THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

"'JAMES DID IT! JAMES HAS MADE A TOUCHDOWN'"
[Page 95]

THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

BY

WAYLAND WELLS WILLIAMS

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY
J. HENRY

"And thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges."—Twelfth Night.

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1916, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.

CONTENTS

THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

PART I

CHAPTER I

UNWRITTEN PAPERS

Two o'clock struck by the tall clock on the stairs, and young Harry Wimbourne, lying wide awake in his darkened bedroom, reflected that he had never heard that clock strike two before, except in the afternoon. To his ears the two strokes had a curious and unfamiliar sound; he waited expectantly for more to follow, but none did, and the tones of the second stroke died slowly away in a rather uncanny fashion through the silent house. For the house was silent now; the strange and terrifying series of sounds, issuing from the direction of his mother's room, that had first awakened him, had ceased some time ago. There had been much scurrying to and fro, much opening and shutting of doors, mingled not infrequently with the sound of voices; voices subdued and yet strained, talking so low and so hurriedly that no complete sentences could be caught, though Harry was occasionally able to distinguish the tones of his father, or the nurse, or the doctor. Once he detected the phrase "hot water"; and even that seemed to give a slight tinge of familiarity and sanity to the other noises. But then had come those other sounds that froze the very blood in his veins, and made him lie stiff and stark in his bed, perspiring in every pore, in an agony of ignorance and terror. It was all so inexplicable; his mother—! A strange voice would not have affected him so.

But all that had stopped after a while, and everything had quieted down to the stillness that had prevailed for an hour or more when the clock struck two. The stillness was in its way even more wearing than the noises had been, for it gave one the impression that more was to follow. "Wait, wait, wait," it seemed to Harry to say; "the worst is not nearly over yet; more will happen before the night is out; Wait, wait!" and the slow tick of the clock on the stairs, faintly heard through the closed door, took up the burden "Wait! Wait!" And Harry waited. The passage of time seemed to him both cruelly slow and cruelly fast; each minute dragged along like an hour, and yet when the hour struck it seemed to him to have passed off in the space of a minute.

Sleep was impossible. For the fiftieth time he turned over in his bed, trying to find a position that would prove so comfortable as to ensure drowsiness; yet as he did so he felt convinced that he could not sleep until something definite, something final, even if unpleasant, should end the suspense of the silence. He looked across the short space of darkness that separated his bed from that of his elder brother James, and envied him his power of sleeping through anything. But a short sudden change in the dim outline of the other bed told him that his brother was not asleep. Harry felt the other's gaze trying to pierce the darkness, even as his own. He half turned, with a sharp and nervous motion, to show that he was awake, and for some minutes both boys lay silently gazing toward each other, each wondering how much the other had heard.

At length James broke the silence. "It's come," he said.

"Yes, it has," answered Harry. "How long have you been awake?" he added, feeling he must ascertain how much James knew before committing himself any further.

"Oh, hours," said James.

"Since before—"

"Yes."

So James had heard all, thought Harry. It was just like him to be awake all that time and never give a sign. It scarcely occurred to him that James might be as shy as himself in reference to the events of the night.

It must not for a moment be supposed that either of these boys was ignorant of the nature of what was taking place in their mother's room. Harry was ten at the time, and James was within hinting distance of his twelfth birthday. So that when their father, a few days before, had solemnly informed them that they might expect the arrival of a little brother or sister before long, and that they must be most careful not to disturb their mother in any way, etc., etc., no childish superstition picturing the newcomer flying through the window or floating down a stream on a cabbage leaf or, more prosaically, being introduced in the doctor's black bag, ever entered their heads. When the trained nurse appeared, a day or two later, they did not need to be told why she was there. They accepted the situation, tried to make as little noise as possible, and struck up a great friendship with Miss Garver, who at first had ample leisure to regale them with tales of her hospital experiences; among which, she was sorry to observe, accounts of advanced cases of delirium tremens were easily the favorites.

For a long time the two boys lay awake without exchanging any more conversation worth mentioning. They heard the clock strike three, and after that they may have slept. At any rate, the first thing they were aware of was the door of their room being opened by a softly rustling figure which they at once recognized as that of the trained nurse. She crossed the room and methodically lit the gas; then she turned and stood at the foot of Harry's bed, resting her hands lightly on the footboard. Both the boys noticed immediately how white her face was and how grave its expression.

"Are you both awake, boys?" she asked.

They both said they were, and Miss Garver, after pausing a moment, as if to choose her words, said:

"Then get up and put on something, and come into your mother's room with me."

Without a word they rose and stumbled into their dressing gowns and slippers. When they were ready Miss Garver led the way to the door, and there turned toward them, with her hand on the knob.

"Your mother is very ill, boys. We are afraid—this may be the last time you will see her."

Dazed and silent they followed her into the hall.

The bedroom into which they then went was a large room at the front of the house, high of ceiling, generous of window space, and furnished for the most part with old mahogany furniture. It was a beautiful old room when the sun was pouring in through the great windows, and it was quite as beautiful, in a solemn sort of way, now, when it was dimly illuminated by one low-burning gas jet and one or two shaded candles. A low fire was burning in the grate, and its dying flames fitfully shone on soft-colored chintz coverings and glowing mahogany surfaces, giving to the room an air of drowsy and delicious peace. And in the middle of it all, on a great mahogany four-poster bed, curtained, after the fashion of a hundred years ago, Edith Wimbourne lay dying. She, poor lady, white and unconscious on her great bed, cared as little for the setting of the scene in which she was playing the chief part as dying people generally do; but we, who look on the scene with detached and appreciative eyes, may perhaps venture the opinion that, if a choice of deaths be vouchsafed us, we would as lief as not die in a four-poster bed, surrounded by those we love best, and with a flickering fire casting changing and fantastic shadows on the familiar walls and ceiling.

Beside the dying lady on the bed, there were three other people in the bedroom when Miss Garver led Harry and James into it. The doctor, whom they both knew and liked well, sat at the head of the bed. In a large armchair near the fire sat the boys' father, and somewhere in the background hovered another trained nurse, sprung out of nowhere. The presence of these figures seemed, in some intangible way, to make death an actual fact, instead of a mere possibility; if they had not been there, the boys might merely have been going to pay their mother a visit when she was ill. Now they both realized, with horribly sinking hearts, that they were going to see her for the last time.

The doctor looked up inquiringly as Miss Garver brought the two boys into the room and led them over toward the bed. The father did not even turn his head as they came in. They stood by the bedside and gazed in silence at the pale sleeping face on the pillow. A faint odor of chloroform hung about the bed. The doctor stood up and leaned over to listen to the action of the dying woman's heart. After he had finished he drew back a little from the bedside.

"You may kiss her, if you like," he said softly.

The boys leaned down in turn and silently touched the calm lips. It was almost more than Harry could stand.

"Oh, must this be the last time?" he heard himself shrieking. But no one paid any attention to him, and he suddenly realized that he had not spoken the words aloud. He looked at James' face, calm though drawn, and the sight reassured him. He wondered if James was suffering as much as himself, and thought he probably was. He wondered if his face showed as little as James'.

The doctor and Miss Garver were whispering together.

"Shall I take them away now?" she asked.

"Not yet," was the answer; "there is just a chance that—"

He did not finish, but Miss Garver must have understood, for she nodded and quietly drew the boys away. They walked off toward the fireplace, and their father, without moving his head, stretched out a hand in their direction. Silently they sat down by him, one on each arm of his chair, and he slipped an arm about the waist of each.

So they started on the last period of waiting for what they all knew must come; what they prayed might come soon and at the same time longed to postpone as long as possible. The doctor had resumed his seat at the bedside, and now kept his fingers almost constantly on the patient's wrist. The two nurses sat down a little way off, to be ready in case—The emergency was not formulated. These three people were all present for professional reasons, so we may assume that most of their meditations were of a professional nature. But even so, they felt beneath their professional calm the mingled sadness and sweetness and solemnity that accompanies the sight of death, be it never so familiar. And we may easily guess the feelings of the two boys as they awaited the departure of the person they loved most on earth; nothing but the feeling of suspense kept them from giving away completely. The person in the room whom the scene might have been expected to affect most was, in point of fact, the one who felt it least, and that was the shortly to be bereaved husband, Hilary Wimbourne.

"Poor Edith," he mused, "poor Edith. What a wife she has been to me, to be sure! I was fond of her, too. Not as fond as I might have been, of course ... Still, when I think that I shall never again see her face behind the coffee things at the breakfast table it gives me a pang, a distinct pang ... By the bye, I don't suppose she remembered, before all this came on, to send that Sheffield urn to be replated ... But it's all so beautiful—the fire, the draped bed, the waiting figures, the whole atmosphere! Just what she would have chosen to die in; all peace and naturalness. Everything seems to say 'Good-by, Edith; congratulations, Edith; well out of it all,' only much more beautifully. There is a dirge—how does it go?—

Oh, no more, no more; too late
Sighs are spent; the burning tapers
Of a life as chaste as fate,
Pure as are unwritten papers,
Are burnt out—

"That comes somewhere near it; 'a life as chaste as fate'—not a bad description of Edith ... 'Pure as are unwritten papers'—who but an Elizabethan would have dared to cast that line just like that? Let's see; Ford, was it, or Shirley?... If only some one were singing that now, behind the scenes, out by the bathroom door, say, everything would be quite perfect. 'Unwritten papers'—ah, well, people have no business to be as pure as Edith was—and live. But what is to become of my home without her? What will become of the boys? Good Heavens, what am I going to do with the boys? Good little souls—how quiet they are! It all hits them a great deal harder than it does me, I know. It won't be so bad when they're old enough to go off to school, but till then ... I must ask Cecilia's advice; she'll have some ideas, and by the way, I wonder if Cecilia thought to see about that Sheraton sideboard for me?"

And so on, and so on. Hilary Wimbourne's meditations never went very far without rounding up at a Sheraton sideboard or an old Sheffield urn or a nice bit of Chienlung or a new idea for a pleached alley. Let us not judge him. He was that sort of person.

These reflections, and the complete outward silence in which they took place, were at last interrupted by a slight stirring of the sick woman on the bed. For the last time in her mortal life—and for very nearly the first, for the matter of that—Edith Wimbourne was to assume the center of her family stage. Her husband and sons heard her sigh and stir slightly as she lay, and then the doctor and Miss Garver appeared to be busy over her for a few moments. Probably they made shift to force a stimulant between her teeth, for in a moment or two she opened her eyes to the extent of seeing what was about her. Almost the first sight that greeted them was that of her two sons sitting on the arms of their father's chair, and as she saw them she smiled faintly.

The nurse glanced inquiringly toward the doctor, who nodded, and she went over and touched Harry lightly on the shoulder.

"Come over and speak to your mother," she whispered, and Harry walked to her side. Very gently he took the hand that lay motionless on the bed and held it in his. He could not have uttered a word for the life of him.

Either the reviving action of the stimulant or the feeling of the warm blood pulsing through his young hand, or perhaps both, lent a little strength to the dying woman. She smiled again, and ever so slight a flush appeared on her wasted cheeks. "Harry, dear Harry," she whispered gently, and the boy leaned down to catch the words. "I am going to leave you, dear, and I am sorry. I know I should be very proud of you, if I could live ... Be a good boy, Harry, and don't forget your mother."

She closed her eyes again, exhausted with the effort of speaking. Dazed and motionless Harry remained where he stood until the nurse led him gently away to make room for James.

James stood for some moments as his brother had done, with his hand clasped in that of his mother. Presently she opened her eyes once more, and gazed gravely for a moment or two at the face of her first-born, as though gathering her little remaining strength for what she had to say to him.

"Listen, dear," she said at last, and James bent down. "I'm going to die, James. Try not to be too sorry about it. It is all for the best ... Dearest, there is something I want you to do for me; you know how I have always trusted you, and depended on you—well, perhaps you don't know, but I have ... James, I want you to look out for Harry. He needs it now, and he will need it a great deal more later. You will see what I mean, as you grow up. He is not made like you; he will need some one to look after him. Can you promise me that you will do this?"

"Yes," whispered James.

His mother sighed gently, as though with relief. "Now kiss me, dear," she said, and then, almost inaudibly, "It is good to leave some one I can trust." Then she closed her eyes, for the last time.

James never repeated those words of his mother to any human being, as long as he lived, not even to Harry. It would be too much to say that they were never absent from his thoughts, for in truth he thought but seldom of them, after the first few days. But in some compelling though intangible way he realized, as he stood there by his mother's death-bed, that he had accepted a trust from which nothing but death would release him.

The doctor returned to the side of the dying woman. Swiftly and quietly Miss Garver placed a hand on the shoulder of each of the two boys and led them from the room. Edith Wimbourne slept, and her sleep slowly passed into death.

The man in the chair never moved.

CHAPTER II

AUNTS

Till Miss Garver had seen Harry and James tucked away in their beds again and had put out the light and left their room, both the boys maintained the same outward composure that they had shown throughout the experiences of the night. But once left alone in the quiet of their darkened bedroom, no further ordeal ahead of them to inspire restraint—for they knew perfectly well by this time that their mother must be dead—they gave way entirely to their natural grief and spent what they both remembered afterward as the wretchedest night of their lives.

It was scarcely better when Miss Garver woke them in the morning, though sleep had so completely erased all recollection of the night before that Harry, lazily sitting up and rubbing his eyes, asked what time it was in the most natural voice in the world.

"About ten o'clock," was the reply.

"Ten o'clock! Why, we're an hour late for school already."

"You are not going to school to-day," answered Miss Garver, gently, and she hated to say it, knowing that the remark would immediately set them remembering. When she turned toward them again she saw that it had, indeed.

"Listen," she told them, as gently as she could, "I want you both to get dressed now as quickly as possible and then go down and eat your breakfast. After that I am going to take you both down town. There is a good deal to be done. So hurry up."

"Why are you going to take us down town?" asked James.

"To get some clothes."

"But I don't understand," he began again, and then he did. He started dressing, mechanically, and had half completed his toilet before he noticed his brother, who was kneeling despairingly by his bed, with his face buried in the pillow.

"Come on, Harry," he said gently; "I'm nearly ready."

"No," moaned Harry.

"Yes. It's got to be done, you know."

"Oh, go away and leave me alone."

James bent his head down close to that of his brother. "You feel better when you're doing something," he said softly.

Harry, at length persuaded, arose and began to dress, and before long he began to feel that James was right. Doing something did not remove the pain, or even ease it, but it made you notice it less. It was even better during breakfast. Both the boys ate steadily and fairly copiously, though their enjoyment, if there was any, of what was customarily their pleasantest meal, was wholly subconscious. There was honey on the table, and Harry, without realizing what he was doing, helped himself to it for a second time. He mechanically pushed the pot back toward James, who also partook. Almost simultaneously their teeth closed on honey and muffin, and at the same time their eyes met. For two or three seconds they gazed shamefacedly at each other, and then stopped eating. Harry left the table and stood in front of the window, looking out over the wide lawn.

"Oh, Mother, Mother," he cried within himself; "to think I should be eating honey and muffin, now, so soon, and enjoying it! Oh, forgive me, forgive me!"

When the first shock of self-contempt had passed off, the boys wandered into the library, in search of their father. They discovered him, seated at his desk as they had expected, but it was with a sharp shock of surprise that they perceived that he was interviewing the cook. Both were more or less disgusted at the discovery, but they felt nevertheless, in a vague but reassuring way, that this partly justified the honey episode.

The interview closed almost as soon as they entered, and their father called them over to him.

"You have both been very good," he said, taking a hand of each of them; "this has all been very hard for you, I know." He paused, and then, seeing signs of tears on their faces, he went on somewhat hurriedly: "You must go down town with Miss Garver now; she has very kindly offered to get you what you will need for the funeral. Aunt Cecilia will take you to New York after that, I expect, and will fit you out more fully. The funeral will be to-morrow at three o'clock, and you will be on hand for that. I don't know whether any one told you; the baby died—the one that was born last night. It was a little girl; she only lived a few minutes. She will be buried with your mother. There will be a lot of people coming up to-day and to-morrow for the funeral; Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia and various others, and as there is a good deal to arrange you must try to be a help and not a hindrance, and make yourselves useful if you can. Now run along with Miss Garver and—oh, one more thing. I should advise you not to ask to see your mother again. You can, of course, if you want to, but I rather think you will not be sorry if you don't. You see, you probably have a good many years in which you will have to live on her memory, and I think it will be better if your last recollection of her is as she was when she was alive, not when she was dead ... and if you want to drive down to the station after lunch to meet Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia on the two-fifty, you can. You'd better do that; it's a good thing to give yourself plenty of occupation. That's all—good-by."

Then they went off in search of black clothes, and somewhat to their surprise they noticed that Miss Garver had returned to her companionable self of the preceding days; it was almost as if their mother had not died, except that she was gravely cheerful now, instead of cheerfully cheerful, as before.

Before long the boys noticed that almost every one they had to do with adopted the attitude taken by Miss Garver. Lunch, to be sure, was a rather terrible meal, for then they were alone with their father, and he, though he refrained from further allusion to the loss that hung over them all, was silent and preoccupied. But Uncle James and Aunt Cecilia, when met at the station by their nephews, spoke and acted much as usual, and neither of them noticed that Aunt Cecilia's gentle eyes filled with tears as she kissed them. They had always loved Aunt Cecilia best of all their aunts, though she was not their real aunt, being the wife of their father's younger brother. Of their Uncle James the boys were both a little afraid, and never felt they understood him. He was much like their father, both in behavior and appearance—though he was clean-shaven and their father wore a beard and mustache—but he was much more unapproachable. He had an uncomfortable way of suddenly joining in a conversation with an apparently irrelevant remark, at which everybody would generally remain silent for a moment and then laugh, while he sat with grave and unchanged countenance. The boys had once spoken to their father of their uncle's apparent lack of sympathy; Harry had complained that Uncle James never seemed to "have any feelings." "Well," replied their father, "he is a better lawyer than I am," and the boys never saw any sense in that reply till they remembered it years afterward, and even then they never could decide whether it was meant as an explanation or a corollary.

Later in the afternoon Aunt Selina arrived. There was always something magnificent and aloof about Aunt Selina; she had the air of having been transplanted out of a glorious past into a frivolous and inferior present, and being far too well-bred to comment on its inferiority, however keenly she was aware of it. She was the half-sister of Hilary Wimbourne, and much older than he, being the child of a first marriage of his father. Harry and James were on the front steps to greet her as she drove up in state. Her very manner of stepping out of the carriage and ascending the steps where she gravely bent and kissed each of her nephews with the same greeting—"How do you do, my dear James," "How do you do, my dear Harry,"—was not so much a tribute to the gravity of this particular occasion as a typical instance of Aunt Selina's way of doing things. Though only of average height, she generally gave the impression of being tall by the erect way in which she habitually carried her head, and by the straightness and spareness of her whole figure. Her skirts always nobly swept the floor beside and behind her, in a day when other women's skirts hung limply about their ankles. Both Harry and James looked upon her with an awe which was only slightly modified by affection.

But both boys' views of Aunt Selina underwent expansion within the next twenty-four hours, and they were to learn the interesting lesson that a warm and impulsive heart may be hidden within a forbidding exterior. Aunt Selina entered the home of the Wimbournes with her customary quiet ceremony, and gravely greeted such of her relatives as were present, after which every one else in the room instinctively "stood around," waiting for her to make the first move. Kind and gentle Aunt Cecilia, who was a daughter of one of New York's oldest and proudest and richest families, was no one in particular while Aunt Selina was in the room. Miss Wimbourne immediately proceeded to her bedroom, to repair the ravages of travel, and when she came down again she found the drawing-room deserted except for James, who was standing in front of a window and gazing out into the twilight. She went over and stood by him, also looking over the darkening lawn.

"I am very glad to get this chance to see you, James," she said presently, in her subdued, measured tones, "even though the occasion for my being here is such a sad one. It is not often I get a chance to see any of my nephews and nieces."

James mumbled an inarticulate monosyllable or two in reply, without turning his head. Aunt Selina had interrupted what was a bad half-hour for James. She turned and looked at him, and the look of dumb suffering on his face struck into the very roots of her heart. She stooped suddenly and put her arms about him, kissing his cheek with a warmth that was entirely new to James.

"I know how it feels," she whispered; "I've been through it all, not once, but again and again, and I know just how bad it is. Dear boy, how I wish I could bear it for you."

She sat down on a little settee that stood in front of the window, still holding one of James' hands in hers, and the boy, after the first shock of astonishment had passed, sank down on his knees in front of her and buried his head in her lap. So he remained for some minutes, sobbing almost contentedly; it was sweet to find consolation in this unexpected quarter.

Presently he raised his miserable eyes to hers. "It's Harry, too—partly—" he said, and could go no further.

"Yes, I know that too," said his aunt. "You mean that you have to bear up on Harry's account—"

"Yes!"

"Because you are older and stronger than he, and you know he would suffer more if you let him see how much you suffer. So you go about with the pain burning your very heart out, because all the time something in his face makes it impossible for you to breathe a word more of it than you can help. And so every one gets the idea you are more hard-hearted than he," she went on passionately, letting her voice sink to a whisper, "and are not capable of as much feeling as he. But you don't care what people think; you don't know or care about anything except oh! if you only might go somewhere and shriek it all out to somebody, anybody! And after a lifetime of that sort of thing self-repression becomes second nature to you, so that you can't say a thing you think or feel, and you become the sort of living mummy that I am, with your soul dead and embalmed years ago, while your body, your worthless, useless body, goes on living and living. You have begun it early, my poor James!"

She stopped, quite as much astounded at her own outburst as James. The boy no longer cried, for astonishment had driven away his tears, but stared thoughtfully out of the window. He had not caught the full meaning of all that his aunt had said, but he knew that he was receiving a most important confidence from the most unexpected possible quarter, which was exactly in tune with his own mood. The good lady herself was for a few moments literally too bewildered to utter a word.

"Good Heavens!" ran her astonished thoughts, "do you know what you have done, Selina Wimbourne? You have made more of a fool of yourself in the last five minutes than you have done in all the years since you were a girl! God grant it may do him no harm."

To James she said aloud, as soon as she could control her voice:

"I am a foolish and indiscreet old woman, James—"

"No, you're not," interrupts the boy with sudden spirit.

"Well, I've said a great deal more than I ought, at any rate. I don't want you to get any false impression from what I have told you. I want to explain to you that all the suffering I have undergone from—in the way I have told you—has not hurt me, but has rather benefited me. You see, there are two kinds of human suffering. One is forced upon you from the outside. You can't prevent that kind, you just have to go through with it. It never is as bad as you think it is going to be, I find. The other kind you make for yourself, by doing the wrong thing when you know you ought to be doing the right thing. That is the really bad kind of suffering, and you can always prevent it by doing the thing you know is right."

"You mean," said James thoughtfully, "that it would have been even worse for you if you had squealed, when you knew—when you knew you ought not to!"

"Exactly. It's simply a question of the lesser of two evils. Doing the pleasant but wrong thing hurts more in the end than doing the disagreeable but right thing."

"I see. But suppose you can't tell which is the right thing and which the wrong one?"

"Ah, there you've put your finger on a real difficulty. You just have to think it all over and decide as best you can, and then, if it turns out wrong, you're not so much to blame. Then, your suffering is of the kind that you can't help. No one can do any better than what he thinks is right at the time.... Now get up, dear, I hear people coming."

"Well, thank you, Aunt Selina. What you have told me helps, an awful lot. Really!"

"I am glad, my dear," replied Miss Wimbourne, and when people entered the room a second or two later no one suspected the sudden bond of sympathy that had sprung up between the specimens of crabbed age and youth they found there.

"Cecilia, what's going to become of those two boys?" inquired Miss Wimbourne later in the evening, finding herself for the moment alone with her sister-in-law.

"I've been asking myself that question pretty steadily for the last twelve hours," answered Mrs. James. "I wish I could take them," she added, impulsively.

"Hardly, I suppose." If any of the remarks made in this conversation seem abrupt or inconsequent, it must be remembered that these two ladies understood each other pretty thoroughly without having to polish off or even finish their sentences, or even to make them consecutive.

"Unfortunately," went on Mrs. James, after a brief pause, "the whole thing depends entirely upon Hilary."

"The very last person—"

"Exactly. Yet what can one do?"

"It seems quite clear to me," said Aunt Selina, choosing her words carefully and slowly, "that Hilary will inevitably choose the one course which is most to be avoided. Hilary will want them to go on living here alone with him; preserve the status quo as far as possible. What do you think?"

"I am almost sure of it. But...."

"But if any of us have the slightest feeling for those boys ... Until they are both safely away at school, at any rate, and he won't send them away for a year or two yet, at any rate."

"Harry not for three, I should say.... That is, I shouldn't."

Silence for a moment, then Aunt Selina:

"Well, can you think of any one that could be got to come here?"

Mrs. James fluttered for a moment, as though preparing for a delicate and difficult advance.

"I wonder," she said, "that is, the thought struck me to-day—if you—if you could ever—"

"Hilary and I," observed Aunt Selina in calm, clear impersonal tones that once for all disposed of the suggestion; "Hilary and I Do Not Get On. That way, I mean. At a distance—"

The sentence was completed by a gesture that somehow managed to convey an impression of understanding and amity at a distance. Mrs. James' subdued "Oh!" of comprehension, or rather of resignation, bid fair for a while to close the interview. But presently Aunt Selina, with the air of one accepting a sword offered with hilt toward her, asked, or rather observed, as though it was not a question at all, but a statement:

"What do you think of Agatha Fraile?"

"Well," replied Mrs. James with something of a burnt-child air; "I like her. Though I hardly know her, of course. I should say she would be willing, too. Though of course one can't tell.... They are not well off, I believe.... She is very good, no doubt...."

"Hm," said Aunt Selina serenely, aware that there was a conversational ditch to be taken, and determined to make her interlocutrix give her a lead. This Aunt Cecilia bravely did with:

"You mean—how much does she know about—?"

"About Hilary, yes."

"I rather think, myself, she must have found out through Edith.... I don't see how she could have failed to know. Do you?"

"I can't say, I'm sure. Edith had rather curious ideas, though she was one of the best women that ever lived. However, that is not the main point for consideration now. What I want to know is, can you think of anything better?"

"N-no," replied Mrs. James slowly. "I even think it would be the best possible arrangement, if—Oh dear, to think it should come to this—those poor boys!"

"Yes, I know," said Aunt Selina, briskly. "Now, that being decided, some one has got to put it to Hilary. Hilary will do nothing alone. She comes to-morrow morning, does she not? I think it should be settled, one way or the other, before she goes. Now who is to approach Hilary?"

"I don't know," faltered Mrs. James, rather bewildered by the other's swiftness of reasoning.

"Well, I do. James is the only human being I know who has, or ever had, any influence on Hilary. Now one of us has got to talk to James, and I rather think, Cecilia, that I could do it more successfully than you. For the first time, that is.... Of course, afterward, you...."

"Yes, of course," murmurs Mrs. James.

"Very well, then; I will see James the first thing in the morning. I don't say it will come to anything, but there is a great deal to be gone through before she is even approached. We must do something. Living here alone, with their father...."

"Out of the question, of course." The conversation having, as it were, completed one lap of its course and arrived again at its starting point, might have perambulated gently along till bedtime, had it not been abruptly interrupted by the entrance of James, junior, come to say good-night.

A few days after the funeral, after they had gone to bed of an evening, Harry through the darkness apostrophized his brother thus:

"I tell you, James, Aunt Selina is all right; did you know it?"

"Oh," was the reply, "she gave you five dollars, too, did she?"

"Yes, but that's not what I mean. She's given me five dollars plenty of times before this."

"Well, what do you mean, then?"

"Well, she found me in the garden one morning.... Tuesday, I guess—" Tuesday had been the day of the funeral—"and I had been crying a good deal, and I suppose she knew it. At any rate, she took me by the hand and talked to me for a while...."

"What did she say to you?" This question was not prompted by vulgar curiosity; James knew that his brother wished to be pumped.

"Oh, she didn't say much. She was just awfully nice, that's all.... She told me—well, she said, for one thing, that I cried too much. Only she didn't say it like that. She said that going about and crying wasn't much of a way of showing you were sorry. She said that if—well, if you really missed a person, the least you could do was not to go about making a pest of yourself, even if you couldn't really do anything to help."

"Oh."

"She said that the last thing that would please Mama herself was to think that all she had taught me came to no more than ... well, than crying. Then she said.... I don't think I'll tell you that, though."

"Well, don't, if you don't want to."

"She told me that, in a way, she realized I must feel it—about Mama—more than any one else, because I had been more with her lately than any one else—more dependent on her, she said, ..."

"Yes, I see."

"And that while it was harder on me, it put a greater responsibility on me, because, you see—oh, I can't explain it all! But she was about right, I guess."

"She told me something of the same kind ... not exactly like that, I mean, but—well, the same sort of thing. It helped, too. It's funny, to think of her understanding better than any one else—Aunt Selina!"

"Yes, isn't it? Well, you really never can tell about people." With which mature reflection Harry turned over and went to sleep. But his brother lay awake for some time thinking over what he had just heard, and as he thought, his respect for his aunt grew. Not only could she sound the depths of his own woe and give him comfort for it, but she could light on the one thing that would be likely to help Harry in his own peculiar need, and show it to him with ready and fearless tact. And what she had told Harry was practically the very opposite of what she had told him.

"I wish I could be like Aunt Selina," he thought.

CHAPTER III

NOT COLONIAL; GEORGIAN

Harry and James lived in the city of New Haven in a big house surrounded by spacious grounds. The house itself was an old and stately one; the local papers, when they had occasion to mention it, usually referred to it as the Wimbourne "mansion." The boys' dislike of this word dated from an early age, when their father informed them that it was a loathsome expression, which people who "really knew" never used under any circumstances. He himself, if he had had occasion to describe it, would have spoken of it as a "place."

The house was built in the first decade of the nineteenth century. It was put up by Hilary Wimbourne's great-grandfather James, first of the name, the founder of the family fortunes. He came to New Haven as a penniless apprentice to a carriage-maker after the conclusion of the Revolutionary wars left him without other occupation, and within ten years after his arrival he became one of the two or three most prominent lawyers in the place. His understanding of his early trade he turned to good account by investing a large portion of his earnings as a lawyer in the carriage factory in which he originally served, and which with the benefit of his money and business acumen, became the most profitable of its kind in the town. He bought a farm in what were then the extreme outskirts of the city and built the spacious, foursquare, comfortable-looking house in which the Wimbournes with whom we have to deal still lived, nearly one hundred years later.

The house stood in a commanding position above an up-town avenue. It was painted white with green trimmings, and had a front portico of tall Doric columns reaching up to the top of the house. People habitually referred to its style of architecture as "Colonial." "Post-Colonial," or "late American Georgian" would have come much nearer the mark, but these distinctions are as naught to the great and glorious body of New England's inhabitants, to whom everything with pillars is and always will be "Colonial." The house was in truth a fine example of its style, and had been surprisingly little spoiled by the generations of Wimbournes that had lived and died in it, but the unity of its general effect was marred by the addition of two wings reaching out from its sides, erected by Hilary Wimbourne's father in the fifties and showing all the peculiarities of that glorious but architecturally weak period. Friends of the family often expressed sympathy and sorrow at the anachronism the house was thus made to offer, but Hilary soon became somewhat impatient of these. In fact, he never listened to an expression of regret on the subject without breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the wings had been built when they were, and not ten or twenty or thirty years later, when architectural indiscretion ran to extremes only vaguely hinted at in the forties and fifties.

"Besides," he would explain to those who showed interest in the matter, "those wings are not always going to look as badly as they do now. Our eyes will always look on them as unpleasantly different from the old house, but the eyes of a hundred years hence will see in them nothing more than a quaint and agreeable variety. After all, the two styles are but two different aspects of neo-classicism, one a little more remote from its original model than the other. History has proved what I say; think how the sensitive must have shuddered in the fifteenth century when they saw a lot of Perpendicular Gothic slammed down by the side of pure Early English! It must have looked like the very devil to them." Only very few people heard this theory carried back to its logical conclusion, however. Hilary would see and recognize the drowning expression that came over their faces, and as soon as he knew that he was beyond their depth he stopped, for he made it a rule never to talk above people's heads. Consequently he seldom got beyond the "neo-classicism" point.

As far as the interior was concerned, the atmosphere of the old days had been almost perfectly preserved. Every wall-paper, every decoration had, by some lucky succession of chances, been as nearly as possible duplicated when it became necessary to replace or restore, and the hand of the seventies and eighties left almost no trace of its equally ruthless destructive and constructive powers. So that at the time of which we write the house was furnished almost completely in the style of the late Georgian period, for what his ancestors omitted to leave him the faultless taste of Hilary supplied.

The house faced westward and toward the principal street of the neighborhood; the ground fell gently away from it on all sides, but most steeply toward the west. Carriage drives led up to the house from the two corners formed by the main thoroughfare and the two intersecting streets which bounded the property. A tar footpath followed the curve of each driveway, so that between the street and the front door of the house there stretched an unbroken expanse of green lawn. In their early youth Harry and James both wondered why no footpath ran directly up the middle of the front lawn, as was the case with most of the other front lawns of their acquaintance, and they considered it monstrously inconvenient that they were obliged to "go way round by the corners" when they wished to reach the house from without. At length, however, the brilliant thought occurred to them that as they always approached the house either from the north or the south, and never from the unbroken block to the west, they could not well have used a central walk if they had had it.

Such was the setting in which the early lives of these two boys took place, and, taking one thing with another, their lot could probably not have been bettered. The first ten years of their lives had the divine monotony of perfect happiness and harmony, in which no more momentous events than the measles, a change of school, or summer trips to the coast of Maine or, more rarely, to Europe, ever occurred. They were brought up, from their earliest years, under the direct but never too obtrusive eye of their mother, and as we have already heard Aunt Selina describe her as "one of the best women that ever lived," we should be guilty of something akin to painting the rose if we ventured on any further encomiums of her character on our own account. Their relation with their father was hardly less ideal, though they saw much less of him and were, at bottom, less deeply attached to him than to their mother. Hilary was fond of his boys, and was capable of entering into their youthful moods with a sort of intimate aloofness that the boys found very winning. Not infrequently he would suddenly swoop down on them in their happy but humdrum occupations and carry them off to a baseball game or perhaps to New York for the day to spend a few hours of bliss in the Aquarium or the Zoo, in less time than it frequently took their mother to decide what overcoats they should wear to school. This dashing insouciance secretly captivated their mother as much as it did them, and though by this time she had given up showing the delight it caused her, she was never more pleased than when Hilary would so take them off.

Hilary also read to them occasionally, and his reading was another source of secret admiration to their mother. He never read them anything but what his wife would have described, and rightly, too, as "far beyond them"; such things as Spenser, Shakespeare, Sheridan, or Milton, even; and he always read with such a mock-serious air as Sir Henry Irving used in the scene where Charles I recites poetry to his children. His wife on such occasions, though perfectly content with her rôle of Henrietta Maria, would reflect that if she tried to read such things to them they would be fidgeting and walking about the room and longing for her to stop, instead of sitting spellbound, as they did when he read, on the arms of his chair and breathlessly following each word of the text.

With another parent and with other children such reading would have proved utterly sterile, but from it the boys managed to absorb a good deal of pleasure and the germs of literary appreciation as well, and the words of many a great passage in many a great author became dear to them long before they were able to grasp their full meaning. Results of their literary sessions would crop out in the family intercourse in sundry curious ways. One instance may serve to illustrate this. The family were sitting about together one day after lunch; Edith Wimbourne had a pile of household mending before her.

"I declare," she said, "these tablecloths have simply rotted away from lying in that dark closet; they would have lasted much better if they had been used a little."

"She let concealment," said Hilary from behind a magazine, "like a worm i' the bud, feed—what did concealment feed on, James?"

"Feed on her damask—"

"Tablecloth!" shouts Harry, brilliantly but indiscreetly.

"Oh, shut up," retorts his brother, peevishly, as who would not, at having the words snatched from his mouth? "You needn't be so smart, I was going to say that anyway."

"The heck you were!"

"Yes, I was."

"You were not! You were going to say 'cheek'; I saw you start to say it."

"Oh, shut up! Can't any one be bright but you?"

"That's all right; you were going to say it. Wasn't he, Father?" asks Harry, with the air of one appealing to the supreme authority.

"What?" Hilary had long since returned to his magazine.

"Say 'cheek.' Wasn't he going to?"

"Who?"

"James, of course."

"I trust not. It seems to me that it is one of the slang words your mother has requested you not to use."

"Wha—what is?"

"Cheek." Not much of a joke, certainly, but Hilary, looking with impenetrable gravity over his glasses at his son, when he really knows perfectly well what Harry is talking about, is funny. At any rate Harry stops to laugh, and the quarrel is a failure. Edith could have stopped the quarrel by simply enjoining peace, but she could not have done it without resort to parental authority.

One day James, ordinarily phlegmatic and self-controlled, ran through the house in a great state of dishevelment and distress in search of his mother, holding aloft a bloody finger and weeping hot tears of woe.

"Where's Mama?" he inquired breathlessly, ending up in the library and finding his father alone there.

"Out, I think. What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing.... A kid licked me.... I wanted something for this finger."

"Well, go upstairs and get that large brown bottle on my wash-stand, and we'll see what we can do about it." Hilary, taking a page out of his own boyhood, guessed that no mere cut finger could have reduced James to such an abject pass. He suspected that his son, who, unlike Harry, was almost morbidly sensitive to appearances and almost never gave way to demonstrations of grief, had augmented the disgrace of being thrashed by allowing himself to be reduced to a state of tears in the presence of his fellows. Some such occurrence only could account for this precipitate rout. One or two further inquiries confirmed this conjecture, and he then prepared to apply, if possible, a balm to his son's mental wound as well as the physical one.

"There," said he, giving a final pull to an unprofessional-looking bandage, composed of an entirely un-antiseptic handkerchief, "that will stay till your mother comes in. Now go and get me that green book on the third shelf and I'll read to you for a while, if you want."

The green book happened to be no less notable a work than "Paradise Lost," and Hilary, turning to the last pages of the twelfth book, read of the expulsion of our sinning forbears from Eden. He read Milton rather well, almost as well, in fact, as he secretly thought he did, and James, though incapable at first of listening attentively or understanding much of anything, was gradually soothed by the solemn music of the lines; by the time his father reached the closing passage he was listening with wide open ears.

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

Hilary kept the book open on his knee for a moment after he had finished, and he noticed with interest that James leaned forward with aroused attention to read over the passage again. "Some natural tears—wiped them soon—the world was all before them—" the words sank in on James' mind as his father knew they would, and suggested the thought that the world need not be irrevocably lost through one indiscretion.

Let no one gain from these somewhat extended accounts of Hilary's dealings with his sons an impression to the effect that the boys found a more sympathetic friend in their father than in their mother. As a matter of fact, the exact contrary was true. Like all perfect art, Hilary's successful passages with them bore no trace of the means by which they were brought about, and consequently they did not feel that their father's attitude toward them was inspired by anything like the warm and undisguised affection which pervaded their mother's. Nor, indeed, was it.

James, even in these early days, showed signs of having inherited a fair share of his father's inborn tact in his dealings with his brother. The fraternal relation is always an interesting one to observe, because of its extreme elasticity, combining, as it does, apparently unlimited possibilities for love, hate and indifference. Who ever saw two pairs of brothers that seemed to regard each other with exactly the same feelings? Harry and James certainly did not hate each other, but on the other hand they did not love each other with that passionate devotion that is supposed to characterize the ideal brothers of fancy. Nor could they truthfully be called wholly indifferent to each other; their mutual attitude lay somewhere between indifference and the Castor-and-Pollux-like devotion that the older and less attractive of their relatives constantly tried to instil in their youthful bosoms. They were never bored by each other. James always felt for Harry's superior quickness in all intellectual matters an admiration which he would have died sooner than give full expression to, and Harry, though he frequently scouted his brother's opinions in all matters, had a profound respect for James' clearness and maturity of judgment. But what, more than anything else, kept them on good terms with each other and always, at the last moment, prevented serious ructions, was a way that James had at times of viewing their relation in a detached and impersonal light, and acting accordingly. On such occasions he appeared to be two people; first, the James that was Harry's brother and contemporary, less than two years older than he and subject to the same desires and weakness, and, secondly, the James who stood as judge over their differences and distributed justice to them both with a fair and impartial hand.

For instance, there was the episode of the neckties. A distant relative, a cousin of their mother's, who does not really come into the story at all, took occasion of expressing her approval of their existence by sending them two neckties, one purple and one green, with the direction that they should decide between them which was to have which. James, by the right of primogeniture that prevails among most families of children, was given the first choice, and picked out the purple one. Harry quietly took the other, but though there was no open dissatisfaction expressed, it soon became evident to James that his brother was tremendously disappointed. During the rest of the day, as he went about his business and pleasure, vague but disturbing recollections flitted through James' mind of Harry's being particularly anxious to possess a purple tie, of having been half promised one, indeed, by the very relative from whom these blessings came; circumstances which, from the wording of the letter which accompanied the gift, obviously constituted no legal claim on the tie, but were nevertheless enough to appeal to James' sense of moral, or "ultimate" justice.

The next morning James, according to custom, approaching the completion of his dressing some time before Harry, remarked in a casual tone:

"Oh, you can have that purple tie, if you want. I'd just as lief take the green one."

Harry, who had taken the attitude of being willing to suffer to the point of death before making a complaint in the matter, would not allow this. In the brief conversational intervals that the spirited wielding of a sponge, and subsequently of a towel, allowed, he disclaimed any predilection for ties of any particular color, or of any particular kind of tie, or for any particular color in general. Clothes were a matter of complete indifference for him; he had never been able to understand why people spent their time in raving inanely over this or that particular manner of robing themselves. As for colors, he could scarcely bother to tell one from the other; the prism presented to him a field in which it was impossible to make any choice. If, however, in his weaker moments, he had ever felt a passing fancy for one color over and above another, that color was undoubtedly green. And so on, and so forth. James made no further observation on the subject, but when he reached the necktie stage in his dressing, he quietly put on the green tie, and Harry, like the Roman senators of old, subsequently flashed in the purple.

James preferred the purple tie, but he let Harry have it because Harry felt more keenly on the subject than he. "If"—so ran the substance of his reasoning—"if I give way in this matter, about which I do not particularly care, one way or the other, there will be a better chance of my getting what I want some other time, when the issue is a really vital one. By sacrificing a penny now, I gain a pound in the future." Such clearness of sight was beyond James' years, and, but for the real sense of justice that accompanied it might have made him an opportunist. James would never in the last resort, have used his reasoning powers to cheat Harry, who, though his brother, was, when all was said and done, his best friend.

CHAPTER IV

PUPPY DOGS, AND A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT

The story of the life of any person begins with the moment of his birth and ends with the last breath that leaves his body. The complete account of the inward and outward experiences that go to make up any one individual life would, if properly told, be the most fascinating story in the world, for there never lived a person who did not carry about within himself the materials for a great and complete novel. Such stories have never yet been written, and probably never will be, partly because they would be too long and partly because the thing would be so confoundedly hard to do. So as to make it interesting, that is. We have chosen to begin this account of the lives, or rather, a section of the lives, of Harry and James at the death of their mother because that was their first great outward experience. It influenced their inward lives even more fundamentally. It lifted their thoughts, their whole outlook on life, from what, for want of a better expression, might be called the level of youthful development and sent them branching and soaring into new and strange regions.

One of the most important outward changes that Edith Wimbourne's death caused in the life of her household was the substitution, as far as such a thing could be, of her younger sister, Agatha Fraile, in her place. Such was, in a word, the ultimate fruit of the conversation between Aunt Selina and Aunt Cecilia that occurred a chapter or two ago. James Wimbourne was approached and convinced, and in his turn approached and convinced his brother Hilary, who, in his turn, came back to his half-sister Selina and persuaded her to approach and convince that lady in question on his behalf. Aunt Selina was perfectly willing to do this, though she had not counted on it.

"Miss Fraile," she said, on the first occasion for speech that presented itself; "my brother Hilary has asked me to put a proposition to you on his behalf. What would you say to coming here and living with him as his housekeeper and having an eye on those two boys, until—well, say till it is time for them to go off to a boarding-school?"

This direct manner of approach was perhaps the one best calculated to win Miss Fraile, who after a very little parley, assented to the proposition. She was a very young and fragile-looking woman, having but lately passed her thirtieth birthday, but she was in reality quite as able to take care of herself as the next person, if not, indeed, a great deal more so. She was the very antithesis, as the boys presently discovered, of Aunt Selina, being all smiles and cordiality on the outside and about as hard as tempered steel when you got a little below the surface, in spite of her smiles, and in spite, moreover, of her really unusual and perfectly sincere piety.

"I think," went on Aunt Selina rather magnificently, after the main point had been gained, "that in the matter of the stipend there will be no difficulty at all. You will find my brother entirely liberal in such matters." Here she named a sum, Miss Fraile instantly decided that it would not do, and proceeded after her own fashion to the work of raising her opponent's bid.

"How very good of him," she murmured, letting her eyes fall to the carpet. "All of our family have unfortunately been obliged to devote so much thought and attention to money matters since our dear father's death left us so badly off. Let me see.... I suppose my duties here would take up very nearly all my time, would they not?"

"I do not know.... I daresay...."

"Exactly; one has to look so far ahead in all these matters, does one not? I mean, that looking after this great house and those two dear boys and Hilary himself would not leave me much time for anything like music lessons, would it? Perhaps you did not know that I gave music lessons at home?... Money is such a bother—! I suppose I should scarcely have time to practise here myself, with one thing and another—household affairs do pile up so, do they not?—without thinking of lessons or anything of that sort; yet I daresay I should somehow be able to ... to make it up, that is, if—"

"How much more would you need?" asked Aunt Selina bluntly.

Miss Fraile named a sum half as large again as the one previously mentioned, but Aunt Selina, stifling a gasp, clinched the matter there.

After the funeral Miss Fraile returned to her home in semi-rural Pennsylvania "to collect my traps" as she brightly put it, and a week or so later came back to New Haven and settled down in her new position. The boys on the whole liked their Aunt Agatha, though even their exuberant boyish natures occasionally found her cheerfulness a little oppressive, and she certainly did very well for them and for their father. She ordered the meals, saw to the housework, arranged the flowers, dusted the bric-à-brac with her own hands, did most of the mending and presided at the head of the table at meals, fairly radiating peace and cheer.

Hilary was a little appalled, to be sure, when she would burst on him on his returning to the house of an evening with a pair of warmed slippers in her hand and a musical little peal of laughter on her lips, but he did not have to see much of her, and besides, he so thoroughly approved of her.

"It is like living with Mary and Martha rolled into one," he told his brother a month or two after her arrival; "with a little of Job and the archangel Gabriel thrown in, flavored with a spice of St. Elizabeth of Hungary—that bread woman, you know—and just a dash of St. Francis of Assisi. She has covered the lawn knee-deep with bread crumbs for the sparrows, and when she is not busy with her church work, which she almost always is, she goes about kissing strange children on the head and asking them if they say their prayers regularly. They all seem to like her, too; that's the funny part of it. The boys are entirely happy with her, and she is splendid for them. In short, I am entertaining an angel, though not unawares—oh, no, certainly not unawares."

The two boys were thrown on each other's society much more constantly than formerly, especially as, during the first weeks, at any rate, they had small heart for the games of their schoolmates. James especially, during these days of retirement, observed his brother with a newly-awakened interest, and in the light, of course, of his mother's last words to him. He had always thought of Harry as more irresponsible and light-headed than himself, but it had never occurred to him that he could give him any help against his impulsiveness beyond the customary fraternal criticism and banter. Now he began to see that his position of elder brother, combined with his superior balance and poise of character, gave him a considerable influence over Harry, and he began to feel at times an actual sense of responsibility very different from the attitude of tolerant and half-amused superiority with which he had previously regarded Harry's vagaries. At such times he would drop his ridicule or blame, whichever it happened to be, and would become silent and embarrassed, feeling that he should be helping Harry instead of merely laying stress on his shortcomings, and yet not having the first idea of how to go to work about it.

One day they were returning to the house after a walk through a somewhat slummy and hoodlum-infested neighborhood and came upon a group of boys tormenting a small, dirty, yellow mongrel puppy after the humorous manner of their kind. They were not actually cruel to the dog, but they were certainly not giving it a good time, and Harry's tender heart was stirred to its core. Without a word or a second thought he rushed into the middle of the gang, extracted the puppy and ran off with it to a place of safety. The thing was done in the modern rather than in the romantic style; he did not strike out at boys twice as big as himself—there were none there, in the first place, and in any case he had no desire for a fight—nor did he indulge in a lengthy tirade against cruelty to animals; he simply grabbed the dog and ran. The "micks" followed him at first, but he could run faster than they and none of them cared much about a puppy, one way or the other.

James, meanwhile, had run off a different way, and when presently he came upon his brother again he was walking leisurely along clasping the puppy in a close embrace.

"You certainly are a young fool," said James, half amused and half irritated; "what did you want to get mixed up in a street row like that for? Darned lucky you didn't get your head smashed."

Harry thought it needless to reply to this, as the facts spoke for themselves, and merely walked on, hugging and kissing his prize.

Then suddenly the situation dawned on James in its new light, and he walked on, silent as Harry himself and far more perplexed. Harry's fundamental motive was a good one, no doubt, but he realized what disproportionate trouble the reckless following up of Harry's good motives might bring him into. This time he had luckily escaped scot free, but the next time he would very likely get mixed up in a street fight, and would be lucky if he were able to walk home. And all about so little—the dog was not really suffering; being a slum dog it had probably thrived on teasing and mistreatment since before its eyes were open. And the worst part of the situation was that he was so helpless in making Harry see the thing in its true light.

At any rate, he reflected, his first attitude was of no avail. Calling Harry a fool, he knew, would not convince him of his foolishness; it would more likely have the effect of making him think he was more right than ever. As he walked silently on, beside his brother, Harry's shortcomings seemed to dwindle and his own to increase.

"Let's have a look at the beast," he said presently in an altered tone, stopping and taking the puppy from Harry's arms. "He's not such a bad puppy, after all. Wonder how old he is." He sat down on a nearby curbstone and balancing the puppy on his knee apostrophized him further: "Well, it was poor pupsy-wupsy; did the naughty boys throw stones at it? That was a dirty shame, it was!"

James put the puppy down in the gutter and encouraged playfulness. For a few minutes the two boys watched its somewhat reluctant antics; then James asked:

"What are you going to do with it, anyway?"

"Take it home, I suppose."

"What'll you do with it there? Keep him in the house?"

"No. That is, I suppose Father wouldn't hear of it."

"I suppose not A puppy...! There are three dogs in the house anyway."

"What about the stable, then?"

"I don't know. There's Thomas." Thomas was the coachman, who made no secret of his dislike for dogs "under the horses' hoofs."

"Yes," said Harry, "and Spark, too. Spark would try to bite him, I'm afraid."

"What are you going to do with him, then?"

"I don't know; what shall we?"

"It's for you to say—he's your dog."

"Do you think," said Harry, lowering his voice and gazing furtively around, "do you think it would be all right just to leave him here?"

James laughed, inwardly. Then a bright idea struck him. Grasping the puppy in one hand he walked across the street to a small and dirty front yard in which a small and dirty child of four or five was sitting playing.

"Hullo, kid," said James breezily, "do you want a puppy dog? Here you are, then. He's a very valuable dog, so be careful of him. Mind you don't pull his tail now, or he'll bite."

James walked off well pleased with the turn of events, which left Harry relieved and satisfied and the dog honorably disposed of. As for Harry, he was profoundly grateful. He would have liked to give some expression to his gratitude, but the words would not come, and he walked on for some time without speaking. But he was determined to give some sign of what he felt.

"Thank you, James," he said at length in a low voice, and blushed to the roots of his hair.

"What? Oh, that's all right." James' surprise was no affectation; the matter had really passed from his mind. But he gave to Harry's words the full meaning that the speaker placed in them. They made him feel suddenly ashamed of himself; what had Harry done that was wrong? What had he done but what was right and praiseworthy, when you came to look at it? Should he not be ashamed himself of not having run in and rescued the dog before Harry?

And yet, most of the things that Harry did worked out wrong, somehow, even when they were prompted by the best of motives.

"Poor Harry," thought James, "he's always getting into scrapes, and yet I suppose, if everything were known, people would see that he was twice as good as I am, at bottom. I would never have thought of saving that dog; Harry thinks out such funny things to do.... I can generally do the right thing, if it's put directly up to me, but Harry goes out and searches for the right thing to do; I guess that's what it amounts to. Only, I wish he didn't have to search in such strange places."

As James settled down into his position of mentor to his brother he found out a curious thing; he was fonder of Harry than formerly. The old sense of unconscious, taking-it-for-granted companionship gradually became infused with positive affection which, for the reason that it found little if any outward expression in the daily round of work and play, escaped the notice of everybody except James himself.

"Do you think that doing something for a person would ever make you fonder of that person?" he once asked of his father when they were alone together. "I mean—I should think, that is, that it would work out the other way, so that the person you did the thing for would be fonder of you."

"It's a well known psychological fact," replied his father; "I've often noticed it. If you merely stop a person in the street and ask him the way, or what time it is, you can see his expression change from one of indifference, or even dislike, to interest and cordiality. And if you ever feel that a man, an acquaintance, doesn't like you, ask him to do you some slight service, and he'll admire you intensely from that moment on. And conversely, if you want to make a man your enemy, the best way of going about it is to do something for him.—Why, what made you think of it?"

"Thomas," replied James promptly, being prepared for the question. "He was cross as two sticks the other day when we wanted to build forts in the haymow, but after I asked him to help me put the chain on my bicycle," etc., etc. But James was disturbed by his father's development of the theory. What if his "helping out" Harry should have the effect of making him hate him, James, the very effect of all others he desired to avoid? He resolved to keep his new-found feeling to himself, and give his brother's resentment no foothold; but he could not entirely live it down, for all that. Unconsciously he found fault less with him, unconsciously he would take his part in squabbles with the servants or with his father; and as he noticed no change in Harry's conduct toward him he congratulated himself on his powers of concealment.

But he need have had no worries on the score of Harry's resenting his protection. To Harry, James had always appeared to partake somewhat of the nature of a divinity; if not Apollo or Jupiter, out and out, he was at least Hercules, say, or Theseus. And though, in the very nature of things in general and the fraternal relation in particular, he was obliged outwardly to deny James' superiority in everything and more especially the right to boss younger brothers, he was acutely, almost pathetically, sensitive to James' demeanor toward him and was entirely ready to respond to any increase in good feeling, if James would lead the way.

James, with all his insight and quickness of perception, failed to count upon the fact that Harry would be as slow in making a parade of his feelings as he himself, and was a little surprised that Harry made so slight a demonstration of sorrow when, about a year after their mother's death, James was sent off to school. Harry, indeed, sought to cover his secret conviction that he would really miss his brother very much by repeated harpings upon the blessings that James' presence had ever kept from him, and now, the obstacle being removed, would shower copiously on his deserving, but hitherto officially unrecognized, head. Now he would get the first go at all dishes at table, now he would always sit on the box beside Thomas and drive, now people would see whether he could not be on time for breakfast without his brother's assistance, and so forth. James smiled tolerantly at all such talk; he knew that it did not amount to much, though even he failed to realize quite how little.

When the fatal morning came the brothers parted with complete cordiality and every outward expression of mutual contempt.

"Be very careful about putting on your clothes in the morning, kid," said James as the train that was to take him off rolled into the station. "You put on your undershirt first, remember, then your shirt and coat. Don't go putting your undershirt over your coat; people might laugh."

"All right, you dear thoughtful boy, I'll try to remember, but I shall be pretty busy hoping that those other kids'll lick the tar out of you, for the first time in your innocent life. You're a good boy at heart, James; all you need is to have the nonsense knocked out of you!"

James' first letter to his brother from school, written some ten days after his departure, is still extant, and may be quoted in full as a document in the story.

St. Barnabas' School.

October 5.

Dear Harry:

I meant to have written you before, but I have been so busy that there was no time. This certainly is a fine place, and I like it a lot already. There are 21 new boys this term, which is fewer than usual, but they say we are an unusually good crowd. We say so, at any rate! There was a big rough-house in our corridor Saturday night. A lot of the old boys came down and turned the new fellows after lights were out, and also made them run the gauntlet down the hall, standing at the sides and swatting them with belts and things as they went by. That was much worse than the turning, which did not amount to much. I got turned five times, and Brush, the fellow that rooms with me, six times. That was not much. There was one chap that got turned 22 times that one night. That was Hawley. They call him 'Stink' Hawley already, because he is so dirty looking. They say he has not washed his face since he came. Gosh, I wonder what you will be called when you get here!"

"What a filthy lie!" shrieked Harry when he reached this, making up in vehemence what he lacked in coherence. His alleged aversion to the wash-basin was a standing joke in the family, and any reference to it invariably brought a rise.

"Gracious, dear," murmured Aunt Agatha, and smiled.

"Let's hear," said his father, suspending judgment. (The scene took place at the breakfast table.) Harry read the letter aloud up to the point in question, and was relieved to observe an exculpatory smile on his father's lips when he stopped.

"I admit there is an implication in that last remark," said Hilary, "that might prove irritating. However, that's no excuse for making a menagerie of yourself. What else does James say?" Harry read on:

There always is a big rough-house the first two or three Saturday nights every year, and after that they keep pretty quiet. They say the masters let them do what they like, almost, those first nights, because they behave better afterwards and it keeps the new boys from being too fresh. That's what I'll be doing to you, you see, next year!

I have been playing football every day, and am trying for the fourth team. Do you remember Roswell Banks, that boy we saw up at Northeast? He is going to make the first team this year, probably. They say he tackles better than any one else here. Kid Leffingwell also plays a peach of a game, but he won't make the first this year. He is too light, but he has got lots of nerve.

I must stop now, so good-night.

Your affectionate brother,

James.

The present writer has no quarrel with any one who is unable to detect in this letter symptoms of any particularly keen brotherly affection. It is his private opinion, however, that such exist there. He thinks, imprimis, that James, strange as it may appear, laid himself out to be more agreeable in that letter than he would if he had written it, say, a year previously. It is longer and fuller than James' letters usually were. And—though this may be drawing the point too fine—he thinks that the exclamation point after "that's what I'll be doing to you next year" would not have been put in under the old régime. An exclamation point does so much toward toning down and softening a disagreeable remark! And for the manner of signature, of course James might have signed himself like that to Harry at any time of his life. Yet the writer, even at the risk of being called super-sensitive, will not ignore the fact that most of James' letters to his brother previous to this date are signed, more casually, "Yours affect'ly," or "Ever yours," or simply "Good-by,—James," and though he realizes that at best the point is not an all-important one, he feels he can do no better than give the reader all the information he has at his command, be it never so trifling, and let him draw conclusions for himself.

CHAPTER V

BABES IN THE WOOD

One Saturday morning about a year after James went away to school Harry bounded downstairs for breakfast to find his father just leaving the dining room.

"Hello, Father," he said, jumping up and kissing him as usual. "You don't stay in the office this afternoon, do you, Father? Why don't you take Bugs and me to the game? Or you can take us for a ride in the car, if you like; we'll meet you downtown for lunch, so as to save time." (Bugs was for the moment Harry's fidus Achates; a sort of vice-James.)

"You will not, I fear," returned Hilary briefly. "I'm going out of town for the day."

"What, not in the car?"

"In the car."

"All day?"

"All day. Leaving now, as soon as ever the car comes round, and not getting back till late—perhaps not to-night."

"Dash," remarked Harry. "I wish you'd go by train; Graves told me he'd give me a lesson in running the machine the next free Saturday."

"Sorry. Next week, perhaps."

"Where are you going, anyway, Father?"

"My business."

"Going to take Graves?"

"No."

"What, all alone? You'll be lonely. Why don't you take Aunt Agatha?"

"No, I shan't be lonely and I'm not going to take Aunt Agatha. I'll tell you what I am going to do, however; I'm going to send you away to school, and that next term. You have a pretty glib tongue in your head, Harry my boy, and I think perhaps young gentlemen of your own age will be even better able to appreciate it than I am."

But Harry was far too elated by the news to pay much heed to the rebuke. He became inarticulate with delight, and his father went calmly on with his preparations for departure.

"Yes, I'll have a talk with Hodgman about the exams.... There's the car, at last—I must run. Where did I put those water rights, anyway? Oh.... Yes, I think you'll probably have to do extra work in algebra this term.... Take care of yourself; we'll have a spree next week if I can arrange it," and so forth, enough to cover sorting a morning's mail, progress into the front hall, donning a hat and overcoat—no, the dark one, and where are the gray gloves, dash it?—and a triumphal exit in a motor car. Harry watched the retreating vehicle with mingled regret and admiration. Hilary made a striking and debonair picture as he whirled along in his scarlet chariot—they ran a great deal to bright red paint in those early days, if you'll remember—and people would run to catch a glimpse of him as he dashed by and talk about it at length at the next meal. But it occurred to Harry that he would complete the picture very nicely, sitting there at his father's side. He wished fervently that he could ever make his father remember that Saturday was Saturday.

This parting conversation was redeemed from the oblivion of trivial things and inscribed indelibly on Harry's memory by the fact that it was the last he ever had with his father.

The day passed like any other day and at its close the household went to bed as usual, boding no ill. Toward midnight the telephone rang and Aunt Agatha arose and answered it. The voice at the other end introduced itself as Police Headquarters and inquired, as an afterthought, if this was Mr. Wimbourne's house. Yet, it was. Headquarters then expressed a desire to know if any of the family was there and, without waiting for a reply, asked with perceptible animation if this was one of the girls speaking? Aunt Agatha answered, in a tone which in another person would have been called frigid, that this was Miss Fraile.

Headquarters appeared duly impressed; at least he seemed to have difficulty in finding words in which to continue. Aunt Agatha's crisp inquiry of what was it, please? at last moved him to admit there had been an accident. Yes, to Mr. Wimbourne. The automobile did it; ran into a telegraph pole down near Port Chester. Pretty bad smash-up; couldn't say just how bad.... Was Mr. Wimbourne badly hurt? Well, yes, pretty badly; the machine—Was Mr. Wimbourne killed? Well, yes, he was, if you put it that way. His body would arrive sometime next morning....

This was the sort of occasion on which Aunt Agatha shone as a perfect model of efficiency. She spent an hour or more telegraphing and telephoning, prayed extensively, returned to her bed and slept soundly till seven. Then she arose and gave directions to the servants. It was breakfast time before she remembered that she had yet to tell Harry.

Then, as he appeared so cheerfully and ignorantly at the breakfast table, Aunt Agatha's heart failed her. Her presence of mind also left her; she blurted out a few words to the effect that his father had had a bad accident, wished she had let him eat his breakfast in ignorance, hoped despairingly that he would guess the truth from her perturbation. But even this was denied her; he asked a great many questions and refused to eat till she made him, but gave no sign of suspecting anything beyond what she told him.

She saw that the suspense of waiting for his father's return would tell on him more than the worst certainty, but still she could not bring herself to break the truth to him. When at last she nerved herself to do it, it was too late.

"Come here and sit down by me, Harry," she said gently, but Harry, who was standing at one of the front windows, listlessly replied:

"Wait, there's something coming up the street."

"Just a minute, dear, I want to talk to you," said Aunt Agatha, going over and trying to push him gently away from the window. But Harry's attention was caught and he refused to move.

"I thought it might be Father. Do you think it's Father, Aunt Agatha? It moves so slowly I can't see.... Yes, it's turning in at the gate. What sort of a thing is it, anyway?..."

The next moment his own eyes answered the question, and with a little cry he toppled backward into her arms.

James' reception of the news was characteristically different. His behavior was generally referred to by the family as "wonderful." He certainly was very calm throughout. He was informed of his father's death on the Sunday morning by the headmaster of his school, to whom Aunt Agatha had telegraphed the night before.

"I suppose I'd better go home," was his first comment.

"I suppose you had," replied the schoolmaster, and he was rather at a loss for what to say next. He had certainly expected more of a demonstration than this. "Somebody had better go with you. Whom would you like to have go?"