Chapter II: Part I: I (2)

Grégoire slept now in the office of the mill, as a measure of precaution. To-night, Hosmer had received certain late telegrams that necessitated a return to the mill, and his iron-grey was standing outside in the lane with Grégoire’s horse, awaiting the pleasure of his rider. When Grégoire quitted the group to go and throw the saddles across the patient animals, Melicent, who contemplated an additional hour’s chat with Thérèse, crossed over to the cottage to procure a light wrap for her sensitive shoulders against the chill night air. Hosmer, who had started to the assistance of Grégoire, seeing that Thérèse had remained alone, standing at the top of the stairs, approached her. Remaining a few steps below her, and looking up into her face, he held out his hand to say good-night, which was an unusual proceeding, for they had not shaken hands since his return to Place-du-Bois three months before. She gave him her soft hand to hold and as the warm, moist palm met his, it acted like a charged electric battery turning its subtle force upon his sensitive nerves.

“Will you let me talk to you to-morrow?” he asked.

“Yes, perhaps; if I have time.”

“Oh, you will make the time. I can’t let the day go by without telling you many things that you ought to have known long ago.” The battery was still doing its work. “And I can’t let the night go by without telling you that I love you.”

Grégoire called out that the horses were ready. Melicent was approaching in her diaphanous envelope, and Hosmer reluctantly let drop Thérèse’s hand and left her.

As the men rode away, the two women stood silently following their diminishing outlines into the darkness and listening to the creaking of the saddles and the dull regular thud of the horses’ feet upon the soft earth, until the sounds grew inaudible, when they turned to the inner shelter of the veranda. Melicent once more possessed herself of the hammock in which she now reclined fully, and Thérèse sat near enough beside her to intertwine her fingers between the tense cords.

“What a great difference in age there must be between you and your brother,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Yes--though he is younger and I older than you perhaps think. He was fifteen and the only child when I was born. I am twenty-four, so he of course is thirty-nine.”

“I certainly thought him older.”

“Just imagine, Mrs. Lafirme, I was only ten when both my parents died. We had no kindred living in the West, and I positively rebelled against being separated from David; so you see he’s had the care of me for a good many years.”

“He appears very fond of you.”

“Oh, not only that, but you’ve no idea how splendidly he’s done for me in every way. Looked after my interest and all that, so that I’m perfectly independent. Poor Dave,” she continued, heaving a profound sigh, “he’s had more than his share of trouble, if ever a man had. I wonder when his day of compensation will come.”

“Don’t you think,” ventured Thérèse, “that we make too much of our individual trials. We are all so prone to believe our own burden heavier than our neighbor’s.”

“Perhaps--but there can be no question about the weight of David’s. I’m not a bit selfish about him though; poor fellow, I only wish he’d marry again.”

Melicent’s last words stung Thérèse like an insult. Her native pride rebelled against the reticence of this man who had shared her confidence while keeping her in ignorance of so important a feature of his own life. But her dignity would not permit a show of disturbance; she only asked:--

“How long has his wife been dead?”

“Oh,” cried Melicent, in dismay. “I thought you knew of course; why--she isn’t dead at all--they were divorced two years ago.”

The girl felt intuitively that she had yielded to an indiscretion of speech. She could not know David’s will in the matter, but since he had all along left Mrs. Lafirme in ignorance of his domestic trials, she concluded it was not for her to enlighten that lady further. Her next remark was to call Thérèse’s attention to the unusual number of glow-worms that were flashing through the darkness, and to ask the sign of it, adding “every thing seems to be the sign of something down here.”

“Aunt Belindy might tell you,” replied Thérèse, “I only know that I feel the signs of being very sleepy after that ride through the woods to-day. Don’t mind if I say good night?”

“Certainly not. Good night, dear Mrs. Lafirme. Let me stay here till David comes back; I should die of fright, to go to the cottage alone.”

VII

Painful Disclosures.

Thérèse possessed an independence of thought exceptional enough when considered in relation to her life and its surrounding conditions. But as a woman who lived in close contact with her fellow-beings she was little given to the consideration of abstract ideas, except in so far as they touched the individual man. If ever asked to give her opinion of divorce, she might have replied that the question being one which did not immediately concern her, its remoteness had removed it from the range of her inquiry. She felt vaguely that in many cases it might be a blessing; conceding that it must not infrequently be a necessity, to be appealed to however only in an extremity beyond which endurance could scarcely hold. With the prejudices of her Catholic education coloring her sentiment, she instinctively shrank when the theme confronted her as one having even a remote reference to her own clean existence. There was no question with her of dwelling upon the matter; it was simply a thing to be summarily dismissed and as far as possible effaced from her remembrance.

Thérèse had not reached the age of thirty-five without learning that life presents many insurmountable obstacles which must be accepted, whether with the callousness of philosophy, the revolt of weakness or the dignity of self-respect. The following morning, the only sign which she gave of her mental disturbance, was an appearance that might have succeeded a night of unrefreshing sleep.

Hosmer had decided that his interview with Mrs. Lafirme should not be left further to the caprice of accident. An hour or more before noon he rode up from the mill knowing it to be a time when he would likely find her alone. Not seeing her he proceeded to make inquiry of the servants; first appealing to Betsy.

“I don’ know whar Miss T’rèse,” with a rising inflection on the “whar.” “I yain’t seed her sence mornin’, time she sont Unc’ Hi’um yonda to old Morico wid de light bread an’ truck,” replied the verbose Betsy. “Aunt B’lindy, you know whar Miss T’rèse?”

“How you want me know? standin’ up everlastin’ in de kitchen a bakin’ light-bread fu’ lazy trash det betta be in de fiel’ wurkin’ a crap like people, stid o’ ’pendin’ on yeda folks.”

Mandy, who had been a silent listener, divining that she had perhaps better make known certain information that was exclusively her own piped out:--

“Miss T’rèse shet up in de parla; ’low she want we all lef ’er ’lone.”

Having as it were forced an entrance into the stronghold where Thérèse had supposed herself secure from intrusion, Hosmer at once seated himself beside her.

This was a room kept for the most part closed during the summer days when the family lived chiefly on the verandas or in the wide open hall There lingered about it the foreign scent of cool clean matting, mingled with a faint odor of rose which came from a curious Japanese jar that stood on the ample hearth. Through the green half-closed shutters the air came in gentle ripples, sweeping the filmy curtains back and forth in irregular undulations. A few tasteful pictures hung upon the walls, alternating with family portraits, for the most part stiff and unhandsome, except in the case of such as were of so remote date that age gave them a claim upon the interest and admiration of a far removed generation.

It was not entirely clear to the darkies whether this room were not a sort of holy sanctuary, where one should scarce be permitted to breathe, except under compulsion of a driving necessity.

“Mrs. Lafirme,” began Hosmer, “Melicent tells me that she made you acquainted last night with the matter which I wished to talk to you about to-day.”

“Yes,” Thérèse replied, closing the book which she had made a pretense of reading, and laying it down upon the window-sill near which she sat; adding very simply, “Why did you not tell me long ago, Mr. Hosmer?”

“God knows,” he replied; the sharp conviction breaking upon him, that this disclosure had some how changed the aspect of life for him. “Natural reluctance to speak of a thing so painful--native reticence--I don’t know what. I hope you forgive me; that you will let it make no difference in whatever regard you may have for me.”

“I had better tell you at once that there must be no repetition of--of what you told me last night.”

Hosmer had feared it. He made no protest in words; his revolt was inward and showed itself only in an added pallor and increased rigidity of face lines. He arose and went to a near window, peering for a while aimlessly out between the partly open slats.

“I hadn’t thought of your being a Catholic,” he said, finally turning towards her with folded arms.

“Because you have never seen any outward signs of it. But I can’t leave you under a false impression: religion doesn’t influence my reason in this.”

“Do you think then that a man who has had such misfortune, should be debarred the happiness which a second marriage could give him?”

“No, nor a woman either, if it suit her moral principle, which I hold to be something peculiarly one’s own.”

“That seems to me to be a prejudice,” he replied. “Prejudices may be set aside by an effort of the will,” catching at a glimmer of hope.

“There are some prejudices which a woman can’t afford to part with, Mr. Hosmer,” she said a little haughtily, “even at the price of happiness. Please say no more about it, think no more of it.”

He seated himself again, facing her; and looking at him all her sympathetic nature was moved at sight of his evident trouble.

“Tell me about it. I would like to know every thing in your life,” she said, feelingly.

“It’s very good of you,” he said, holding a hand for a moment over his closed eyes. Then looking up abruptly, “It was a painful enough experience, but I never dreamed that it could have had this last blow in reserve for me.”

“When did you marry?” she asked, wishing to start him with the story which she fancied he would feel better for the telling.

“Ten years ago. I am a poor hand to analyze character: my own or another’s. My reasons for doing certain things have never been quite clear to me; or I have never schooled myself to inquiry into my own motives for action. I have been always thoroughly the business man. I don’t make a boast of it, but I have no reason to be ashamed of the admission. Socially, I have mingled little with my fellow-beings, especially with women, whose society has had little attraction for me; perhaps, because I have never been thrown much into it, and I was nearly thirty when I first met my wife.”

“Was it in St. Louis?” Thérèse asked.

“Yes. I had been inveigled into going on a river excursion,” he said, plunging into the story, “Heaven knows how. Perhaps I was feeling unwell--I really can’t remember. But at all events I met a friend who introduced me early in the day to a young girl--Fanny Larimore. She was a pretty little thing, not more than twenty, all pink and white and merry blue eyes and stylish clothes. Whatever it was, there was something about her that kept me at her side all day. Every word and movement of hers had an exaggerated importance for me. I fancied such things had never been said or done quite in the same way before.”

“You were in love,” sighed Thérèse. Why the sigh she could not have told.

“I presume so. Well, after that, I found myself thinking of her at the most inopportune moments. I went to see her again and again--my first impression deepened, and in two weeks I had asked her to marry me. I can safely say, we knew nothing of each other’s character. After marriage, matters went well enough for a while.” Hosmer here arose, and walked the length of the room.

“Mrs. Lafirme,” he said, “can’t you understand that it must be a painful thing for a man to disparage one woman to another: the woman who has been his wife to the woman he loves? Spare me the rest.”

“Please have no reservations with me; I shall not misjudge you in any case,” an inexplicable something was moving her to know what remained to be told.

“It wasn’t long before she attempted to draw me into what she called society,” Hosmer continued. “I am little versed in defining shades of distinction between classes, but I had seen from the beginning that Fanny’s associates were not of the best social rank by any means. I had vaguely expected her to turn from them, I suppose, when she married. Naturally, I resisted anything so distasteful as being dragged through rounds of amusement that had no sort of attraction whatever for me. Besides, my business connections were extending, and they claimed the greater part of my time and thoughts.

“A year after our marriage our boy was born.” Here Hosmer ceased speaking for a while, seemingly under pressure of a crowding of painful memories.

“The child whose picture you have at the office?” asked Thérèse.

“Yes,” and he resumed with plain effort: “It seemed for a while that the baby would give its mother what distraction she sought so persistently away from home; but its influence did not last and she soon grew as restless as before. Finally there was nothing that united us except the child. I can’t really say that we were united through him, but our love for the boy was the one feeling that we had in common. When he was three years old, he died. Melicent had come to live with us after leaving school. She was a high-spirited girl full of conceits as she is now, and in her exaggerated way became filled with horror of what she called the mésalliance I had made. After a month she went away to live with friends. I didn’t oppose her. I saw little of my wife, being often away from home; but as feebly observant as I was, I had now and again marked a peculiarity of manner about her that vaguely troubled me. She seemed to avoid me and we grew more and more divided.

“One day I returned home rather early. Melicent was with me. We found Fanny in the dining-room lying on the sofa. As we entered, she looked at us wildly and in striving to get up grasped aimlessly at the back of a chair. I felt on a sudden as if there were some awful calamity threatening my existence. I suppose, I looked helplessly at Melicent, managing to ask her what was the matter with my wife. Melicent’s black eyes were flashing indignation. ‘Can’t you see she’s been drinking. God help you,’ she said. Mrs. Lafirme, you know now the reason which drove me away from home and kept me away. I never permitted my wife to want for the comforts of life during my absence; but she sued for divorce some years ago and it was granted, with alimony which I doubled. You know the miserable story now. Pardon me for dragging it to such a length. I don’t see why I should have told it after all.”

Thérèse had remained perfectly silent; rigid at times, listening to Hosmer often with closed eyes.

He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing for a while till finally: “Your--your wife is still quite young--do her parents live with her?”

“Oh no, she has none. I suppose she lives alone.”

“And those habits; you don’t know if she continues them?”

“I dare say she does. I know nothing of her, except that she receipts for the amount paid her each month.”

The look of painful thought deepened on Thérèse’s face but her questions having been answered, she again became silent.

Hosmer’s eyes were imploring her for a look, but she would not answer them.

“Haven’t you a word to say to me?” he entreated.

“No, I have nothing to say, except what would give you pain.”

“I can bear anything from you,” he replied, at a loss to guess her meaning.

“The kindest thing I can say, Mr. Hosmer, is, that I hope you have acted blindly. I hate to believe that the man I care for, would deliberately act the part of a cruel egotist.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I have learned one thing through your story, which appears very plain to me,” she replied. “You married a woman of weak character. You furnished her with every means to increase that weakness, and shut her out absolutely from your life and yourself from hers. You left her then as practically without moral support as you have certainly done now, in deserting her. It was the act of a coward.” Thérèse spoke the last words with intensity.

“Do you think that a man owes nothing to himself?” Hosmer asked, in resistance to her accusation.

“Yes. A man owes to his manhood, to face the consequences of his own actions.”

Hosmer had remained seated. He did not even with glance follow Thérèse who had arisen and was moving restlessly about the room. He had so long seen himself as a martyr; his mind had become so habituated to the picture, that he could not of a sudden look at a different one, believing that it could be the true one. Nor was he eager to accept a view of the situation that would place him in his own eyes in a contemptible light. He tried to think that Thérèse must be wrong; but even admitting a doubt of her being right, her words carried an element of truth that he was not able to shut out from his conscience. He felt her to be a woman with moral perceptions keener than his own and his love, which in the past twenty-four hours had grown to overwhelm him, moved him now to a blind submission.

“What would you have me do, Mrs. Lafirme?”

“I would have you do what is right,” she said eagerly, approaching him.

“O, don’t present me any questions of right and wrong; can’t you see that I’m blind?” he said, self accusingly. “What ever I do, must be because you want it; because I love you.”

She was standing beside him and he took her hand.

“To do a thing out of love for you, would be the only comfort and strength left me.”

“Don’t say that,” she entreated. “Love isn’t everything in life; there is something higher.”

“God in heaven, there shouldn’t be!” he exclaimed, passionately pressing her hand to his forehead, his cheek, his lips.

“Oh, don’t make it harder for me,” Thérèse said softly, attempting to withdraw her hand.

It was her first sign of weakness, and he seized on it for his advantage. He arose quickly--unhesitatingly--and took her in his arms.

For a moment that was very brief, there was danger that the task of renunciation would not only be made harder, but impossible, for both; for it was in utter blindness to everything but love for each other, that their lips met.

The great plantation bell was clanging out the hour of noon; the hour for sweet and restful enjoyment; but to Hosmer, the sound was like the voice of a derisive demon, mocking his anguish of spirit, as he mounted his horse, and rode back to the mill.

VIII

Treats of Melicent.

Melicent knew that there were exchanges of confidence going on between her brother and Mrs. Lafirme, from which she was excluded. She had noted certain lengthy conferences held in remote corners of the verandas. The two had deliberately withdrawn one moonlight evening to pace to and fro the length of gravel walk that stretched from door front to lane; and Melicent had fancied that they rather lingered when under the deep shadow of the two great live-oaks that overarched the gate. But that of course was fancy; a young girl’s weakness to think the world must go as she would want it to.

She was quite sure of having heard Mrs. Lafirme say “I will help you.” Could it be that David had fallen into financial straights and wanted assistance from Thérèse? No, that was improbable and furthermore, distasteful, so Melicent would not burden herself with the suspicion. It was far more agreeable to believe that affairs were shaping themselves according to her wishes regarding her brother and her friend. Yet her mystification was in no wise made clearer, when David left them to go to St. Louis.

Melicent was not ready or willing to leave with him. She had not had her “visit out” as she informed him, when he proposed it to her. To remain in the cottage during his absence was out of the question, so she removed herself and all her pretty belongings over to the house, taking possession of one of the many spare rooms. The act of removal furnished her much entertainment of a mild sort, into which, however, she successfully infused something of her own intensity by making the occasion one to bring a large detachment of the plantation force into her capricious service.

Melicent was going out, and she stood before her mirror to make sure that she looked properly. She was black from head to foot. From the great ostrich plume that nodded over her wide-brimmed hat, to the pointed toe of the patent leather boot that peeped from under her gown--a filmy gauzy thing setting loosely to her slender shapely figure. She laughed at the somberness of her reflection, which she at once set about relieving with a great bunch of geraniums--big and scarlet and long-stemmed, that she thrust slantwise through her belt.

Melicent, always charming, was very pretty when she laughed. She thought so herself and laughed a second time into the depths of her dark handsome eyes. One corner of the large mouth turned saucily upward, and the lips holding their own crimson and all that the cheeks were lacking, parted only a little over the gleaming whiteness of her teeth. As she looked at herself critically, she thought that a few more pounds of flesh would have well become her. It had been only the other day that her slimness was altogether to her liking; but at present she was in love with plumpness as typified in Mrs. Lafirme. However, on the whole, she was not ill pleased with her appearance, and gathering up her gloves and parasol, she quitted the room.

It was “broad day,” one of the requirements which Grégoire had named as essential for taking Melicent to visit old McFarlane’s grave. But the sun was not “shining mighty bright,” the second condition, and whose absence they were willing enough to overlook, seeing that the month was September.

They had climbed quite to the top of the hill, and stood on the very brink of the deep toilsome railroad cut all fringed with matted grass and young pines, that had but lately sprung there. Up and down the track, as far as they could see on either side the steel rails glittered on into gradual dimness. There were patches of the field before them, white with bursting cotton which scores of negroes, men, women and children were dexterously picking and thrusting into great bags that hung from their shoulders and dragged beside them on the ground; no machine having yet been found to surpass the sufficiency of five human fingers for wrenching the cotton from its tenacious hold. Elsewhere, there were squads “pulling fodder” from the dry corn stalks; hot and distasteful work enough. In the nearest field, where the cotton was young and green, with no show of ripening, the overseer rode slowly between the rows, sprinkling plentifully the dry powder of paris green from two muslin bags attached to the ends of a short pole that lay before him across the saddle.

Grégoire’s presence would be needed later in the day, when the cotton was hauled to gin to be weighed; when the mules were brought to stable, to see them properly fed and cared for, and the gearing all put in place. In the meanwhile he was deliciously idle with Melicent.

They retreated into the woods, soon losing sight of everything but the trees that surrounded them and the underbrush, that was scant and scattered over the turf which the height of the trees permitted to grow green and luxuriant.

There, on the far slope of the hill they found McFarlane’s grave, which they knew to be such only by the battered and weather-worn cross of wood, that lurched disreputably to one side--there being no hand in all the world that cared enough to make it straight--and from which all lettering had long since been washed away. This cross was all that marked the abiding place of that mist-like form, so often seen at dark to stalk down the hill with threatening stride, or of moonlight nights to cross the lake in a pirogue, whose substance though visible was nought; with sound of dipping oars that made no ripple on the lake’s smooth surface. On stormy nights, some more gifted with spiritual insight than their neighbors, and with hearing better sharpened to delicate intonations of the supernatural, had not only seen the mist figure mounted and flying across the hills, but had heard the panting of the blood-hounds, as the invisible pack swept by in hot pursuit of the slave so long ago at rest.

But it was “broad day,” and here was nothing sinister to cause Melicent the least little thrill of awe. No owl, no bat, no ill-omened creature hovering near; only a mocking bird high up in the branches of a tall pine tree, gushing forth his shrill staccatoes as blithely as though he sang paeans to a translated soul in paradise.

“Poor old McFarlane,” said Melicent, “I’ll pay a little tribute to his memory; I dare say his spirit has listened to nothing but abuse of himself there in the other world, since it left his body here on the hill;” and she took one of the long-stemmed blood-red flowers and laid it beside the toppling cross.

“I reckon he’s in a place w’ere flowers don’t git much waterin’, if they got any there.”

“Shame to talk so cruelly; I don’t believe in such places.”

“You don’t believe in hell?” he asked in blank surprise.

“Certainly not. I’m a Unitarian.”

“Well, that’s new to me,” was his only comment.

“Do you believe in spirits, Grégoire? I don’t--in day time.”

“Neva mine ’bout spirits,” he answered, taking her arm and leading her off, “let’s git away f’om yere.”

They soon found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk, and Grégoire lay prone upon the ground with--his head in Melicent’s lap.

When Melicent first met Grégoire, his peculiarities of speech, so unfamiliar to her, seemed to remove him at once from the possibility of her consideration. She was not then awake to certain fine psychological differences distinguishing man from man; precluding the possibility of naming and classifying him in the moral as one might in the animal kingdom. But short-comings of language, which finally seemed not to detract from a definite inheritance of good breeding, touched his personality as a physical deformation might, adding to it certainly no charm, yet from its pathological aspect not without a species of fascination, for a certain order of misregulated mind.

She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms, indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she was in love with Grégoire. But the admission embraced the understanding with herself, that nothing could come of it. She accepted it as a phase of that relentless fate which in pessimistic moments she was inclined to believe pursued her.

It could not be thought of, that she should marry a man whose eccentricity of speech would certainly not adapt itself to the requirements of polite society.

He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss--possibly an over exuberance--it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection. Indeed, on the few occasions when Melicent had been engaged, kissing had been excluded as superfluous to the relationship, except in the case of the young lieutenant out at Fort Leavenworth who read Tennyson to her, as an angel might be supposed to read, and who in moments of rapturous self-forgetfulness, was permitted to kiss her under the ear: a proceeding not positively distasteful to Melicent, except in so much as it tickled her.

Grégoire’s hair was soft, not so dark as her own, and possessed an inclination to curl about her slender fingers.

“Grégoire,” she said, “you told me once that the Santien boys were a hard lot; what did you mean by that?”

“Oh no,” he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, “you did’n year me right. W’at I said was that we had a hard name in the country. I don’ see w’y eitha, excep’ we all’ays done putty much like we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois, they ain’t no temptations o’ no kine.”

“There’s little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations to withstand,” delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.

Melicent felt that she did not fully know Grégoire; that he had always been more or less under restraint with her, and she was troubled by something other than curiosity to get at the truth concerning him. One day when she was arranging a vase of flowers at a table on the back porch, Aunt Belindy, who was scouring knives at the same table, had followed Grégoire with her glance, when he walked away after exchanging a few words with Melicent.

“God! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah.”

“Different?” questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward look at Aunt Belindy.

“Lord yas honey, ’f you warn’t heah dat same Mista Grégor ’d be in Centaville ev’y Sunday, a raisin’ Cain. Humph--I knows ’im.”

Melicent would not permit herself to ask more, but picked up her vase of flowers and walked with it into the house; her comprehension of Grégoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he was liable to “raise Cain” during her absence--a proceeding which she could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension of what it might imply.

Meanwhile she would not allow her doubts to interfere with the kindness which she lavished on him, seeing that he loved her to desperation. Was he not at this very moment looking up into her eyes, and talking of his misery and her cruelty? turning his face downward in her lap--as she knew to cry--for had she not already seen him lie on the ground in an agony of tears, when she had told him he should never kiss her again?

And so they lingered in the woods, these two curious lovers, till the shadows grew so deep about old McFarlane’s grave that they passed it by with hurried step and averted glance.

IX

Face to Face.

After a day of close and intense September heat, it had rained during the night. And now the morning had followed chill and crisp, yet with possibilities of a genial sunshine breaking through the mist that had risen at dawn from the great sluggish river and spread itself through the mazes of the city.

The change was one to send invigorating thrills through the blood, and to quicken the step; to make one like the push and jostle of the multitude that thronged the streets; to make one in love with intoxicating life, and impatient with the grudging dispensation that had given to mankind no wings wherewith to fly.

But with no reacting warmth in his heart, the change had only made Hosmer shiver and draw his coat closer about his chest, as he pushed his way through the hurrying crowd.

The St. Louis Exposition was in progress with all its many allurements that had been heralded for months through the journals of the State.

Hence, the unusual press of people on the streets this bright September morning. Home people, whose air of ownership to the surroundings classified them at once, moving unobservantly about their affairs. Women and children from the near and rich country towns, in for the Exposition and their fall shopping; wearing gowns of ultra fashionable tendencies; leaving in their toilets nothing to expediency; taking no chances of so much as a ribbon or a loop set in disaccordance with the book.

There were whole families from across the bridge, hurrying towards the Exposition. Fathers and mothers, babies and grandmothers, with baskets of lunch and bundles of provisional necessities, in for the day.

Nothing would escape their observation nor elude their criticism, from the creations in color lining the walls of the art gallery, to the most intricate mechanism of inventive genius in the basement. All would pass inspection, with drawing of comparison between the present, the past year and the “year before,” likely in a nasal drawl with the R’s brought sharply out, leaving no doubt as to their utterance.

The newly married couple walking serenely through the crowd, young, smiling, up-country, hand-in-hand; well pleased with themselves, with their new attire and newer jewelry, would likely have answered Hosmer’s “beg pardon” with amiability if he had knocked them down. But he had only thrust them rather violently to one side in his eagerness to board the cable car that was dashing by, with no seeming willingness to stay its mad flight. He still possessed the agility in his unpracticed limbs to swing himself on the grip, where he took a front seat, well buttoned up as to top-coat, and glad of the bodily rest that his half hour’s ride would bring him.

The locality in which he descended presented some noticeable changes since he had last been there. Formerly, it had been rather a quiet street, with a leisurely horse car depositing its passengers two blocks away to the north from it; awaking somewhat of afternoons when hordes of children held possession. But now the cable had come to disturb its long repose, adding in the office, nothing to its attractiveness.

There was the drug store still at the corner, with the same proprietor, tilted back in his chair as of old, and as of old reading his newspaper with only the change which a newly acquired pair of spectacles gave to his appearance. The “drug store boy” had unfolded into manhood, plainly indicated by the mustache that in adding adornment and dignity to his person, had lifted him above the menial office of window washing. A task relegated to a mustacheless urchin with a leaning towards the surreptitious abstraction of caramels and chewing gum in the intervals of such manual engagements as did not require the co-operation of a strategic mind.

Where formerly had been the vacant lot “across the street,” the Sunday afternoon elysium of the youthful base ball fiend from Biddle Street, now stood a row of brand new pressed-brick “flats.” Marvelous must have been the architectural ingenuity which had contrived to unite so many dwellings into so small a space. Before each spread a length of closely clipped grass plot, and every miniature front door wore its fantastic window furnishing; each set of decorations having seemingly fired the next with efforts of surpassing elaboration.

The house at which Hosmer rang--a plain two-storied red brick, standing close to the street--was very old-fashioned in face of its modern opposite neighbors, and the recently metamorphosed dwelling next door, that with added porches and appendages to tax man’s faculty of conjecture, was no longer recognizable for what it had been. Even the bell which he pulled was old-fashioned and its tingle might be heard throughout the house long after the servant had opened the door, if she were only reasonably alert to the summons. Its reverberations were but dying away when Hosmer asked if Mrs. Larimore were in. Mrs. Larimore was in; an admission which seemed to hold in reserve a defiant “And what if she is, sir.”

Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets which he and Fanny had gone out together to buy during the early days of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare, well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small household gods were as of old: things--trifles--that had never much occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad remembrance.

It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her a clue for the reason of it.

There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if’s and and’s, but stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger, true--but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.

And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at the submission of a human destiny to the exacting and ignorant rule of what he termed moral conventionalities. He had startled and angered Hosmer with his denunciation of Thérèse’s sophistical guidance. Rather--he proposed--let Hosmer and Thérèse marry, and if Fanny were to be redeemed--though he pooh-poohed the notion as untenable with certain views of what he called the rights to existence: the existence of wrongs--sorrows--diseases--death--let them all go to make up the conglomerate whole--and let the individual man hold on to his personality. But if she must be redeemed--granting this point to their littleness, let the redemption come by different ways than those of sacrifice: let it be an outcome from the capability of their united happiness.

Hosmer did not listen to his friend Homeyer. Love was his god now, and Thérèse was Love’s prophet.

So he was sitting in this little parlor waiting for Fanny to come.

She came after an interval that had been given over to the indulgence of a little feminine nervousness. Through the open doors Hosmer could hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted mid-way. Then she passed through the dining-room, and he arose and went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once ready to accept, being flustered and unprepared for his manner in whichever way it might direct itself.

They sat opposite each other and remained for a while silent; he with astonishment at sight of the “merry blue eyes” faded and sunken into deep, dark round sockets; at the net-work of little lines all traced about the mouth and eyes, and spreading over the once rounded cheeks that were now hollow and evidently pale or sallow, beneath a layer of rouge that had been laid on with an unsparing hand. Yet was she still pretty, or pleasing, especially to a strong nature that would find an appeal in the pathetic weakness of her face. There was no guessing at what her figure might be, it was disguised under a very fashionable dress, and a worsted shawl covered her shoulders, which occasionally quivered as with an inward chill. She spoke first, twisting the end of this shawl.

“What did you come for, David? why did you come now?” with peevish resistance to the disturbance of his coming.

“I know I have come without warrant,” he said, answering her implication. “I have been led to see--no matter how--that I made mistakes in the past, and what I want to do now is to right them, if you will let me.”

This was very unexpected to her, and it startled her, but neither with pleasure nor pain; only with an uneasiness which showed itself in her face.

“Have you been ill?” he asked suddenly as the details of change in her appearance commenced to unfold themselves to him.

“Oh no, not since last winter, when I had pneumonia so bad. They thought I was going to die. Dr. Franklin said I would ’a died if Belle Worthington hadn’t ’a took such good care of me. But I don’t see what you mean coming now. It’ll be the same thing over again: I don’t see what’s the use, David.”

“We won’t talk about the use, Fanny. I want to take care of you for the rest of your life--or mine--as I promised to do ten years ago; and I want you to let me do it.”

“It would be the same thing over again,” she reiterated, helplessly.

“It will not be the same,” he answered positively. “I will not be the same, and that will make all the difference needful.”

“I don’t see what you want to do it for, David. Why we’d haf to get married over again and all that, wouldn’t we?”

“Certainly,” he answered with a faint smile. “I’m living in the South now, in Louisiana, managing a sawmill down there.”

“Oh, I don’t like the South. I went down to Memphis, let’s see, it was last spring, with Belle and Lou Dawson, after I’d been sick; and I don’t see how a person can live down there.”

“You would like the place where I’m living. It’s a fine large plantation, and the lady who owns it would be the best of friends to you. She knew why I was coming, and told me to say she would help to make your life a happy one if she could.”

“It’s her told you to come,” she replied in quick resentment. “I don’t see what business it is of hers.”

Fanny Larimore’s strength of determination was not one to hold against Hosmer’s will set to a purpose, during the hour or more that they talked, he proposing, she finally acquiescing. And when he left her, it was with a gathering peace in her heart to feel that his nearness was something that would belong to her again; but differently as he assured her. And she believed him, knowing that he would stand to his promise.

Her life was sometimes very blank in the intervals of street perambulations and matinées and reading of morbid literature. That elation which she had felt over her marriage with Hosmer ten years before, had soon died away, together with her weak love for him, when she began to dread him and defy him. But now that he said he was ready to take care of her and be good to her, she felt great comfort in her knowledge of his honesty.

X

Fanny’s Friends.

It was on the day following Hosmer’s visit, that Mrs. Lorenzo Worthington, familiarly known to her friends as Belle Worthington, was occupied in constructing a careful and extremely elaborate street toilet before her dressing bureau which stood near the front window of one of the “flats” opposite Mrs. Larimore’s. The Nottingham curtain screened her effectually from the view of passers-by without hindering her frequent observance of what transpired in the street.

The lower portion of this lady’s figure was draped, or better, seemingly supported, by an abundance of stiffly starched white petticoats that rustled audibly at her slightest movement. Her neck was bare, as were the well shaped arms that for the past five minutes had been poised in mid-air, in the arrangement of a front of exquisitely soft blonde curls, which she had taken from her “top drawer” and was adjusting, with the aid of a multitude of tiny invisible hair-pins, to her own very smoothly brushed hair. Yellow hair it was, with a suspicious darkness about the roots, and a streakiness about the back, that to an observant eye would have more than hinted that art had assisted nature in coloring Mrs. Worthington’s locks.

Dressed, and evidently waiting with forced patience for the termination of these overhead maneuvers of her friend, sat Lou,--Mrs. Jack Dawson,--a woman whom most people called handsome. If she were handsome, no one could have told why, for her beauty was a thing which could not be defined. She was tall and thin, with hair, eyes, and complexion of a brownish neutral tint, and bore in face and figure, a stamp of defiance which probably accounted for a certain eccentricity in eschewing hair dyes and cosmetics. Her face was full of little irregularities; a hardly perceptible cast in one eye; the nose drawn a bit to one side, and the mouth twitched decidedly to the other when she talked or laughed. It was this misproportion which gave a piquancy to her expression and which in charming people, no doubt made them believe her handsome.

Mrs. Worthington’s coiffure being completed, she regaled herself with a deliberate and comprehensive glance into the street, and the outcome of her observation was the sudden exclamation.

“Well I’ll be switched! come here quick Lou. If there ain’t Fanny Larimore getting on the car with Dave Hosmer!”

Mrs. Dawson approached the window, but without haste; and in no wise sharing her friend’s excitement, gave utterance to her calm opinion.

“They’ve made it up, I’ll bet you what you want.”

Surprise seemed for the moment to have deprived Mrs. Worthington of further ability to proceed with her toilet, for she had fallen into a chair as limply as her starched condition would permit, her face full of speculation.

“See here, Belle Worthington, if we’ve got to be at the ’Lympic at two o’clock, you’d better be getting a move on yourself.”

“Yes, I know; but I declare, you might knock me down with a feather.”

A highly overwrought figure of speech on the part of Mrs. Worthington, seeing that the feather which would have prostrated her must have met a resistance of some one hundred and seventy-five pounds of solid avoirdupois.

“After all she said about him, too!” seeking to draw her friend into some participation in her own dumbfoundedness.

“Well, you ought to know Fanny Larimore’s a fool, don’t you?”

“Well, but I just can’t get over it; that’s all there is about it.” And Mrs. Worthington went about completing the adornment of her person in a state of voiceless stupefaction.

In full garb, she presented the figure of a splendid woman; trim and tight in a black silk gown of expensive quality, heavy with jets which hung and shone, and jangled from every available point of her person. Not a thread of her yellow hair was misplaced. She shone with cleanliness, and her broad expressionless face and meaningless blue eyes were set to a good-humored readiness for laughter, which would be wholesome if not musical. She exhaled a fragrance of patchouly or jockey-club, or something odorous and “strong” that clung to every article of her apparel, even to the yellow kid gloves which she would now be forced to put on during her ride in the car. Mrs. Dawson, attired with equal richness and style, showed more of individuality in her toilet.

As they quitted the house she observed to her friend:

“I wish you’d let up on that smell; it’s enough to sicken a body.”

“I know you don’t like it, Lou,” was Mrs. Worthington’s apologetic and half disconcerted reply, “and I was careful as could be. Give you my word, I didn’t think you could notice it.”

“Notice it? Gee!” responded Mrs. Dawson.

These were two ladies of elegant leisure, the conditions of whose lives, and the amiability of whose husbands, had enabled them to develop into finished and professional time-killers.

Their intimacy with each other, as also their close acquaintance with Fanny Larimore, dated from a couple of years after that lady’s marriage, when they had met as occupants of the same big up-town boarding house. The intercourse had never since been permitted to die out. Once, when the two former ladies were on a visit to Mrs. Larimore, seeing the flats in course of construction, they were at once assailed with the desire to abandon their hitherto nomadic life, and settle to the responsibilities of housekeeping; a scheme which they carried into effect as soon as the houses became habitable.

There was a Mr. Lorenzo Worthington; a gentleman employed for many years past in the custom house. Whether he had been overlooked, which his small unobtrusive, narrow-chested person made possible--or whether his many-sided usefulness had rendered him in a manner indispensable to his employers, does not appear; but he had remained at his post during the various changes of administration that had gone by since his first appointment.

During intervals of his work--intervals often occurring of afternoon hours, when he had been given night work--he was fond of sitting at the sunny kitchen window, with his long thin nose, and shortsighted eyes plunged between the pages of one of his precious books: a small hoard of which he had collected at some cost and more self-denial.

One of the grievances of his life was the necessity under which he found himself of protecting his treasure from the Philistine abuse and contempt of his wife. When they moved into the flat, Mrs. Worthington, during her husband’s absence, had ranged them all, systematically enough, on the top shelf of the kitchen closet to “get them out of the way.” But at this he had protested, and taken a positive stand, to which his wife had so far yielded as to permit that they be placed on the top shelf of the bedroom closet; averring that to have them laying around was a thing that she would not do, for they spoilt the looks of any room.

He had not foreseen the possibility of their usefulness being a temptation to his wife in so handy a receptacle.

Seeking once a volume of Ruskin’s Miscellanies, he discovered that it had been employed to support the dismantled leg of a dressing bureau. On another occasion, a volume of Schopenhauer, which he had been at much difficulty and expense to procure, Emerson’s Essays, and two other volumes much prized, he found had served that lady as weights to hold down a piece of dry goods which she had sponged and spread to dry on an available section of roof top.

He was glad enough to transport them all back to the safer refuge of the kitchen closet, and pay the hired girl a secret stipend to guard them.

Mr. Worthington regarded women as being of peculiar and unsuitable conformation to the various conditions of life amid which they are placed; with strong moral proclivities, for the most part subservient to a weak and inadequate mentality.

It was not his office to remodel them; his rôle was simply to endure with patience the vagaries of an order of human beings, who after all, offered an interesting study to a man of speculative habit, apart from their usefulness as propagators of the species.

As regards this last qualification, Mrs. Worthington had done less than her fair share, having but one child, a daughter of twelve, whose training and education had been assumed by an aunt of her father’s, a nun of some standing in the Sacred Heart Convent.

Quite a different type of man was Jack Dawson, Lou’s husband. Short, round, young, blonde, good looking and bald--as what St. Louis man past thirty is not? he rejoiced in the agreeable calling of a traveling salesman.

On the occasions when he was at home; once in two weeks--sometimes seldomer--never oftener--the small flat was turned inside out and upside down. He filled it with noise and merriment. If a theater party were not on hand, it was a spin out to Forest park behind a fast team, closing with a wine supper at a road-side restaurant. Or a card party would be hastily gathered to which such neighbors as were congenial were bid in hot haste; deficiencies being supplied from his large circle of acquaintances who happened not to be on the road, and who at the eleventh hour were rung up by telephone. On such occasions Jack’s voice would be heard loud in anecdote, introduced in some such wise as “When I was in Houston, Texas, the other day,” or “Tell you what it is, sir, those fellers over in Albuquerque are up to a thing or two.”

One of his standing witticisms was to inquire in a stage whisper of Belle or Lou--whether the little gal over the way had taken the pledge yet.