Chapter X (5)

“Perhaps,” she mused, “happiness is ended for my husband and me; at all events, I will not seek its destruction. Perhaps he wants to leave me and be free. He must prove it to me. He has not proved it yet. Perhaps I can learn to be to him more than any other woman can ever be--can charm him to me again as I did when I was a girl. I can try with all my heart.”

She let down the glass of the little window and leaned out. The air was sweet with the smell of the damp winter woods--the trees clustered like phantoms close to the road--there had been an ice storm, and the glistening tops of the pines shone in the night like fairy trees in crystal urns. A few stars were out, big and bright in a sky faintly blue; as Mrs. Evremond lifted her face to them they seemed to shine on her as never before. She looked up into the heavens with a childlike sweetness, and perhaps, in her hope and her goodness, with as pure a faith as prayer ever carried. She was possibly deserted definitely by the man she loved. She had been betrayed by him. She had never suffered in her life as to-day. She could never so suffer again.

We all possess the power to make those who love us suffer just so far. Evremond had come all at once to the high-tide mark of his limit. He could never cause her such keen pain again, and he paid the penalty. She loved him not less but differently, with a tenderness that comes only when we have ceased to lean--to repose; with a protection that only comes when we are conscious of weakness; with renunciation that only comes when we see and accept the destruction of the ideal, the death of illusion, and take up with courage the reality and embrace it instead.

“He shall never know that I know,” she murmured, “unless he wishes to. He has a right to his life; he has a right to love where he likes, not by law, but because of his nature. If he loves me still, if he wants to go on as we are, he will make me feel it to-night. I shall know to-night, and for all our future he shall decide.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Evremond was a methodical woman of reasonable habits, and not given to tardy wanderings about shops or prolonged absences from her home. She was on this night very late indeed. The long time Evremond waited for her confirmed his most unpleasant fears. He had come in about six and gone to the salon to wait her probably speedy entrance. Then, with the nervous impatience of a person who had every reason to dread, and every reason to hope for, the arrival of the expected, he watched the clock mercilessly mark hour after hour. At eight--never had she been out so late before--he said, definitely:

“She has left me--there is no doubt about it. She knows everything, and she never wants to see me again.”

Such a fact as the termination of their married relations, in the most extreme moments of his interest in another, he had never thought of--he had never wished for. He had always considered his wife suited to him, understanding his idiosyncrasies, patient and a pleasant background, but never had he supposed that the naked truth of the loss of her--or the risk of the loss of her--would fill him with dismay.

Not caring to suggest significance in her absence by questioning the servants, he waited in the salon without giving orders to retard the dinner. Every passing cab that showed evidence of drawing up to the curbstone made him go to the window, only to see the vehicle roll unconcernedly past. His wife had left the house at five o’clock in her carriage, which had been sent back from the Champs Elysées; this was all he knew save that she had been to his studio half an hour before his rendezvous, and had there dropped her glove with the compromising letter. The end, then, of his conventional commonplace married life was to be a kind of tragedy; the public were to have their taste offended by his delinquencies--or to remain indifferent to the subject.

At all events, the poignancy of the affair was reserved for himself alone. Consistent with his self-absorbed nature, he pictured but one sufferer. He allotted to his wife righteous anger, disgust and a jealous pride--which, nevertheless, he justified--and nothing else. With surprise and vexation he discovered that he was suffering, and, unused to pain of any kind, annoyed and ill at ease with his conscience and his fate, he could have snapped at his irritation like an animal at a tantalizing wound.

If she were, indeed, gone, then his home was wrecked in consequence of his passing passion for a woman he had always thought in no wise equal to the wife whom he had dishonored, whom he, nevertheless, discovered he treasured and valued and could not lightly lose. What folly--what poor logic--what false judgment! Neither logic nor judgment entered into the case, and he knew it, nor did an overwhelming temptation of a grand passion justify even remotely his behavior in his eyes; he admitted his weakness, his facile drifting, when he took no means to stem the tide, his half-cynical pastime. It looked to have cost him dear.

As sentiments whose characters have changed in the unalterable and fickle moment of time, when love is love no more and desire non-existent, become as unpleasant and safe as they were secret and dangerous, so he thought of his late friendship with anger and held it cheap, a priceless imitation for which perhaps he had given a pure jewel in stupid exchange.

If she did not come in by nine o’clock he would go to her, to her mother’s, where she had undoubtedly taken refuge in the sudden storm that had driven her from her own doors. Once there, facing her, what should he say? She was so simple, so direct, so honest, so unworldly. He was too intelligent not to comprehend all that occasion would require of his duplicity, subtleties, to dupe her, to make her believe--what? He could _not_ make her now believe anything but the truth. Her entire confidence had spared him hitherto the necessity of lying to her. He owed her that.

As he said this to himself, the debt of everything that he owed came very practically to his mind. All the peace he had known; agreeable and courteous companionship whenever he had sought it; the grace and comfort of a well-ordered household; and, if anything further, he had for a long time been too careless to foster it, unheedful of its value. If she were only a habit, she was a fixed one, more steadfast than any other hitherto formed. What should he say to her? Since he could not trick her to regard the situation with anything but disgust and anger, he would tell her the truth and plead weakness without love and beg her forgiveness. His nature twinged at this, a burning flush made him hot all over. A distaste of the cowardice in such confessions nauseated him. If she forgave him, if he made a clean breast of it in loyalty to her and disloyalty to the other, things would never be the same again. Between them there would always be his weakness and her nobility. Before humiliations such as these some natures do not shrink. Evremond shivered at it with all his sensibility and pride.

“Not,” he acknowledged, “that I am too beastly proud to own up, but that I dread the result to us both. _Que faire?_”

At nine o’clock, his nerves on the rack, his control gone, he telephoned to the little hotel, 75 Rue Docteur Blanche.

“Mrs. Evremond has not been at her mother’s for several days--who wished to know? Was there anything wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He put up the receiver--a new thought seized him horribly. Why had he supposed this the one and only solution--the quiet solution to his wife’s problem, the sequence to her discovery? What if she had suddenly, surprisingly, taken it to heart, and it had unnerved her? He had not thought of her or her feelings. She loved him--she had loved him, he knew it well--dearly.

“What if she had----” he exclaimed, aloud, white with emotion. Then: “Nonsense,” he exclaimed, “she is not hysterical--she is control itself.”

What was she? Really, what did he know of her accurately; when had he seen her obliged to face any crisis in her quiet life?

He rang violently, and when the man came in, asked:

“When did madame go out, did you tell me? Tell me again.”

“At five. Charles drove madame a little way on the Champs Elysées, and was then dismissed.”

She had been gone then five hours. There was no house of an intimate friend to which she could have gone for advice or even familiar confidence. She had no _intimes_, no enthusiasms; she lived, and he knew it, for him and her home absolutely. She had built a simple, healthful existence around him.

In this, his first solitude, his first long soliloquy, the state of Evremond’s mind altered as did his countenance. He grew stilled, almost appalled, at what might come to his knowledge now, at any moment, and facts magnified by his vivid imagination became ghosts to him--every one.

He went from the salon to her rooms--the pretty rooms of the woman of wealth and good taste, where every article of toilet and furniture spoke charmingly of the mistress. Mrs. Evremond’s dinner dress lay out on the bed; her maid stood in the window looking out. With a word about madame’s being very late to-night, she left the room discreetly.

Neither dressing table nor bureau nor secretary had any letter for him. There was no evidence of a hasty departure, no melodramatic chaos in the tranquil rooms that, with bright wood fires and shut-in invitingness, waited her return. She had gone out, as usual, but not as usual had she returned.

These rooms, to whose voices he had been for months deaf and indifferent, spoke to him now so insistingly that he turned away from them, not able to bear their appeal.

Back in the salon the clock marked the quarter after nine--at half-past he would go out to the prefecture of the police--and what then? Did this mean that he discarded the idea of a voluntary flight from him? No--she was, of course, safe. She had simply left him without a word or sign. He could do nothing--but suffer and wait.

In her withdrawal, in his certainty of loss of her, she grew infinitely precious in his eyes and, above all the rest of the world, for the first in a long time she took her rightful place. If anything sinister had occurred he knew the whole face of life would be altered for him forever. If she had left him, he determined to move heaven and earth to win her back to him--and just here he turned sharply at the opening of the salon door.

He sprang toward her--his white and drawn face wore a look of fear and suffering that at the sight of her altered to a welcome and relief, and with a tenderness such as had never greeted Emily Evremond in her life before, he cried her name:

“_Emily!_” He stammered it and stopped. The face of his wife was so different to what he would have looked for it to be, her coming was so little what he had planned for, that he had no words at command.

“I am late. I am awfully late--I did not realize it was half-past nine. Have you dined, Maurice?”

She laid her muff and furs down. She had only one glove on--a gray _suède_ glove; she drew it slowly off, her other hand was bare.

“_Dined!_” echoed her husband. “Why, I’ve been waiting for you here since six o’clock. I’ve been horribly anxious. Emily, where on earth have you been?” He might have said, “Where in heaven?” for her face was heavenly. He knew her for a pretty woman, a graceful woman, but the face of his wife, as she stood looking at him, quiet, unemotional, was of a divinity that made him marvel. He felt more infinitely far away from her than if she had not returned to him.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I had some things to do, and I did not realize the time. You must be starved, Maurice.”

What things--what had she done and planned further to do? That tears and reproaches and accusations were not in the rôle she had given herself, he saw. Any opening of the subject by him he felt would be a grave mistake. If she said nothing he would ignore that she knew. She did not, of course, know yet that he had found her glove, even if she had purposely left it--how could she be sure that he would return? Perhaps she did not know that she had lost it, or where. His heart leaped at the respite--the little respite it was--his color came back, and the possibility of a natural attitude.

She had gone over to the mirror and was taking off her hat tranquilly, instead of going to her own room. She arranged her hair deftly and lightly with a touch here and there. Maurice watched her, and the light on her hands and on the jewels of her engagement ring and the plain round of her wedding ring. Her hands were small; on one hand all day she had worn a gray glove, and between it and her palm had lain the letter with its cruel flaunting to her of his treachery and his sin. And she returned to him like this--gentle, controlled!

He drew a deep breath. “What pluck!” he thought. “What a woman!” He adored her, and all that her unspoken forgiveness meant, all that her grace conceded, worked in him a change--a conversion. Maurice Evremond was a different man to the one who had left her that very morning--she had won her husband.

And she, for her part, was under the spell of his greeting. She wanted never to forget his face until its pallor and its transfiguration, until its significance, were fixed upon her heart. He had believed her gone--and he cared. He answered her question unconsciously without speaking a word. If he loved her ever so little, she would win the rest. She would supersede any other woman in the world with him. She turned with a smile to find his eyes fixed on her.

“Let’s go in to dinner as we are, Maurice, it’s so late.”

Evremond came to her, put his arms around her; for the thousandth part of a second he felt her shrink. He drew her close. Under his touch her face suffused like a bride’s. He saw now, as he held her, the marks of tears on her eyes; the illuminating of her spirit had concealed them until now, but the human touch brought her to life.

The sharp drawing of the cord, as the curtains were pulled back between salon and dining room, made them start apart as the _maitre d’hôtel_ summoned them to a repast already two hours late.

“_Madame est servie._”

The DOG STAR

By Joseph C. Lincoln

It commenced the day after we took old man Stumpton out codfishin’. Me and Cap’n Jonadab both told Peter T. Brown that the cod wa’n’t bitin’ much at that season, but he said cod be jiggered. “What’s troublin’ me jest now is landin’ suckers,” he says.

So the four of us got into the _Patience M._--she’s Jonadab’s catboat--and sot sail for the Crab Ledge. And we hadn’t more’n got our lines over the side than we struck into a school of dogfish. Now, if you know anything about fishin’ you know that when the dogfish strike on it’s “good-by, cod!” So when Stumpton hauled a big fat one over the rail I could tell that Jonadab was jest ready to swear. But do you think it disturbed your old friend, Peter Brown? No, sir! He never winked an eye.

“By Jove!” he sings out, starin’ at that blamed dogfish as if ’twas a gold dollar. “By Jove!” says he, “that’s the finest specimen of a Labrador mack’rel ever I see. Bait up, Stump, and go at ’em again.”

So Stumpton, havin’ lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old, and not havin’ sighted salt water in all that time, he don’t know but what there is sech critters as “Labrador mack’rel,” and he does go at ’em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish, four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cookin’ one of them “mack’rel” with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn’t steered him out of the way while I sneaked down to the Port and bought a bass, we’d have had to eat dogfish--we would, as sure as I’m a foot high.

Stumpton and his daughter, Maudina, was at the Old Home House, at Wellmouth Port. ’Twas late in September, and the boarders had cleared out. Old Dillaway--Ebenezer Dillaway, Peter’s father-in-law--had decoyed the pair on from Montana because him and some Wall Street sharks were figgerin’ on buyin’ some copper country out that way that Stumpton owned. Then Dillaway was too sick, and Peter, who was jest back from his weddin’ tower, brought the Montana victims down to the Cape with the excuse to give ’em a good time alongshore, but really to keep ’em safe and out of the way till Ebenezer got well enough to finish robbin’ ’em. Belle--Peter’s wife--stayed behind to look after papa.

Stumpton was a great tall man, narrer in the beam, and with a figgerhead like a henhawk. He jest enjoyed himself here at the Cape. He fished, and loafed, and shot at a mark. He sartinly could shoot. The only thing he was wishin’ for was somethin’ alive to shoot at, and Brown had promised to take him out duck shootin’. ’Twas too early for ducks, but that didn’t worry Peter any; he’d a-had ducks to shoot at if he bought all the poultry in the township.

Maudina was like her name, pretty but sort of soft and mushy. She had big blue eyes and a baby face, and her principal cargo was poetry. She had a deckload of it, and she’d heave it overboard every time the wind changed. She was forever orderin’ the ocean to “roll on,” but she didn’t mean it; I had her out sailin’ once when the bay was a little mite rugged, and I know. She was jest out of a convent school, and you could see she wasn’t used to most things--includin’ men.

The fust week slipped along, and everything was serene. Bulletins from Ebenezer more encouragin’ every day, and no squalls in sight. But ’twas almost too slick. I was afraid the calm was a weather breeder, and sure enough, the hurricane struck us the day after that fishin’ trip.

Peter had gone drivin’ with Maudina and her dad, and me and Cap’n Jonadab was smokin’ on the front piazza. I was pullin’ at a pipe, but the cap’n had the home end of one of Stumpton’s cigars harpooned on the little blade of his jackknife, and was busy pumpin’ the last drop of comfort out of it. I never see a man who wanted to git his money’s wuth more’n Jonadab. I give you my word, I expected to see him swaller that cigar remnant every minute.

And all to once he gives a gurgle in his throat.

“Take a drink of water,” says I, scared like.

“Well, by time!” says he, p’intin’.

A feller had jest turned the corner of the house and was headin’ up in our direction. He was a thin, lengthy craft, with more’n the average amount of wrists stickin’ out of his sleeves, and with long black hair trimmed aft behind his ears and curlin’ on the back of his neck. He had high cheek bones and kind of sunk-in black eyes, and altogether he looked like “Dr. Macgoozleum, the Celebrated Blackfoot Medicine Man.” If he’d hollered: “Sagwa Bitters, only one dollar a bottle!” I wouldn’t have been surprised.

But his clothes--don’t say a word! His coat was long and buttoned up tight, so’s you couldn’t tell whether he had a vest on or not--though ’twas a safe bet he hadn’t--and it and his pants was made of the loudest kind of black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year’s bird’s nest _now_, but when them clothes was fresh--whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn’t have been more’n a cloudy day ’longside of him.

He run up to the piazza like a clipper comin’ into port, and he sweeps off that rusty hat and hails us grand and easy.

“Good-mornin’, gentlemen,” says he.

“We don’t want none,” says Jonadab, decided.

The feller looked surprised. “I beg your pardon,” says he. “You don’t want any--what?”

“We don’t want any ‘Life of King Solomon’ nor ‘The World’s Big Classifyers.’ And we don’t want to buy any patent paint, nor sewin’ machines, nor clothes washers, nor climbin’ evergreen roses, nor rheumatiz salve. And we don’t want our pictures painted, neither.”

Jonadab was gittin’ excited. Nothin’ riles him wuss than a peddler, unless it’s a woman sellin’ tickets to a church fair. The feller swelled up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat would drag anchor, sure.

“You are mistaken,” says he. “I have called to see Mr. Peter Brown; he is--er--a relative of mine.”

Well, you could have blown me and Jonadab over with a cat’s-paw. We went on our beam ends, so’s to speak. A relation of Peter T.’s; why, if he’d been twice the panorama he was we’d have let him in when he said that. Loud clothes, we figgered, must run in the family. We remembered how Peter was dressed the fust time we met him.

“You don’t say!” says I. “Come right up and set down, Mr--Mr.----”

“Montague,” says the feller. “Booth Montague. Permit me to present my card.”

He dove into the hatches of his checkerboards and rummaged around, but he didn’t find nothin’ but holes, I jedge, because he looked dreadful put out, and begged our pardons five or six times.

“Dear me!” says he. “This is embarrassin’. I’ve forgot my cardcase.”

We told him never mind the card; any of Peter’s folks was more’n welcome. So he come up the steps and set down in a piazza chair like King Edward perchin’ on his throne. Then he hove out some remarks about its bein’ a nice morning’, all in a condescendin’ sort of way, as if he usually attended to the weather himself, but had been sort of busy lately, and had handed the job over to one of the crew. We told him all about Peter, and Belle, and Ebenezer, and about Stumpton and Maudina. He was a good deal interested, and asked consider’ble many questions. Pretty soon we heard a carriage rattlin’ up the road.

“Hello!” says I. “I guess that’s Peter and the rest comin’ now.”

Mr. Montague got off his throne kind of sudden.

“Ahem!” says he. “Is there a room here where I may--er--receive Mr. Brown in a less public manner? It will be rather a--er--surprise for him, and----”

Well, there was a good deal of sense in that. I know ’twould surprise _me_ to have such an image as he was sprung on me without any notice. We steered him into the gents’ parlor, and shut the door. In a minute the horse and wagon come into the yard. Maudina said she’d had a “heavenly” drive, and unloaded some poetry concernin’ the music of billows, and pine trees, and sech. She and her father went up to their rooms, and when the decks was clear Jonadab and me tackled Peter T.

“Peter,” says Jonadab, “we’ve got a surprise for you. One of your relations has come.”

Brown, he did looked surprised, but he didn’t act as he was any too joyful.

“Relation of _mine_?” says he. “Come off! What’s his name?”

We told him Montague, Booth Montague. He laffed.

“Wake up and turn over,” he says. “They never had anything like that in my fam’ly. Booth Montague! Sure ’twa’n’t Algernon Coughdrops?”

We said no, ’twas Booth Montague, and that he was waitin’ in the gents’ parlor. So he laffed again, and said somethin’ about sendin’ for Laura Lean Jibbey, and then we started.

The checkerboard feller was standin’ up when we opened the door. “Hello, Petey!” says he, cool as a cucumber, and stickin’ out a foot and a ha’f of wrist with a hand at the end of it.

Now, it takes consider’ble to upset Peter Theodosius Brown. Up to that time and hour I’d have bet on him against anything short of an earthquake. But Booth Montague done it--knocked him plumb out of water. Peter actually turned white.

“Great----” he began, and then stopped and swallered. “_Hank!_” he says, and set down in a chair.

“The same,” says Montague, wavin’ the starboard extension of the checkerboard. “Petey, it does me good to set my lamps on you. Especially now, when you’re the reel thing.”

Brown never answered for a minute. Then he canted over to port and reached down into his pocket. “Well,” says he, “how much?”

But Hank, or Booth, or Montague--whatever his name was--he waved his flipper disdainful. “Nun-nun-nun-no, Petey, my son,” he says, smilin’. “It ain’t ’how much?’ this time. When I heard how you’d rung the bell the first shot out the box and was rollin’ in coin, I said to myself: ‘Here’s where the prod comes back to his own.’ I’ve come to live with you, Petey, and you pay the freight.”

Peter jumped out of the chair. “_Live_ with me!” he says. “You Friday evenin’ amateur night! It’s back to ‘Ten Nights in a Barroom’ for yours!” he says.

“Oh, no, it ain’t!” says Hank, cheerful. “It’ll be back to Popper Dillaway and Belle. When I tell ’em I’m your little cousin Henry and how you and me worked the territories together--why--well, I guess there’ll be gladness round the dear home nest; hey?”

Peter didn’t say nothin’. Then he fetched a long breath and motioned with his head to Cap’n Jonadab and me. We see we weren’t invited to the family reunion, so we went out and shut the door. But we did pity Peter; I snum if we didn’t!

It was ’most an hour afore Brown come out of that room. When he did he took Jonadab and me by the arm and led us out back of the barn.

“Fellers,” he says, sad and mournful, “that--that plaster cast in a crazy-quilt,” he says, referrin’ to Montague, “is a cousin of mine. That’s the livin’ truth,” says he, “and the only excuse I can make is that ’tain’t my fault. He’s my cousin, all right, and his name’s Hank Schmults, but the sooner you box that fact up in your forgetory, the smoother ’twill be for yours drearily, Peter T. Brown. He’s to be Mr. Booth Montague, the celebrated English poet, so long’s he hangs out at the Old Home; and he’s to hang out here until--well, until I can dope out a way to get rid of him.”

We didn’t say nothin’ for a minute--jest thought. Then Jonadab says, kind of puzzled: “What makes you call him a poet?” he says.

Peter answered pretty snappy: ”’Cause there’s only two or three jobs that a long-haired image like him could hold down,” he says. “I’d call him a musician if he could play ’Bedelia’ on a jews’-harp; but he can’t, so’s he’s got to be a poet.”

And a poet he was for the next week or so. Peter drove down to Wellmouth that night and bought some respectable black clothes, and the follerin’ mornin’, when the celebrated Booth Montague come sailin’ into the dinin’ room, with his curls brushed back from his forehead, and his new cutaway on, and his wrists covered up with clean cuffs, blessed if he didn’t look distinguished--at least, that’s the only word I can think of that fills the bill. And he talked beautiful language, not like the slang he hove at Brown and us in the gents’ parlor.

Peter done the honors, introducin’ him to us and the Stumptons as a friend who’d come from England unexpected, and Hank he bowed and scraped, and looked absent-minded and crazy--like a poet ought to. Oh, he done well at it! You could see that ’twas jest pie for him.

And ’twas pie for Maudina, too. Bein’, as I said, kind of green concernin’ men folks, and likewise takin’ to poetry like a cat to fish, she jest fairly gushed over this fraud. She’d reel off a couple of fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or sech like, and he’d never turn a hair, but back he’d come and say they was good, but he preferred Confucius, or Methuselah, or somebody so antique that she nor nobody else ever heard of ’em. Oh, he run a safe course, and he had _her_ in tow afore they turned the fust mark.

Jonadab and me got worried. We see how things was goin’, and we didn’t like it. Stumpton was havin’ too good a time to notice, goin’ after “Labrador mack’rel” and so on, and Peter T. was too busy steerin’ the cruises to pay any attention. But one afternoon I come by the summerhouse unexpected, and there sat Booth Montague and Maudina, him with a clove hitch round her waist, and she lookin’ up into his eyes like they were peekholes in the fence ’round paradise. That was enough. It jest simply _couldn’t_ go any further, so that night me and Jonadab had a confab up in my room.

“Barzilla,” says the cap’n, “if we tell Peter that that relation of his is figgerin’ to marry Maudina Stumpton for her money, and that he’s more’n likely to elope with her, ’twill pretty nigh kill Pete, won’t it? No, sir; it’s up to you and me. We’ve got to figger out some way to git rid of the critter ourselves.”

“It’s a wonder to me,” I says, “that Peter puts up with him. Why don’t he order him to clear out, and tell Belle if he wants to? She can’t blame Peter ’cause his uncle was father to an outrage like that.”

Jonadab looks at me scornful. “Can’t, hey?” he says. “And her high-toned and chummin’ in with the bigbugs? It’s easy to see you never was married,” says he.

Well, I never was, so I shet up.

We set there and thought and thought, and by and by I commenced to sight an idee in the offin’. ’Twas hull down at fust, but pretty soon I got it into speakin’ distance, and then I broke it gentle to Jonadab. He grabbed at it like the “Labrador mack’rel” grabbed Stumpton’s hook. We set up and planned until pretty nigh three o’clock, and all the next day we put in our spare time loadin’ provisions and water aboard the _Patience M._ We put grub enough aboard to last a month.

Just at daylight the mornin’ after that we knocked at the door of Montague’s bedroom. When he woke up enough to open the door--it took some time, ’cause eatin’ and sleepin’ was his mainstay--we told him that we was plannin’ an early-mornin’ fishin’ trip, and if he wanted to go with the folks he must come down to the landin’ quick. He promised to hurry, and I stayed by the door to see that he didn’t git away. In about ten minutes we had him in the skiff rowin’ off to the _Patience M._

“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” says he, when he stepped aboard.

“They’ll be along when we’re ready for ’em,” says I. “You go below there, will you, and stow away the coats and things.”

So he crawled into the cabin, and I helped Jonadab git up sail. We intended towin’ the skiff, so I made her fast astern. In ha’f a shake we was under way and headed out of the cove. When that British poet stuck his nose out of the companion we was abreast the p’int.

“Hi!” says he, scramblin’ into the cockpit. “What’s this mean?”

I was steerin’ and feelin’ toler’ble happy over the way things had worked out.

“Nice sailin’ breeze, ain’t it?” says I, smilin’.

“Where’s Mau--Miss Stumpton?” he says, wild like.

“She’s abed, I cal’late,” says I, “gittin’ her beauty sleep. Why don’t _you_ turn in? Or are you pretty enough now?”

He looked fust at me and then at Jonadab, and his face turned a little yellower than usual.

“What kind of a game is this?” he asks, brisk. “Where are you goin’?”

’Twas Jonadab that answered. “We’re bound,” says he, “for the Bermudas. It’s a lovely place to spend the winter, they tell me,” he says.

That poet never made no remarks. He jumped to the stern and caught hold of the skiff’s pointer. I shoved him out of the way and picked up the boat hook. Jonadab rolled up his shirt sleeves and laid hands on the centerboard stick.

“I wouldn’t, if I was you,” says the cap’n.

Jonadab weighs pretty close to two hundred, and most of it’s gristle. I’m not quite so much, fur’s tonnage goes, but I ain’t exactly a canary bird. Montague seemed to size things up in a jiffy. He looked at us, then at the sail, and then at the shore out over the stern.

“Done!” says he. “Done! And by a couple of ‘come-ons’!”

And down he sets on the thwart.

“Is there anything to drink aboard this liner?” asks Booth Hank Montague.

* * * * *

Well, we sailed all that day and all that night. Course we didn’t reelly intend to make the Bermudas. What we intended to do was to cruise around alongshore for a couple of weeks, long enough for the Stumptons to git back to Dillaway’s, settle the copper bus’ness and break for Montana. Then we was goin’ home again and turn Brown’s relation over to him to take care of. We knew Peter’d have some plan thought out by that time. We’d left a note tellin’ him what we’d done, and sayin’ that we trusted to him to explain matters to Maudina and her dad. We knew that explainin’ was Peter’s main holt.

The poet was pretty chipper for a spell. He set on the thwart and bragged about what he’d do when he got back to “Petey” again. He said we couldn’t git rid of him so easy. Then he spun yarns about what him and Brown did when they was out West together. They was interestin’ yarns, but we could see why Peter wa’n’t anxious to introduce Cousin Henry to Belle. Then the _Patience M._ got out where ’twas pretty rugged, and she rolled consider’ble, and after that we didn’t hear much more from friend Booth--he was too busy to talk.

That night me and Jonadab took watch and watch. In the mornin’ it thickened up and looked squally. I got kind of worried. By nine o’clock there was every sign of a no’theaster, and we see we’d have to put in somewheres and ride it out. So we headed for a place we’ll call Baytown, though that wa’n’t the name of it. It’s a queer, old-fashioned town, and it’s on an island; maybe you can guess it from that.

Well, we run into the harbor and let go anchor. Jonadab crawled into the cabin to git some terbacker, and I was for’ard coilin’ the throat halyard. All to once I heard oars rattlin’, and I turned my head; what I see made me let out a yell like a siren whistle.

There was that everlastin’ poet in the skiff--you remember we’d been towin’ it astern--and he was jest cuttin’ the painter with his jackknife. Next minute he’d picked up the oars and was headin’ for the wharf, doublin’ up and stretchin’ out like a frog swimmin’, and with his curls streamin’ in the wind like a rooster’s tail in a hurricane. He had a long start ’fore Jonadab and me woke up enough to think of chasin’ him.

But we woke up fin’lly, and the way we flew round that catboat was a caution. I laid into them halyards, and I had the gaff up to the peak afore Jonadab got the anchor clear of the bottom. Then I jumped to the tiller, and the _Patience M._ took after that skiff like a pup after a tomcat. We run alongside the wharf jest as Booth Hank climbed over the stringpiece.

“Git after him, Barzilla!” hollers Cap’n Jonadab. “I’ll make her fast.”

Well, I hadn’t took more’n three steps when I see ’twas goin’ to be a long chase. Montague unfurled them thin legs of his and got over the ground somethin’ wonderful. All you could see was a pile of dust and coat tails flappin’.

Up on the wharf we went and round the corner into a straggly kind of road with old-fashioned houses on both sides of it. Nobody in the yards, nobody at the windows; quiet as could be, except that off ahead, somewheres, there was music playin’.

That road was a quarter of a mile long, but we galloped through it so fast that the scenery was nothin’ but a blur. Booth was gainin’ all the time, but I stuck to it like a good one. We took a short cut through a yard, piled over a fence and come out into another road, and up at the head of it was a crowd of folks--men and women and children and dogs.

“Stop thief!” I hollers, and ’way astern I heard Jonadab bellerin’: “Stop thief!”

Montague dives headfust for the crowd. He fell over a baby carriage, and I gained a tack ’fore he got up. He wa’n’t more’n ten yards ahead when I come bustin’ through, upsettin’ children and old women, and landed in what I guess was the main street of the place and right abreast of a parade that was marchin’ down the middle of it.

Fust there was the band, four fellers tootin’ and bangin’ like fo’mast hands on a fishin’ smack in a fog. Then there was a big darky totin’ a banner with “Jenkins’ Unparalleled Double Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company, Number 2,” on it in big letters. Behind him was a boy leadin’ two great, savage-lookin’ dogs--bloodhounds, I found out afterward--by chains. Then come a pony cart with Little Eva and Eliza’s child in it; Eva was all gold hair and beautifulness. And astern of her was Marks, the Lawyer, on his donkey. There was lots more behind him, but these was all I had time to see jest then.

Now, there was but one way for Booth Hank to git acrost that street, and that was to bust through the procession. And, as luck would have it, the place he picked out to cross was jest ahead of the bloodhounds. And the fust thing I knew, them dogs stretched out their noses and took a long sniff, and then bu’st out howlin’ like all possessed. The boy, he tried to hold ’em, but ’twas no go. They yanked the chains out of his hands and took after that poet as if he owed ’em somethin’. And every one of the four million other dogs that was in the crowd on the sidewalks fell into line, and such howlin’ and yappin’ and scamperin’ and screamin’ you never heard.

Well, ’twas a mixed-up mess. That was the end of the parade. Next minute I was racin’ across country with the whole town and the Uncle Tommers astern of me, and a string of dogs stretched out ahead fur’s you could see. ’Way up in the lead was Booth Montague and the bloodhounds, and away aft I could hear Jonadab yellin’: “Stop thief!”

’Twas lively while it lasted, but it didn’t last long. There was a little hill at the end of the field, and where the poet dove over t’other side of it the bloodhounds all but had him. Afore I got to the top of the rise I heard the awfullest powwow goin’ on in the holler, and thinks I: “They’re eatin’ him alive!”

But they wa’n’t. When I hove in sight Montague was settin’ up on the ground at the foot of the sand bank he’d fell into, and the two hounds was rollin’ over him, lappin’ his face and goin’ on as if he was their grandpa jest home from sea with his wages in his pocket. And round them, in a double ring, was all the town dogs, crazy mad, and barkin’ and snarlin’, but scared to go any closer.

In a minute more the folks begun to arrive; boys first, then girls and men, and then the women. Marks come trottin’ up, poundin’ the donkey with his umbrella.

“Here, Lion! Here, Tige!” he yells. “Quit it! Let him alone!” Then he looks at Montague, and his jaw kind of drops.

“Why--why, _Hank_!” he says.

A tall, lean critter, in a black tail coat and a yaller vest and lavender pants, comes puffin’ up. He was the manager, we found out afterward.

“Have they bit him?” says he. Then he done jest the same as Marks; his mouth opened and his eyes stuck out. “_Hank Schmults_, by the livin’ jingo!” says he.

Booth Montague looks at the two of ’em kind of sick and lonesome. “Hello, Barney! How are you, Sullivan?” he says.

I thought ’twas about time for me to git prominent. I stepped up, and was jest goin’ to say somethin’ when somebody cuts in ahead of me.

“Hum!” says a voice, a woman’s voice, and toler’ble crisp and vinegary. “Hum! it’s you, is it? I’ve been lookin’ for _you_!”

’Twas Little Eva in the pony cart. Her lovely posy hat was hangin’ on the back of her neck, her gold hair had slipped back so’s you could see the black under it, and her beautiful red cheeks was kind of streaky. She looked some older and likewise mad.

“Hum!” says she, gittin’ out of the cart. “It’s you, is it, Hank Schmults? Well, p’r’aps you’ll tell me where you’ve been for the last two weeks? What do you mean by runnin’ away and leavin’ your----”

Montague interrupted her. “Hold on, Maggie, hold on!” he begs. “_Don’t_ make a row here. It’s all a mistake; I’ll explain it to you all right. Now, please----”

“Explain!” hollers Eva, kind of curlin’ up her fingers and movin’ toward him. “Explain, will you? Why, you miser’ble, low-down----”

But the manager took hold of her arm. He’d been lookin’ at the crowd, and I cal’late he saw that here was the chance for the best kind of an advertisement. He whispered in her ear. Next thing I knew she clasped her hands together, let out a scream and runs up and grabs the celebrated British poet round the neck.

“Booth!” says she. “My husband! Saved! Saved!”

And she went all to pieces and cried all over his necktie.

And then Marks trots up the child, and that young one hollers: “Papa! papa!” and tackles Hank around the legs. And I’m blessed if Montague don’t slap his hand to his forehead, and toss back his curls, and look up at the sky, and sing out: “My wife and babe! Restored to me after all these years! The heavens be thanked!”

Well, ’twas a sacred sort of time. The town folks tiptoed away, the men lookin’ solemn but glad, and the women swabbin’ their deadlights and sayin’ how affectin’ ’twas, and so on. Oh, you could see that show would do bus’ness _that_ night, if it never did afore.

The manager got after Jonadab and me later on, and did his best to pump us, but he didn’t find out much. He told us that Montague b’longed to the Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company, and that he’d disappeared a fortni’t or so afore, when they were playin’ at Hyannis. Eva was his wife, and the child was their little boy. The bloodhounds knew him, and that’s why they chased him so.

“What was you two yellin’ ‘Stop thief!’ after him for?” says he. “Has he stole anything?”

We says: “No.”

“Then what did you want to get him for?” he says.

“We didn’t,” says Jonadab. “We wanted to git rid of him. We don’t want to see him no more.”

You could tell that the manager was puzzled, but he laffed.

“All right,” says he. “If I know anything about Maggie--that’s Mrs. Schmults--he won’t git loose ag’in.”

We only saw Montague to talk to but once that day. Then he peeked out from under the winder shade at the hotel and asked us if we’d told anybody where’d he been. When he found we hadn’t, he was thankful.

“You tell Petey,” says he, “that he’s won the whole pot, kitty and all. I don’t think I’ll visit him again, nor Belle, neither.”

“I wouldn’t,” says I. “They might write to Maudina that you was a married man. And old Stumpton’s been prayin’ for somethin’ alive to shoot at,” I says.

The manager give Jonadab and me a couple of tickets, and we went to the show that night. And when we saw Booth Hank Montague paradin’ about the stage and defyin’ the slave hunters, and tellin’ ’em he was a free man, standin’ on the Lord’s free soil, and so on, we realized ’twould have been a crime to let him do anything else.

“As an imitation poet,” says Jonadab, “he was a kind of mildewed article, but as a play actor--well, there may be some that can beat him, but _I_ never see ’em!”

AS IT ENDED

God planned me for a butterfly,
But I was marred i’ the making;
What is it that old Omar says
Of the Potter’s hand a-shaking?
Ah, no, not that, the colors ran,
The form turned out awry,
And so I’m what they call a man
Who’d be a butterfly.

FARRINGDON DAVIS.

_The TEARS of UNDINE_

By

Edith Macvane

In the morning young Glyn lost his steamer, so he was forced to spend the whole day at Pemaquid; in the afternoon he lost his heart, so he was forced to stay there for his entire vacation.

This is the way it happened.

After luncheon he went out to sit all by himself on the end of the pier, with a book on “Recent Developments in Dairy Machinery”; for Glyn was a young patent lawyer, a very rising one, in the city of New York; and, as he had failed to find one familiar face in this far-away Maine resort, it seemed to him that he could do nothing better with his time of waiting than devote it to his business. So he sat deep in study, lifting an eye occasionally to the granite cliffs, the dark, ancient fir trees, and the bay with its distant rim of purple-shadowed hills; while the old fisherman beside him smoked his pipe placidly, and the noisy crowd of bathers in by the shore splashed one another with screams of mirth. The student sighed occasionally, for, though a lawyer and a good one, he was still young; then he reproved himself for his sighing, for he aimed to be rather superior, and was also, as a matter of fact, rather shy.

Suddenly a shower of scattering drops fell cold upon his neck and glittered upon the page before him. He started and looked up; the sky was blue and cloudless, his ancient neighbor as placid as the day itself. Then it seemed to him that he heard a laugh, the merest tinkle of a laugh, from somewhere below the wharf; and, starting to his feet and looking downward, he beheld a mermaid floating in the water beneath him.

She lay slim and green upon the gentle harbor swell, her white arms outstretched, her eyelids closed, her wet, upturned face framed by the floating wreaths of dark hair that coiled and rippled in the water about her. Suddenly she threw up her hands and sank slowly, vanishing with a cloud of little bubbles. Glyn started back, horror-smitten. He was not much of a swimmer, even in the warm waters of the Sound; and this North Atlantic water chilled his very eyes with its icy-green transparency.

Nevertheless, under the racial impulse of the life-saver, he threw off his coat and swung his arms preparatory to a jump. Suddenly the hoary and languid old sea dog by his side reached out a slow, restraining hand.

“Don’t go wettin’ yourself for nothing young fellah! That girl, she’s a fish. Watch and see her come up again.”

In a cold perspiration of anxiety the young man waited for a fulfillment of these words. The suspense seemed endless, till suddenly, and at an amazing distance, the waters heaved and parted, and the swimmer’s sleek dark head emerged like a seal’s. Back she came to the wharf, swimming with strokes like those of an oarsman--easy, long and sure. At the end of the pier she paused and clung to the foot of the slippery green steps that ran down the side of the piles, and, resting her chin upon her clasped arms, she glanced up at the two men above her like a severe and dripping cherub. The old fisherman returned to his line, but the student, flinging away his book, ran down the oozy staircase to meet her.

“May I--may I be of any assistance to you?” he inquired, with eager politeness.

She continued to look up at him with the same disapproving air. “You didn’t jump in after me, did you?” she observed, suddenly.

“Well, no,” returned Glyn, somewhat dazed at this greeting. “You see, I was told that you could swim.”

She glared up at the unobserving fisherman. “That was Ben--old tattle-tale!” she hissed; then, turning back to the young man, she inquired, with sudden pathos: “And how should you have felt if I had never come up again?”

“Like a murderer,” replied Stephen Glyn, solemnly. The answer seemed to please her, for she relaxed her frown. “Oh, well, you are all right, anyway,” she was good enough to observe, as she loosed her hold upon the step and swam slowly away to the shore.

So when the afternoon steamer left Pemaquid, one hour later, it left without Stephen Glyn.

He told himself that the air of this sea-girt promontory was just the thing for him: good chance to learn to swim; quiet place, capital chance to study and get at the bottom of those dairy implements. As for the girl--she was pretty to look at, to be sure, with her big green eyes and the glancing motions of her long white hands beneath the water. But still what did the prettiness of a passing girl matter to a prosaic fellow like him? “Besides,” as Stephen added, wisely, to himself, “I’m too old for nonsense, and too young for business--so what’s the use?”

And so, being in this indifferent frame of mind, he spent an hour in putting on his newest English flannels and the very latest thing in pale green shirts, and then, upon descending to the dining room, he bribed the waiter to give him a seat at the next table to his casual acquaintance of the pier; merely, as he told himself, out of curiosity to see how she looked with her hair dry.

In spite of all this indifference, there was a distinct sinking at Glyn’s heart when at last she came, passed by him, seated herself at her table without even a glance in his direction. She seemed in high spirits, she ate with a remarkable appetite, and she talked and laughed incessantly with the large, pink-faced lady on her right and the jolly youth in a blue necktie on her left. All Glyn’s honest Harvard blood rose and boiled within him at the sight of that blue necktie--merely, he assured himself, at the thought of recent football scores. As for the girl, what did it matter to him if she let a dozen Yale men tell her jokes and crack her lobster claws for her?

It must be confessed, however, even by the most disapproving and indifferent critic, that she was charming to look upon, with her thick hair--yellow with greenish lights--and her warm, white skin, tanned by the sun to the pale brown of coffee with cream in it. So after dinner, when a half dozen other youths had dispossessed the Yale man of his monopoly, Glyn strolled up to him and inquired whether he had not seen him at New London the month before.