraged,” shouted she of the pepper-box. “I do not think she knows yet that you’re courting her.”

All the ladies cackled.

“Who said I was courting her?” demanded Brassid, with ferocity.

The ladies laughed again. And when Miss Princeps came down they surrounded her and told her Brassid’s delightful joke.

“I’ve warned him,” said one, “that you’re a siren—one of those ladies who—”

Well, it was his first comradeship, and it happened to be an extraordinarily perfect one. It was so very blessed that, to use the words of Mrs. Paradigm (she was the lady with the lorgnon), he went crazy over it. And perhaps if you had known Brassid’s Sea-Lady, you would not have wondered—you might have commended him for going crazy. You remember that she had the eyes of Brassid’s blessed mother.

“I never hoped to see them on earth again,” he said to the face in the mirror.

Oh, she was rich and splendid and fragrant and melodious—I am using Brassid’s book of adjectives—and altogether more lovely in every detail of herself than any one else on earth! And he had constantly the ecstatic feeling that he had discovered her, really; but he never did. For the Sea-Lady was unlike any one he had ever known. He literally knew that she was wonderful in every way that a lover could wish a sweetheart to be wonderful, yet there was not a single admission to go upon. Whenever she caught herself showing Brassid her heart,—and she would have been fond of showing this to Brassid if he had been a woman, perhaps,—she went to cover—and asked him to swim! And I am glad to think that that is the only reason he never saw her heart—never really discovered her.

Until that last day—that second time the eyes said, “Too late!”

And of that I am now to tell you.

III
SHE MAY HAVE HAD BROTHERS

“By Jove!” said Brassid, that day, as he watched her conquest of the choppy waves, “you are something nautical! I do believe that your ancestors wore scales!”

“Oh, Brassid! Thank you! Think of having such a crest as that! Eight carp gules! And the nearest I can come to it is the whaler! Brassid, in the sea I almost love you! And when you really begin to ‘court’ me and feel that you must propose, do it in the water, to the diapason of the waves, in the sight and hearing of my scaly relatives!”

“Hanged if I do!” said Brassid. “You have got to hear that; but it will be in your own house.”

“In evening dress?”

“Very likely.”

“On your knees?”

“On my knees.”

“Horrid, Brassid!”

“It is your fate.”

“But why, Brassid? Why must it be? Isn’t this lovely enough?” Miss Princeps mourned.

“Because I love you,” said he, stoutly.

“But, Brassid dear, that’s no reason.”

“It is. Every man who loves a woman must propose to her—if for no other reason than to be rejected. Then and then only he will see his finish. And I won’t see mine even then. And, to show you that you like me very much, at least, let me remind you that you quite unconsciously called me ‘dear’ just now.”

“Brassid, my grandfather was a whaler.”

“Well, what on earth has that to do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You love me—that’s what it means.”

“Oh!”

“Yes!”

“I may have brothers—whom I call dear—and—so—get used to it—”

“Have you?” demanded Brassid, with the ferocity that came and went so quickly.

“No, sir,” she answered obediently.

“Oh, you are the most delicious being on earth!” laughed he. “And I won’t wait till we get to town!”

But Brassid had forgotten to tread, and got a generous mouthful of salt water.

“Brassid,” wailed the lady, “I’m sorry for you; but you are punished for taking advantage of me at a time and in an element when I almost love you.”

“Don’t you dare to pity me! I’m not done with you!” spluttered Brassid. “This is my chance—you said it—in—the—sea.”

“In fun! Only in fun!” she cried. “Can’t you see a joke?”

Before he got his chance she said:

“Brassid, we are far enough. You are tired. Let us go back.”

“I won’t!”

“Why?”

“You are mine out here. I am going to keep you—out here.”

“Would you come and live with me in the Dragon King’s palace beneath the sea, where it is always wet?”

“Yes. Whither thou goest I will go.”

“Brassid, I am going home. You will not be restrained.”

“And I’ll follow you. The only way to get rid of me is to marry me.”

“Then I will never, never marry you, Brassid,” said the Sea-Lady, leaving him that riddle, which he never solved. For it was the last day, and presently it would be the second time that her eyes of blue had said, “Too late!”

IV
BUT SHE WAS BEST OF ALL

She pulled him out of the water, and they bathed in the sun. Not a ship sailed the sea.

His voice spoke first, as if he dreamed—a fragment—“But you are best of all!”

She looked up and found his eyes upon her. With her own she questioned him.

“Nothing is in sight, nothing can be heard, but what God has made. This!” He waved his hand at the immaculate sky. “That!” The limitless sea. “The earth!” He pointed where it stretched away from them to the vanishing-point. “You!”

“No—you!” she laughed.

“And it is all good. God alone knows how good. But,” he repeated, while his gaze was fixed upon her upturned face, “you are best of all!”

She kept her eyes upon him in wonder; for if he had not solved the Sea-Lady, she had not solved him. And this was very strange from savage Brassid.

“Yes; God made nothing so perfect as a perfect woman—you!”

“You think me perfect?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Brassid!”

But something clanged in her brain.

“I love you!”

“Don’t, Brassid!” she begged. “You have touched to-day what you have never touched before, what no one has—don’t!”

It was a mighty occasion; but she would not have it. She fought it with her best weapon—levity. She laughed. She made him laugh, and it was done.

“Oh, Brassid,” she sighed, “forgive me! But it is too lovely. And afterward we could not swim together any more.”

“Why not?”

“Why, Brassid! Who ever heard of a rejected lover taking the same walks with his late beloved under the same trees by the light of the same moon?”

“Walks?” questioned Brassid, dully.

“Our swims are the same as walks to other lo—”

“Aha!” cried Brassid, “you almost said ‘lovers’!”

“Did I? How stupid of me!”

“Do you mean to say that you absolutely and positively refuse me?” shouted he, belligerently.

“Certainly not, my dear Brassid,” she hurried forth. “I can’t refuse what you haven’t offered. And, dear Brassid,” she went on caressingly, “I know that you won’t offer—because—because—”

“Out with it!” cried Brassid, still in his ferocity.

“Because I like you so—to swim with!”

“And when there is no swimming?”

“No Brassid—”

“I tell you there will be!” he threatened.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it; for I shouldn’t like this world so well without its Brassid—since I know him. But, Brassid dear,—there! the whaler again!—why must you marry me?”

“Because it’s every woman’s business to be married.”

“But not every man’s, then? So that I might marry some one else, and not bother you with—”

“That is just the trouble!” cried the savage in him again. “You will marry some one else if I let you get away from me.”

“As if I were game!”

“You are. The noblest game on earth.”

“Brassid!”

“Yes. You couldn’t go long uncaptured. How have you escaped? All the men you knew must have been blind, deaf, dumb.”

“Ah, well,” Miss Princeps sighed, “if one must be married some time or other, thank God that there are Brassids! But who ever heard of two married people swimming together!”

“We will,” still threatened Brassid.

“We?”

“Yes, we.”

“It doesn’t sound badly, Brassid.”

“Now that’s better. For you know that, though I’m a poor enough sort, no one has ever adored you as I do, and that you—yes, you—were never such a comrade with any one else.”

“Why, Brassid!”

“Isn’t it so? Answer me!”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

They laughed together.

“Please don’t be cross, Brassid dear, just because I can’t marry you! I’ll keep on calling you ‘dear’ if you won’t.”

V
HIS GRANDFATHER’S COURAGE MADE HER WANT TO LOVE HIM

In the sea again, whither she dragged him after that, far from land, as they looked back at the people on the beach:

“Before you came,” laughed the girl, “I had all the fun to myself. They would follow me with their glasses, expecting me to throw up my arms and call for help. The hotel man actually bought a rope with straps and buckles and things on the end to save me. They used to bring it down every time I went in. Now Bill uses it to pull the trunks up. And no one ever minds us. See, not a soul is looking this way! Brassid, it was lovely of you to come. You are”—she laughed, and by a deft stroke came so close as to touch him—“both my chaperon and palladium. Of course I suppose if we should ever get into trouble I would have to save you. My grandfather was a whaler. But back there they have the most beautiful confidence in you, just because you are a man. I am not pleased with you in that, Brassid. It is false pretence. I shall let you save yourself—remember.”

“I wouldn’t allow you to save me.”

“What! You ungrateful—Brassid! I can swim twice as far as you can. But I’m glad to hear that.”

“When I was taught to swim, my teacher dinned into my ears that I was never to forget when I went out that I had to come back. See?”

For reply she raced away from him.

“My grandfather was a whaler. I wasn’t taught to go back.”

He followed as lustily until he had caught her. They laughed splendidly.

“My grandfather,” he laughed, “the Virginia ranger, you remember, was too proud to call for help when he fought his last fight within a hundred yards of the pickets of his own regiment.”

“Brassid, I love that!” she cried breathlessly, going to his side. “What happened to him?”

“He was killed. But when they found him he had five dead Indians to his credit, while his hands were clutched upon the throat of another.”

“That’s why you adore him, isn’t it? Otherwise you would probably never have heard of him. That is what makes us live in the memories of those who love us—just that one little thing, courage!”

“No. There is another and greater thing,” said Brassid.

She looked up in her questioning way.

He smiled affectionately.

“Love,” said Brassid.

She shook her head:

“Courage.”

“Love,” he insisted.

“Let us put them both together,” she said, “courage and love.”

“Love and courage,” he acquiesced.

“You for love, I for courage.”

Brassid watched her glowing young face and her strong young arms, as they struck out, in a new wonder. He had not yet solved the lovely Sea-Lady.

She went on with dilated nostrils:

“Say, Brassid, that makes me want to love you. An ancestor like that! Oh, it beats the whaler! That’s why I speak so often of him. It needed courage to be a whaler. Brassid, you never were so near winning me—isn’t that what you men call it?—as right now. Go on, Brassid, about your Indian-fighter!”

“My grandfather probably would have won you,” sighed Brassid.

“No; you. You are like him. I knew it from the first. Why didn’t you tell me that at first? You would do as he did—if there were Indians.”

“And what would you do?”

“As your grandfather did, Brassid—if there were Indians.”

He retreated a little from her.

“Maybe I do love love a little, Brassid dear; but I adore the courage that dies without weakening—rather than weaken. I can’t help it. It was born in me. I wouldn’t do it. And if your grandfather had called for help, I should have hated him—and you,” she laughed.

And, after a silence, she said again, as if that was what she had been thinking about:

“Brassid, I love courage more than love.” And again:

“Brassid, your name is Courage.”

VI
HER ANCESTORS WORE SCALES

“For immediate evidence of my pusillanimity,” laughed Brassid, “let us return. We have never been half so far as this. And while you are a mermaiden, I am only a walrus.”

“Must we go back?”

“No,” laughed Brassid.

“Then let us go on and on and on forever! Brassid, I am mad to-day. That about the Indian-fighter did it. And if you knew how close—close—you are—why—come! Out there where it sparkles! It fascinates—calls to me. Oh, dear Brassid, perhaps my ancestors did wear scales! Come! Out there ask for—anything!”

She gave him, there in the water, his first caress—only a touch, after all.

Brassid’s tongue was loosed. He talked on almost in strophes.

And she answered presently:

“Brassid dear, that sounds like the big love. I wouldn’t have any other—if I had to have it at all. I wish I did love you. Oh, not so much for your sake as mine! I begin to feel, to see, to hear, what it is. Brassid, some day I shall demand it.”

“And you shall have it.”

“But not—now—Brassid dear! Not—to-day! Please!”

“Look here,” said he, in his ferocity, “you do love me—and you are going to marry me!”

“No, no, no! Brassid, really, I don’t love you. Not a bit—yet. It is courage—courage. But out here—to-day—Brassid, I like you—courage or no courage, I’ll confess that much—I like you a lot.” Then, presently, “Brassid, do you really think I love you?”

He nodded.

“Why don’t you speak? It is very impolite to nod a reply to such an important—question. I can’t—marry—you—away—out—here.”

They faced each other, and knew that they were out of breath.

“Out there is a bar. I have been watching it. We can rest there.”

But Brassid did not touch her to help.

Presently they reached it. Neither could have gone twenty yards further. Brassid turned and looked shoreward. Something suddenly gripped his heart. The Crazy-Quilt House was a distant blur against the horizon. There were people on the beach, but they were as ants. He kept her face seaward. A ship, hull down, was sailing from them.

“And presently, when we are quite rested, we shall go home.”

“I suppose so,” she said petulantly. “But, oh, it has been so lovely to-day!”

“But I am hungry.”

“Yes. Come.”

Once more he kept her eyes seaward by pointing out that the ship was coming about.

“Brassid,” she laughed, “to-morrow we shall go out to that ship!”

“Yes,” he smiled.

She had come very close to him. She was dancing on her toes upon the bar. The tide was running in rapidly. The sun was overhead in all its September glory. She held by his arms and danced. Her hair was confined under a pale-green scarf, save where it escaped. Below in the green water he could see her loveliness foreshortened.

“Brassid, you are staring at me. Do you see the scales?

“Why are you so quiet—now?

“Brassid, I can touch bottom no longer. See! I must be in your arms! That is my only excuse—I am tired. Aha!”

She laughed gloriously.

“Brassid—dear—good—luck—to—you!” she whispered.

He kissed her.

“Brassid, what does that mean?”

“That you are engaged to me—”

“Brassid, I don’t mind being engaged—that much—out here—”

He kissed her again.

“Yes,” she said. “But remember that I do not love you, and that I shall never marry you. It will be quite different when we land. I heard the snuff lady say that we must be engaged, or it would be very improper to be so much alone—out—here. So now you may tell her that—we—are engaged—that everything is proper—and you needn’t say that it is only a little.”

She stopped to laugh again.

“Oh, Brassid, it is glorious! And you are lovely. And I have everything I want now—since we are engaged a little. And if I ever marry any one it will be some one just like you, who can swim, and has the big love—and courage. But I won’t love you, Brassid, I won’t. You should not expect that.”

“No,” laughed happy Brassid.

“Kiss me!” she commanded. “And laugh!”

Brassid did both.

VII
STRANGE THAT LOVE SHOULD MAKE ONE AFRAID

The fierce inrush of a wave swept him from his feet. She spun around with a little cry. Then she saw what Brassid had seen and had kept from her. Fear touched the heart which had never feared before.

“Brassid,” she whispered, “I did not know that we had come so far!”

Brassid tried to laugh.

“The tide will help us.”

“Brassid, you kept me here—you kept me from looking—so that I might rest—and be—strong?”

“I kept you here,” said Brassid, “to make you mine.”

“Brassid,” she whispered, “why did you do so splendid a thing? Dreadful, too! I am afraid to drown now. I wasn’t before.”

“Why are you afraid now?”

“Because then I should never see you again. That is what made the little fear you saw. It all came in a flash. I know. But I am not—afraid—not now.”

“Not now! My love!”

But he saw that panic had followed fear, that every nerve had slackened, that every muscle was unstrung. She swam, panting now,—he had never seen her do that,—and for a while conquered fear. She kept at his side. Now and then she touched him, and always she watched him piteously.

“Brassid—you are stronger—than I thought—stronger than I—as a man ought to be. I am—glad.”

“Yes,” gasped Brassid, “I am strong—and you are brave—”

“Brassid, I don’t mind being saved by you.”

“I should think not.”

“We will not forget the—Indian-fighter—Brassid.”

“Nor the whaler.”

“Yes; I want to live—to be—your—wife—Brassid.”

“My wife!”

Then was silence; nothing but the beating of their breath.

“Brassid—dear—if we do not—get home—stay with me! I do not want—to—stay out here—alone! Oh! Alone! Brassid—will you—stay with me—no—matter—no matter—”

“No matter—what!”

Perhaps it was wrong to say that. But his love was what he had called it—the big love. She gave up.

“Then—beloved—if you—will stay—with—me—”

She could even smile at him.

“The Indian-fighter—the whaler!” pleaded Brassid.

“Yes.”

She responded, and again and again responded. But he saw her first stroke fail. Each of his own cost what seemed a life.

“I am too—tired—Brassid.”

“Courage!” gasped Brassid.

“Yes; once more. To be your wife!”

They swam silently.

“Brassid—I am thinking—of all the dear things you—said. I didn’t notice some of them then. But now—as the drowning do—they are all—very—sweet.”

“You are not drowning,” said Brassid, with his last ferocity.

“It is so strange—that love—should make—one—afraid! I never was—afraid—until I loved you—Brassid—Brassid! Until I—loved—you!”

Brassid put his arm under her to float her. As he did so she sank away from him.

“Can’t—Brassid—dear,” she whispered. “I—am—too—tired—too—tired—”

He saw the dear face with the green water between them. The sun made it glorious—piteous.

“Too late!” said the eyes, as they had said it that first night—he could read it now as plainly as then. And another smile, as then. Her eyes kept upon him. She was quite still. Her arms opened to him. They closed about him, and once more Brassid followed the lovely Sea-Lady to the bottom.

THE LOADED GUN[^[3]]

I  THREE GENTLEMEN OF PHILADELPHIA

At three o’clock in the morning, Gast, McGill, and Ravant were going down Twentieth street, in the vicinity of Walnut street. They were locked together in the fashion of a Roman phalanx. And even then their going was unsteady. With the memory of his classical studies somewhat revived, Ravant repeated Cæsar’s commendation of the Roman formation.

A little later, and a little further down the street, where lived many of the city’s elect, they were protesting in over-vociferous melody that they would not go home till morning.

“Make it midday, for the sake of ver-sim-ili-tude,” begged Gast, breathless with the word, “for it is morning now. Behold!”

And thereupon he also remembered the invocations to the rising sun, in which the ancients abound, and produced one—according to his memory:

“Aurora leaped upon the nether hills

And flung a kiss to Bacchus—’twas a day!”

The officer on the corner of the square came and looked on amicably.

His applause made McGill realize that the voices of his comrades, unlike his own, had never excelled in melody. He, therefore, attached himself to a lamp-post, and, in the fashion of a precentor, proposed to instruct them in the difficulties of “Annie Laurie.”

But, in attaching himself to the lamp-post, he had detached himself from the critical right of the phalanx, which now floundered dismally and then incontinently disintegrated. The officer of the peace secured Ravant and Gast and anchored them to McGill—and “Annie Laurie” went terribly on.

It would have been hard enough to endure if it had not been mixed with liquors. But since it was so mixed it was not wonderful that anathema was belched at them from the windows of that halcyon neighborhood, and that they were then slammed violently shut.

But they were hardly prepared for a gun-shot in their direction.

“That’s right,” complained McGill; “if you can’t reform ’em, shoot ’em!”

“Mac, that man’s a pil-os-per,” argued Gast. “For, lo! these many years the sover-eign people have sought a cure for the drink evil. Well, he has found it. Shoot ’em. Eh, Ravey?”

Ravant said nothing. And now they awoke to the understanding that he had grown heavy between them.

A cab passed. The driver, an experienced nighthawker, drew up to them.

“Right this time,” said Gast. “This jag is going home imperially in a cab. It’ll be about all I’ll be able to do to walk my own to my happy home.”

The officer assisted in getting Ravant into the cab.

But suddenly his manner changed to savagery. They were under the direct light of the corner electric.

“Which of you did this?” he demanded.

Blood slowly trickled from a wound in Ravant’s head.

Gast had a drunken inspiration.

“That gun!” he whispered.

The officer caught upon this.

“Where was it fired from?”

This none of them in the least knew.

The officer took McGill and Gast to the station-house, where they were ignominiously searched. Ravant went to the hospital in a cab.

Presently, in a lucid interval, Ravant signed an affidavit setting forth that it was neither McGill nor Gast who had fired the shot. Upon this his two companions were released “under surveillance.”

And this was so odious to Gast that he swore to find out who it was had fired the shot.

II
AN OUNCE OF WHISKEY OR AN OUNCE OF BRAINS

The moment Ravant awoke to sanity at the hospital he demanded a drink of whiskey.

“The doctor has forbidden it,” said the nurse.

“Why?” shouted Ravant.

“Your head. He thinks it would take you much longer to get well—perhaps prevent your recovery altogether.”

“Call him!” Still in Ravant’s terrible voice. “I guess it’s my own head. And if I’d rather have an ounce of whiskey—more or less—than an ounce of brains—more or less—it’s my business and none of his.”

The little, frightened nurse did what he asked, and Ravant said to the doctor very much what he had said to the nurse. And the doctor answered him precisely what the nurse had answered.

“But,” he laughed in addition, “your head is certainly your own, and you are certainly sane enough to decide what you want done with it, though it is rather contrary to Dunglison’s ethics to let you. It doesn’t matter greatly either way, though. How much are you in the habit of taking?”

“All I can buy,” snarled Ravant.

The doctor laughed again and wrote a prescription for an ounce of whiskey.

“You don’t care whether I live or die, do you?” asked Ravant, odiously.

“Oh, quite as much as you do!” answered the doctor, with a certain jolly contempt for such a man. Then, to the nurse:

“I don’t think it will be necessary for me to see your patient again. Take care that he gets all he needs. My original instructions will do till he is discharged.”

“You don’t care either,” challenged Ravant, when the doctor had gone.

“Yes—I care—very much,” said the brave little nurse.

Ravant stared, then said:

“Well—hurry that whiskey here!”

And, presently, she brought it. Ravant saw only the hand which offered it to his famished soul. It trembled. As he took the glass he followed the arm up to the nurse’s face. That was very pale. When she was certain that he would drink it, she gasped and then choked down a bit of a sob.

“Now, what’s the matter with you?” cried Ravant, with brutal irritation.

“Noth—nothing,” faltered the nurse.

“You lie,” said Ravant. “I told you that it is my own head. Why don’t you want me to drink it?”

“Drink it!” begged the nurse, now in terror of him. “Please do!”

“I won’t! You’re both too dam’ anxious!”

He flung the frail glass against the wall, where it was broken. Then he turned his back upon the nurse, and, gripping the iron rods of his bed, bent them until they doubled and parted. He slept a little presently—breathing like a wounded beast. When he woke the little nurse was wiping up the spilled liquor. The terrible fragrance infested his very soul.

“Open the window!” Ravant shouted. “You are torturing me!”

The girl did this.

“Why did you make me smell the dam’ stuff?”

Then, a little more gently, before she could answer:

“Thank you. I can’t stand the smell of it—not the smell.”

The nurse laid a brave hand on his.

“I guess you’re the right sort,” he said hoarsely. “Put it there!”

He gripped the hand of the nurse as he would have done that of a man.

Afterward Ravant watched the girl as she “went about doing good” for him—as he gibed it. She tried to keep out of his vision.

“What in the devil are you about?” he commanded. “I want to look at you! It does me good—to look at you!”

She came, with a pink face, where he could see her.

“If it does you good—why, look at me!”

She tried to do it lightly—pose there—but her bosom heaved. Ravant saw this.

“‘I guess you’re the right sort,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Put it there!’”

“Yes, I’ve stopped guessing. You are the right sort—inside. And you’re not half as ugly outside as I thought you at first. Or else you’ve grown prettier. I think it’s that. I suppose they make it a point to hire only ugly girls for nurses. Else the patients would marry ’em as fast as they could gather ’em in, and there would never be any nurses. But you’ve fooled ’em! Look in the glass!”

It was useless to resist what had now become affectionate brutality, and she did this. It was true that there was a glow in her hollow cheeks.

“Thank you!”

“By the Lord, you nearly laughed!” said Ravant, with entire seriousness. “Say—I’m going to like you. And I want you to try to like me. If I ever ask for whiskey again, don’t you give it to me, no matter if I curse you up hill and down dale. And I’ll try not to ask for it.”

The nurse stopped something which would have been a sob at maturity.

“But for God’s sake, don’t cry,” Ravant went on. “I hate women who cry. And I’m not hating you—I see that already.”

“I will not cry!” pledged the nurse.

“I believe you,” said Ravant. “Put it there. I won’t drink!”

And for the second time they shook hands.

III
CALLING A MAN A PIG

“And yet,” mused Ravant, “I make you cry!”

There was an unwonted softness in his voice.

“I’m sorry I’m such a brute—I am a good deal of a brute—ain’t I?”

When she did not answer he shouted at her suddenly:

“Ain’t I?”

“Yes,” said the frightened nurse.

“And I’m a pig, too. That’s what the doctor called me the other day when he left, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I heard him. And he’s right, too—though not so bully as you, at saying it.”

“The doctor is mistaken,” braved the girl. “I wouldn’t say it.”

Ravant gasped and sat up in bed.

“What?”

The girl repeated, without fear, what she had said.

And nothing had ever cowed Ravant as that did. It made him stop and think. It seemed as if he had never thought before—so primitive were his processes.

“I’ll just live up to that girl’s estimate of me—and fool her. I really thought I was a pig. Heavens!” He laughed with himself as if he were some one else. “It didn’t even offend me! But I’m glad I’m not a pig—to her—and I’ll stop being a brute. Especially to women. What was it mother used to say?”

Finally he remembered it:

“Always be gentle to all women. For some of them are mothers, and all of them are daughters of mothers.”

He said to himself that he had better write that out in a plain hand and paste it in his hat. Then he said he would go the hat one better—he would write it out and paste it in his head.

And I think he did this in some fashion. For he often remembered it. And at this time it was hard for him to remember things.

“Please!” she begged of him one day with her hands out to his, meaning that he should intermit his ceaseless watching of her. “I feel like the insect under the microscope.” She ended with that brief, halfway laugh.

“I won’t,” said Ravant. “It helps me. And that is what you are paid for doing.”

“Yes,” said the girl, at once relapsing into her shell. “That is what I am paid for!”

“The only thing you need to be a real beauty is a smile. Can’t you get further than halfway? Try it. You won’t break anything. Smile for the drunken pig one of those smiles that won’t come off.”

“Have you ever smiled?” retorted the girl.

“I grin all day,” answered Ravant.

“Yes—you grin.”

Ravant caught the subtlety and was both amazed at his nurse and shocked at himself. He remembered that it was very long since his face had known the smile of gentleness.

“Let’s learn the art together,” he laughed. “By the Lord, you are good for me!”

“Then I must admit that you are also good for me.”

“Smile!” commanded Ravant.

“I cannot,” laughed the girl.

Ravant laughed, and knew how splendid and strange this was to him.

“If you would do that more often, it would be good for you,” said Ravant again.

“And you would be—good!”

“Yes—” agreed the invalid, “if you would smile so for me—”

“Oh, I meant your own smile!” cried the blushing nurse.

Ravant looked upon this blush until it had much the effect that looking upon the wine when it is red used to have upon him.

“Here!” he cried.

The girl came toward him. He caught her face between his hands and rounded it there.

“I have taken all the lines away. You have no business to have them.”

“My life—” said the girl, simply. “Those lines are its history. They belong there.”

“Then can you read my history in mine?” asked the man.

“Yes.”

“Do they say that I am a brute?”

“Yes.”

“Plainly?”

“Quite plainly.”

“My God! Why did not some one tell me that secret before? We go about thinking our faces conceal the very things they shout aloud!”

He looked again at her face.

“Yes, yours speaks of sorrow—”

A silence then—

“What was it?”

“Others said what you have just said. That I was ugly. A woman has nothing—is nothing—without beauty. That is her one source of power.”

Ravant laughed incredulously.

“Women like me,” added the nurse.

IV
HE DID NOT KNOW THAT IT WAS LOADED

One day the nurse told him—as he insisted—the mystery of his opulent situation.

The person who had fired the shot had learned the effect of it from the newspapers, and being rich and sorry, had put his fortune at the disposal of the victim, and none of it was to be spared if it might help in the least to make him perfectly well again. Every cent of the very many the person had was at his disposal. And that his disposal of it might be the more free from embarrassment, he preferred to remain anonymous himself, and to make the hospital, or the nurse herself, if the victim preferred that, his almoner.

“Preferred to remain anonymous!” laughed Ravant. “He preferred to keep out of jail. I’d have him there in no time if I knew who he was!”

“It appears,” said the nurse, “that he did not know his pistol was loaded.”

Ravant exploded again—first with mirth, then with vengeance.

“The infernal old sneak and liar! To shoot a man simply because he happened to be drunk! Thank God a jag is not capital yet! It is no excuse to say that he didn’t know it was loaded. When he took up that pistol, it was with intent to kill. And, if I still remember any law, that is enough to hang him—”

“But they don’t hang people,” gasped the little nurse, “for anything but murder, do they?”

“I was going to say if he had killed me.”

“Oh!”

“Anyhow, we’ll make it the dearest lesson to the gentlemen who do not know it is loaded that ever was taught! We will spend that last cent of his. If not, we’ll throw it away! We are going to Europe at his expense. I need that to complete my recovery. And even then I will always wear this plate on my head in memory of him! And we’ll let the newspapers have it. It may prevent some other drunkard from such happiness as I am now enjoying, and teach the idiot with an empty gun to respect it as if it were loaded. I’ll be a missionary to my drunken kind all the world over! What do you say? By the way, what is your name?”

“Brown,” said the nurse.

“Whew!” said the invalid. “We can’t change that—can we?”

“No.”

“Marriage would do it.”

“Yes.”

“Ravant is better than Brown, eh?”

But then he laughed—he had frightened her!

“What’s your first name?”

“Rachel.”

“Heavens! But we might call you Ray. Ray Brown is not impossible. Did you notice that when I spoke of going to Europe and spending the old man’s money, I said we?”

“Yes,” said the girl.

“And it didn’t appeal to you?—make your little heart flutter—Ray?”

“No.”

“But you would help to try to ruin the old man?”

“I think it just for you to punish him in that way—but I am only a nurse.”

“Well—you are going with me—and that is the end of it. I need you and shall need you for a long time. In fact, I shall need you always. But, since you won’t marry me, as a nurse you will go!”

“Impossible! Mr. Ravant!” gasped the girl.

“Which?” snarled Ravant, in the old manner.

“Going to Europe with you—as your nurse—alone—”

“Well, then, we’ll take a chaperon. The old man must pay for her too.”

The girl was silent.

“Look here. I noticed that you didn’t say that the other thing was—impossible! Marrying me?”

“Yes—that is impossible, too,” said the girl.

“Oh!”

“What?”

For his tone was sinister.

“I’ll become a sot again.”

“The doctor says that with that wound in your head it will kill you!”

Ravant laughed—the brutal laugh once more.

“Well, let it. You can’t open the gate of paradise and let me get one glimpse and then shut it in my face. I’ll go back to my own little paradise.”

He was laughing. But she caught the note of hopelessness under it.

“Do you mean to say that if I marry you—”

“I will be good.”

“Understand that I do not love you! Not at all!”

“No one does. Marry me anyhow. Marry me to get rid of me. If you fall in love with some one else, it is off.”

The girl sobbed. She was on her knees at his bed. He did not like this.

“Never mind—never mind—child. I only thought we could make it less expensive to the old man in that way. I could then stop your wages, and we would not need a chaperon. And I really fancied that this thing inside of me which yearns for you—can’t wait till the night is over and you and morning come—is love. But I don’t know what the thing is—I never had the symptoms before—speak to the doctor about it—tell him I have ceased to be a pig. But, perhaps you know. Do you? Were you ever in love?”

“No, sir,” answered the nurse.

“Stop crying!” thundered Ravant.

“Yes, sir,” said the little nurse.

V
A FOOL AND HIS MONEY

“Well, thank God,” Ravant said, later on, “that you didn’t refuse me because you didn’t know me. I can’t fancy a better way of finding a man out than being his nurse. But I may not always be a brute. So, remember that I want to marry you, and, when you don’t think me too much of a brute think sometimes about marrying me—you may get used to it!”

“Yes, sir,” said the nurse.

“How much money have I?”

“About four dollars, sir.”

“I don’t blame you now. I thought there was at least ten in my clothes. Four dollars is mighty little to begin housekeeping upon. Keep it for me, will you, until the last cent of the gentleman who did not know it was loaded is gone.”

Later:

“You might as well come and help to spend the old man’s money. We will travel in private cars. Two maids for you, two valets for me. Our pictures in the newspapers. A retinue to smile welcome to us at each city. Another to weep as we depart. We shall leave a trail of American gold in our wake across Europe!”

He had caught her interest. Only he thought it was something which she said it was not.

“Look here. You do like me a little. I have seen you watch me while I pretended to sleep. And I’ll try to learn what love is and to make you love me. I think I can.”

The girl looked down.

“Look here, I was a gentleman and a lawyer before I was a drunkard, and I can be again, if any one cares to have me be. Please marry me!”

“I don’t love you,” said the girl again, with her head still down.

“I know. But I love you—I’m sure now that that is what it is. You see, it’s one of two things for me—you or rum. That’s why I’m working at it overtime. You won’t regret it—hanged if you do.”

VI
THE OLD MAN’S LAST CENT

Well, she did marry him, and she did not regret it—nor did he.

To me it is a wonder that she did not. For he had done the threatened newspapering so well that already upon their arrival at the steamer all the passengers were lined up to await them. And the smile they got there followed them to Europe, and into the most remote corners of the globe where they penetrated to escape it. It became at last a smile of contempt. And he began to understand that it was for him alone and that the world had exempted his wife from it.

“I’m glad for that,” he told her. “If I am to go about the world a cad and a fool, to be laughed at—I am glad that you are—”

“To be pitied as your victim?” laughed his happy wife. “No. I don’t want anything that is not yours, and you shall have nothing that is not mine.”

If they escaped it for a day, they never did for two. Always the servants were in line where they arrived, with the expectation of them in their banal faces. But always she was excepted.

“I wish I could rise with you,” sighed Ravant, whimsically. “I hate to be separated from you. But they won’t have me, and they won’t do without you. I suppose my claws still show somewhere.”

“Whither I go, you shall go,” his wife threatened. “I am too happy—that is what the world sees. What care I—for anything but joy and you!”

She kissed Ravant.

But presently her “beauty” and her “magnetism” began to be paragraphic with him in the newspapers—of which he said he was glad, and was not.

“Beloved,” he told her, “it is a pity you married me.”

“Why?—beloved also.”

“Because you might have had any one of the effete noblemen of Europe, and escaped newspapering.”

“But I would only have been satisfied with a crowned head.”

“I suppose even that is possible to the ‘prevalent goddess’”—he was reading from a newspaper.

“I have it!” laughed his wife, touching the plate which covered his wound.

And then, I am almost sorry to say, yet not quite, that a little mist came into the eyes of the Ravant who had once been a brute, and he remembered all those hospital days.

“How splendid you have become,” he said.

“Thanks to you,” she whispered in his arms, where still he was the savage Ravant and always would be.

“But all I am you have made of me!”

“But, too, all I am you have made of me!” she laughed.

“One thing I take credit for,” he joyed with her, “smiles do become your face.”

“And thought and care yours. The lines of which we once spoke—are gone! From both our faces! Is not that wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” he agreed.

Suddenly she was serious.

“I think we belong together. I thank God always that we met. You were what I needed—the man God meant to complete me. Before you came I was worse than you were before I came. Thank God we met—no matter how!”

“Not forgetting to thank the loaded gun! For a long time I have been sorry for the old man. It has not seemed long—but there are indications that the last cent has been reached. I would pay him back if I could!”

“You never, never could!” laughed his wife.

“But how much do you suppose we have spent?”

“Don’t know! Don’t know,” she chanted. “That is the beauty of it. We don’t have to! No accounts to keep! Money carefully ahead of us at each stopping place! It is like a slot machine! You put in a nickel and get a thousand dollars!”

“It’s wonderful how well he has done it. Hasn’t kicked or funked once! Well, when I get back to America I mean to hunt him up and get down on my knees and God bless him!” laughed Ravant.

“We’ll go together!” said his wife.

“Yes! And confess all! I’ll show him you! He’ll forgive us then and won’t regret—”

“His poverty!” laughed Ravant’s happy wife.

“Yes. Hang it! That’s the horror of it. Once I thought it would be the joy of it! And how he must have writhed under the newspapering! Such a sensitive chap as he is! It has been torture to even me. But I deserve that punishment.”

“You do!” cooed his wife.

“Let us go home,” said Ravant, “and live in a little house—alone!”

“Done!” cried his wife.

“We’ll change our names and the newspapers will not be able to find us!”

“Done!”

“But—there wasn’t any money here, you know” (it was Rouen).

“Perhaps in a day or two.”

So, at Rouen, they waited for the money to take them home to a new happiness.

VII
HER BIG TRUMP

One day she got a big letter with the American postmark. She laughed, made a certain mystery of it, and kept it from him.

“And this is my nurse!” he joyed.

“Yes!” she admitted.

He was opening a letter of his own which he was keeping from her.

“But there must be no secrets between chums.”

She tried to take the letter, but he withheld it.

“Ah, I must first confess? Well—how much do you love me?”

“As much as I can,” said her husband, seriously.

“I know that to be a great deal. How much can you forgive?”

Now she was in his arms.

“As much as I love,” said Ravant.

“Then I am quite safe.”

She crept a little deeper into his arms and opened her letter.

“Dearest, I married you under an assumed name.”

“Thank God!” laughed Ravant—“unless it is a worse one than Brown.”

“I could have been very happy as Mrs. Brown—as happy as I am as Mrs. Ravant.”

She ignored the rest and withdrew the contents of the letter. They appeared to be a deed.

“Dearest, I have a house. Are you angry that I am so rich? Part of an inheritance. But now it must be sold. This is from my lawyer. He tells me that I must sign the deed both with my proper maiden name and as your wife”—she stooped there to kiss him, and repeated the word—“and you must join in it as my husband. It is a bore to own a house, isn’t it, dearest?”

But her lightness found him full of terror. She heard him breathe:

“What was your maiden name?”

“Ruth Fenton,” smiled his wife.

Again that exclamation.

“What is it?” she begged.

“No,” he said. “There must be no secret between chums. My punishment has come. And it is greater than I could possibly have conceived. I must read you this, and then if you wish—go away from you.”

“Not while I am here,” she laughed, beginning to understand. “Whither thou goest, I will go. You can’t—cannot lose me—me, your lawful wife!”

Though she laughed with tremendous happiness, he read the letter through with no abatement of his terror.

“As you know, I have been all these two years finding the person who shot you. At last I have her—yes, her! It is a woman. Her name is Ruth Fenton. Her large fortune has been exhausted by your world-renowned extravagances, and she is now selling the last thing she owns—her house. I hope you feel as mean as I do—for you!

Gast.”

“Yes, I am the old man,” laughed Ravant’s happy wife into her husband’s face.

“Yes,” he said, and then again, “yes—you are—the—old—man! The old man! You! Me!”

“We!” cooed his wife.

“All those things I said about him were about you! To you!”

“Yes! Wasn’t it funny?”

A long time they sat there, she looking up, he down—eye to eye. But she never ceased to smile.

He tried to go.

“Not while I am here!” she laughed, and, slipping down, held him by the knees.

“No, beloved, after this there shall be, indeed, no secrets between us. I was so unhappy and alone that night that I meant to kill myself. No one cared for me, and I had to have some one care for me or die! My hand must have slipped, or, perhaps, I grew afraid. But God himself directed that bullet! You were mine and you were passing—going away from me! If you had gone on, we would never have met. It was the only way to stop you and give you to me, me to you. I went to the hospital and paid to nurse you. They said you needed no nursing, only care and quiet. And when they knew how important it was to me, for I told them all, they broke their rules all to pieces, and let me do it. And, now, dear one, you must keep what I have given you, what the good God has! You shall keep it!” (as he tried to dislodge her) “and you shall keep me! For I will not go! There, I am a beggar!” She laughed gloriously. “But the happiest beggar on earth, and you have got to support your happy beggar wife forever hereafter. That is to be your punishment.”

“Happy punishment!” was the thought which flashed through Ravant.

But he grimly put it out, and for one more last moment the old, brutal Ravant tried to come back. Alas! she was on the floor there before him, her elbows on his knees, her face, halting between smiles and tears, upraised to his, looking out of its glory of living hair, watching the portents there.

And when they did not develop fast enough toward joy, she locked her hands behind his neck suddenly and drew his head down, to the peril of a dislocation.

“You must stay to support your beggar wife; don’t you see?—won’t you understand?—and perhaps her beggar—child!”

“What!” cried Ravant, everything else out of his head in an instant.

“I always keep my biggest trump for the last, dearest. All women do, don’t they? It’s so lovely to play it then—when every one thinks all is lost. Oh, beloved! smile, laugh, shout with me! How can you go away now when you have a beggar wife to support, and a beggar—ch—! Ah! ha! ha!”

How could the old, brutal Ravant come back? He never did. How could he go? He did not.

“But we will not sell your house. We will go back, even if it must be in the steerage, and work together, live together, happily ever after!”

“Dominus vobiscum!” cried Ravant’s happy wife, leaping into his arms.

And all this, save the steerage, they did. And at this very moment they are living as happily as they planned.

“She was on the floor there before him, her face upraised to his”

LIEBEREICH[^[4]]

I  THE HOUSE THAT HE AND EMMY BUILT

“He’d be better off,” said Mrs. Schwalm, referring to the possible death of old Liebereich.

“You don’t mean you’d be?” grinned Hermann Schlimm.

He had drifted into Mrs. Krantz’s kitchen, among the women, after the funeral. No one gave him any attention.

Old Liebereich’s wife had just been buried, and they were met to pay Mrs. Krantz their respects. She had been the “next-door neighbor” through Mrs. Liebereich’s illness.

There was some strawberry preserve presently, and some “field tea.”

Then Mrs. Krantz said to Mrs. Schwalm:

“You had better go now.”

Mrs. Schwalm was “next door” on the other side. She would now housekeep for old Liebereich for a week. Then Mrs. Engwein, who lived next to Mrs. Krantz, would take her turn, and so on while old Liebereich lived—which it was thought would not be long. For no one ever went to “the poor-house” or “the home” from this German vicinage.

These things were so well understood that they were not even discussed at this gathering. But there was a well-defined understanding that the brief management of old Liebereich would be difficult. Mrs. Schwalm rose to go.

“He won’t fold his britches unless you make him,” warned Mrs. Krantz.

“And I’ve heared,” said another, “that he never hangs ’em on the back of a cheer if he kin put ’em on the floor.”

Old Liebereich had an odious reputation for this sort of thing.

“You know Emmy she spoiled him.”

“If he didn’t do things, she done ’em.”

“That’s a good way to spoil ’em!”

Mrs. Krantz warned again:

“You got to keep the clock on him all the time, or it’s no use. At six he’s got to eat his supper. You’ll have to push him right in his cheer, and see that he gits things in his mouth. If you don’t, you’ll have to clean ’em off the floor. Seven, to bed with him. Yisterday he says to me, says he: ‘I ain’t no dog-gone baby! Lemme alone! I kin git to bed myself.’ But I had him asleep by that time.”

Mrs. Schwalm sighed. It was plain that she was going to a house of trouble. But it was her duty, and she would do it, as they all would.

I do not know at what point, precisely, along the pike, east and west from old Liebereich, the “next-door neighbor” obligation ceased. It was very far. Nevertheless, before the year which succeeded the death of his wife had passed, its courtesies had been exhausted. Each neighbor had served two turns, and each had murmured dismally at the prospect of a third. Finally, they all joined in discussing out-and-out rebellion against custom and Liebereich.

Indeed, one morning the doctor, whose business it was to keep the people up to their duties, found an interregnum. He brought Mrs. Krantz from her house to old Liebereich’s as one does a detected criminal.

“I’ve had three turns a’ready,” she defended.

“The man has had no breakfast,” said the doctor. “He must eat while he lives!”

“Well, he’d be better off, and so would we, if he was—”

The doctor stopped her with a solemn up-lifted finger:

“‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”

She thought it made no difference that she gave grudgingly. But old Liebereich felt the touch of impatience. And he saw that she swept the dirt into a corner, stood the broom where it did not belong, and left the stale water in his pitcher.