Chapter V: Prologue (4)

For toward the end of the week he began to feel a warmer feeling for Miss Janet. It was not in the nature of things that John should walk and talk with a pleasant girl a week, and not feel something more than his first interested desire to marry a showy wife. His heart began to be touched, and he resolved to bring things to a crisis as soon as possible. He therefore sought an opportunity to propose. But it was hard to find. For though Mrs. Holmes was tolerably ingenious, she could not get the boys or the deacon to pay any regard to her hints. Boys are totally depraved on such questions anyhow, and always manage to stumble in where any privacy is sought. And as for the deacon, it really seemed as though he had some design in intruding at the critical moment.

I do not think that John was seriously in love with Miss Dunton. If he had been he would have found some means of communicating with her. A thousand spies with sleepless eyes all round their heads can not keep a man from telling his love somehow, if he really have a love to tell.

There is another fact which convinces me that John Harlow was not yet very deeply in love with Janet. He was fond of talking with her of Byron and Milton, of Lord Bacon and Emerson--i.e., as I have already said, he was fond of putting his own knowledge on dress parade in the presence of one who could appreciate the display. But whenever any little thing released him for the time from conversation in the sitting room he was given to slipping out into the old kitchen, where, sitting on a chair that had no back, and leaning against the chimney side, he delighted to talk to Huldah. She couldn't talk much of books, but she could talk most charmingly of everything that related to the country life, and she could ask John many questions about the great city. In fact, John found that Huldah had come into possession of only such facts and truths as could be reached in her narrow life, but that she had assimilated them and thought about them, and that it was more refreshing to hear her original and piquant remarks about the topics she was acquainted with than to listen to the tireless stream of Janet Dunton's ostentatious erudition. And he found more delight in telling the earnest and hungry-minded country girl about the great world of men and the great world of books than in talking to Janet, who was, in the matter of knowledge, a little _blasée_, if I may be allowed the expression. And then, to Huldah he could talk of his mother, whom he had often watched moving about that same kitchen. When he had spoken to Janet of the associations of the old place with his mother's countenance, she had answered with a quotation from some poet, given in a tone of empty sentimentality. He instinctively shrank from mentioning the subject to her again; but to Huldah it was so easy to talk of his mother's gentleness and sweetness. Huldah was not unlike her in these respects, and then she gave him the sort of sympathy that finds its utterance in a tender silence--so much more tender than any speech can be.

He observed often during the week that Huldah was depressed. He could not exactly account for it, until he noticed something in his sister's behavior toward her that awakened his suspicion. As soon as opportunity offered he inquired of Huldah, affecting at the same time to know something about it.

"I don't want to complain of your sister to you, Mr. Harlow----"

"Pshaw! call me John; and as for my sister, I know her faults better than you do. Go on, please."

"Well, it's only that she told me that Miss Dunton wasn't used to eating at the same table with _servants_; and when one of the boys told your father, he was mad, and came to me, and said, 'Huldah, you must eat when the rest do. If you stay away from the table on account of these city snobs I'll make a fuss on the spot.' So, to avoid a fuss, I have kept on going to the table."

John was greatly vexed with this. He was a chivalrous fellow, and he knew how such a remark must wound a person who had never learned that domestic service had anything degrading in it. And the result was just the opposite of what his sister had hoped. John paid more attention than ever to Huldah Manners because she was the victim of oppression.

The evening before Thanksgiving day the ladies were going to make a visit. It was not at all incumbent on John to go, but he was seeking an opportunity to carry off the brilliant Miss Dunton, who would adorn his parlors when he became rich and distinguished, and who would make so nice a headpiece for his table. And so he had determined to go with them, trusting to some fortunate chance for his opportunity.

But, sitting in the old "best room" in the dark, while the ladies were getting ready, and trying to devise a way by which he might get an opportunity to speak with Miss Dunton alone, it occurred to him that she was at that time in the sitting room waiting for his sister. To step out to where she was, and present the case in a few words, would not be difficult, and it might all be settled before his sister came downstairs. The Fates were against him, however; for, just as he was about to act on his thought, he heard Amanda Holmes's abundant skirts sweeping down the stairway. He could not help hearing the conversation that followed:

"You see, Janet, I got up this trip to-night to keep John from spending the evening in the kitchen. He hasn't a bit of dignity, and would spend the evening romping with the children and talking to Huldah if he took it into his head."

"Well," said Janet, "one can overlook everything in a man of your brother's culture. But what a queer way your country servants have of pushing themselves! Wouldn't I make them know their places!"

And all this was said with the kitchen door open, and with the intention of wounding Huldah.

John's castles tumbled. The erudite wife alongside the silver tea urn faded out of sight rapidly. If knowledge could not give a touch of humane regard for the feelings of a poor girl toiling dutifully and self-denyingly to support her family, of what account was it?

Two minutes before he was about to give his life to Janet Dunton. Now there was a gulf wider than the world between them. He slipped out of the best room by the outside door and came in through the kitchen. The neighbor's sleigh that was to call for them was already at the door, and John begged them to excuse him. He had set his heart on helping Huldah make mince pies, as he used to help his mother when a boy. His sister was in despair, but she did not say much. She told John that it was time he was getting over his queer freaks. And the sleigh drove off.

For an hour afterward John romped with his sister's children and told stories to the boys and talked to his father. When a man has barely escaped going over a precipice he does not like to think too much about it. John did not.

At last the little children went to bed. The old gentleman grew sleepy, and retired. The boys went into the sitting room and went to sleep, one on the lounge and one on the floor. Huldah was just ready to begin her pies. She was deeply hurt, but John succeeded in making her more cheerful. He rolled up his sleeves and went to rolling out the pastry. He thought he had never seen a sweeter picture than the young girl in clean dress and apron, with her sleeves rolled above her elbows. There was a statuesque perfection in her well-rounded arms. The heat of the fire had flushed her face a little, and she was laughing merrily at John's awkward blunders in pie-making. John was delighted, he hardly knew why. In fixing a pie crust his fingers touched hers, and he started as if he had touched a galvanic battery. He looked at Huldah, and saw a half-pained expression on her flushed face.

For the first time it occurred to him that Huldah Manners had excited in him a feeling a thousand times deeper than anything he had felt toward Janet, who seemed to be now in another world. For the first time he realized that he had been more in love with Huldah than with Janet all the time. Why not marry her? And then he remembered what the governor had said about marrying a woman's heart and not her head.

He put on his hat and walked out--out, out, into the darkness, the drizzling rain, and the slush of melting snow, fighting a fierce battle. All his pride and all his cowardly vanity were on one side, all the irresistible torrent of his love on the other. He walked away into the dark wood pasture, trying to cool his brow, trying to think, and--would you believe it?--trying to pray, for it was a great struggle, and in any great struggle a true soul always finds something very like prayer in his heart.

The feeling of love may exist without attracting the attention of its possessor. It had never occurred to John that he could love or marry Huldah. Thus the passion had grown all the more powerful for not being observed, and now the unseen fire had at a flash appeared as an all-consuming one.

Turning back, he stood without the window, in the shadow, and looked through the glass at the trim young girl at work with her pies. In the modest, restful face he read the story of a heart that had carried great burdens patiently and nobly. What a glorious picture she was of warmth and light, framed in darkness! To his heart at that moment all the light and warmth of the world centered in Huldah. All the world besides was loneliness and darkness and drizzle and slush. His fear of his sister and of his friends seemed base and cowardly. And the more he looked at this vision of the night, this revelation of peace and love and light, the more he was determined to possess it. You will call him precipitate. But when all a man's nobility is on one side and all his meanness on the other, why hesitate? Besides, John Harlow had done more thinking in that half hour than most men do in a month.

The vision had vanished from the window, and he went in and sat down. She had by this time put in the last pie, and was sitting with her head on her hand. The candle flickered and went out, and there was only the weird and ruddy firelight. I can not tell you what words passed between John and the surprised Huldah, who had thought him already betrothed to Miss Dunton. I can not tell what was said in the light of that fire; I don't suppose Harlow could tell that story himself.

Huldah asked that he should not say anything about it till his sister was gone. Of course John saw that she asked it for his sake. But his own cowardice was glad of the shelter.

Next day a brother of John's, whom I forgot to mention before, came home from college. Mrs. Holmes's husband arrived unexpectedly. Aunt Judith, with her family, came over at dinner time, so that there was a large and merry party. Two hearts, at least, joined in the deacon's thanksgiving before dinner with much fervor.

At the table the dinner was much admired.

"Huldah," said Janet Dunton, "I like your pies. I wish I could hire you to go to Boston. Our cook never does so well."

John saw the well-aimed shaft hidden under this compliment, and all his manhood rallied. As soon as he could be sure of himself he said:

"You can not have Huldah; she is already engaged."

"How's that?" said Aunt Judith.

"Oh! I've secured her services," said John.

"What?" said Mrs. Holmes, "engaged your--your--your help before you engaged a wife!"

"Not at all," said John; "engaged my help and my wife in one. I hope that Huldah Manners will be Huldah Harlow by Christmas."

The deacon dropped his knife and fork, and dropped his lower jaw, and stared. "What! How! What did you say, John?"

"I say, father, that this good girl Huldah is to be my wife."

"John!" gasped the old man, getting to his feet and reaching his hand across the table, "you've got plenty of sense if you do wear a mustache! God bless you, my boy; there ain't no better woman here, nor in New York, nor anywhere, than Huldah. God bless you both! I was afraid you'd take a different road, though."

"Hurrah for our Huldah and our John!" said George Harlow, the college boy, and his brothers joined him. Even the little Holmes children hurrahed.

* * * * *

Here the judge stopped.

"Well," said Irene, "I don't think it _was_ very nice in him to marry the 'help.' Do you, father?"

"Indeed I _do_," said the judge, with emphasis.

"Did she ever come to understand Emerson?" asked Anna, who detested the Concord philosopher because she could not understand him.

"Indeed I don't know," said the judge; "you can ask Huldah herself."

"Who? what? You don't mean that mother is Huldah?"

It was a cry in concert.

"Mother" was a little red in the face behind the copy of Whittier she was affecting to read.

_1870._

THE NEW CASHIER.

My friend Macartney-Smith has working theories for everything. He illustrated one of these the other day by relating something that happened in the Giralda apartment house, where he lives in a suite overlooking Central Park. I do not remember whether he was expounding his notion that the apartment house has solved the question of co-operative housekeeping, or whether he was engaged in demonstrating certain propositions regarding the influence of the city on the country. Since I have forgotten what it was intended to prove, the incident has seemed more interesting. It is bad for a story to medicate it with a theory. However, here are the facts as Macartney-Smith relates them with his Q.E.D. omitted.

* * * * *

I do not know [he began] by what accident or on what recommendation the manager of the Giralda brought a girl from Iowa to act as clerk and cashier in the restaurant.

The new cashier had lived in a town where there were differences in social standing, but no recognized distinctions, after you had left out the sedimentary poverty-stricken class. She not only had no notions of the lines of social cleavage in a great apartment-house, but she had never heard of chaperonage, or those other indelicacies that go along with the high civilization of a metropolis. I have no doubt she was the best scholar in the arithmetic class in the village high school, and ten to one she was the champion at croquet. She took life with a zest unknown to us New Yorkers, and let the starchiest people in the house know that she was glad to see them when they returned after an absence by going across the dining-room to shake hands with them and to inquire whether they had had a good time. Even the gently frigid manner of Mrs. Drupe could not chill her friendliness; she was accustomed to accost that lady in the elevator, and demand, "How is Mr. Drupe?" whenever that gentleman chanced to be absent. It was not possible for her to imagine that Mrs. Drupe could be otherwise than grateful for any manifestation of a friendly interest in her husband.

To show any irritation was not Mrs. Drupe's way; that would have disturbed the stylish repose of her bearing even more than misplaced cordiality. She always returned the salutations of Miss Wakefield, but in a tone so neutral, cool, and cucumberish that she hoped the girl would feel rebuked and learn a little more diffidence, or at least learn that the Drupes did not care for her acquaintance. But the only result of such treatment was that Miss Wakefield would say to the clerk in the office: "Your Eastern people have such stiff ways that they make me homesick. But they don't mean any harm, I suppose."

Some of the families in the Giralda rather liked the new cashier; these were they who had children. The little children chatted and laughed with her across her desk when they came down as forerunners to give the order for the family dinner. If it were only lunch time, when few people were in the restaurant, they went behind the desk and embraced the cashier and had a romp with her. The smallest chaps she would take up in her arms while she pulled out the drawers to show them her paper knife and trinkets; and when there were flowers, she would often break off one apiece for even those least amiable little plagues that in an apartment house are the torment of their nurses and their mammas the livelong day. This not only gave pleasure to the infantry, but relieved an aching which the poor girl had for a once cheerful home, now broken up by the death of her parents and the scattering abroad of brothers and sisters.

The young men in the house thought her "a jolly girl," since she would chat with them over her desk as freely as she would have chatted across the counter with the clerks in Cedar Falls, where she came from. She was equally cordial with the head waiter, and with those of his staff who knew any more English than was indispensable to the taking of an order. But her frank familiarity with young gentlemen and friendly speech with servants were offensive to some of the ladies. They talked it over, and decided that Miss Wakefield was not a modest girl; that at least she did not know her place, and that the manager ought to dismiss her if he meant to maintain the tone of the house. The manager--poor fellow!--had to hold his own place against the rivalry of the treasurer, and when such complaints were made to him what could he do? He stood out a while for Miss Wakefield, whom he liked; but when the influential Mrs. Drupe wrote to him that the cashier at the desk in the restaurant was not a well-behaved girl, he knew that it was time to look out for another.

If the manager had forewarned her, she could have saved money enough to take her back to Iowa, where she might dare to be as friendly as she pleased with other respectable humans without fear of reproach. But he was not such a fool as to let go of one cashier till he had found another. It was while the manager was deciding which of three other young women to take that Mr. Drupe was stricken with apoplexy. He had finished eating his luncheon, which was served in the apartment, and had lighted a cigar, when he fell over. There were no children, and the Drupes kept no servant, but depended on the housekeeper to send them a maid when they required one, so that Mrs. Drupe found herself alone with her prostrate husband. The distracted wife did not know what to do. She took hold of the needle of the teleseme, but the words on the dial were confused; she quickly moved the needle round over the whole twenty-four points, but none of them suited the case. She stopped it at "porter," moved it to "bootblack," carried it around to "ice water," and successively to "coupe," "laundress," and "messenger-boy," and then gave up in despair, and jerked open the door that led to the hall. Miss Wakefield had just come up to the next apartment to inquire after a little girl ill from a cold, and was returning toward the elevator when Mrs. Drupe's wild face was suddenly thrust forth upon her.

"Won't you call a boy--somebody? My husband is dying," were the words that greeted Miss Wakefield at the moment of the apparition of the despairing face.

Miss Wakefield rushed past Mrs. Drupe into the apartment, and turned the teleseme to the word "manager," and then pressed the button three times in quick succession. She knew that a call for the manager would suggest fire, robbery, and sudden death, and that it would wake up the lethargic forces in the office. Then she turned to the form of the man lying prostrate on the floor, seized a pillow from the lounge, and motioned to Mrs. Drupe to raise his head while she laid it beneath.

"Who is your doctor?" she demanded.

"Dr. Morris; but it's a mile away," said the distracted woman. "Won't you send a boy in a coupé"

"I'll go myself, the boys are so slow," said the cashier. "Shall I send you a neighboring doctor till Dr. Morris can get here?"

"Do! do!" pleaded the wife, now wildly wringing her hands.

Miss Wakefield caught the elevator as it landed the manager on the floor, and she briefly told him what was the matter. Then she descended, and had the clerk order a coupé by telephone, and then herself sent Dr. Floyd from across the street, while she ran to the stable, leaped into the coupé before the horse was fairly hitched up, and drove for Dr. Morris.

Dr. Morris found Mrs. Drupe already a widow when he arrived with the cashier. The latter promptly secured the addresses of Mr. Drupe's brother and of his business partner, again entered the coupé, and soon had the poor woman in the hands of her friends.

The energetic girl went to her room that night exhilarated by her own prompt and kind-hearted action. But the evil spirit that loves to mar our happiness had probably arranged it that on that very evening she received a note from the manager notifying her that her services would not be required after one more week. On inquiry the next day she learned that some of the ladies had complained of her behavior, and she vainly tried to remember what she had done that was capable of misconstruction. She also vainly tried to imagine how she was to live, or by what means she was to contrive to get back to those who knew her too well to suspect her of any evil. She was so much perplexed by the desperate state of her own affairs that she even neglected to attend Mr. Drupe's funeral, but she hoped that Mrs. Drupe would not take it unkindly.

It was with a heavy heart that the manager called Miss Wakefield into his office on the ground floor in order that he might pay her last week's wages. He was relieved that she seemed to accept her dismissal with cheerfulness.

"What are you going to do?" he asked timidly.

"Why, didn't you know?" she said. "I am to live with Mrs. Drupe as a companion, and to look out for her affairs and collect her rents. I used to think she didn't like me. But it will be a good lesson to those ladies who found fault with me for nothing when they see how much Mrs. Drupe thinks of me."

And she went her way to her new home in Mrs. Drupe's apartment, at the end of the hall on the sixth floor, while the manager took from a pigeonhole Mrs. Drupe's letter of complaint against the former cashier, and read it over carefully.

The thickness of the walls at the base of so lofty a building made it difficult for daylight to work its way through the tunnel-like windows, so that in this office a gas jet was necessary in the daytime. After a moment's reflection the manager touched Mrs. Drupe's letter of complaint to the flame, and it was presently reduced to everlasting illegibility.

PRISCILLA.

The trained novel readers, those who have made a business of it (if any such should honor this poor little story with their attention), will glance down the opening paragraphs for a description of the heroine's tresses. The opening sentences of Miss Braddon are enough to show how important a thing a head of hair is in the getting up of a heroine for the popular market. But as my heroine is not a got-up one, and as I can not possibly remember even the color of her hair or her eyes as I recall her now, I fear I shall disappoint the professionals, who never feel that they have a complete heroine till the "long waving tresses of raven darkness, reaching nearly to the ground, enveloping her as with a cloud," have been artistically stuck on by the author. But be it known that I take Priscilla from memory, and not from imagination. And the memory of Priscilla, the best girl in the school, the most gifted, the most modest, the most gentle and true, is a memory too sacred to be trifled with. I would not make one hair light or dark, I would not change the shading of the eyebrows. Priscilla is Priscilla forever, to all who knew her. And as I can not tell the precise color of her hair and eyes, I shall not invent a shade for them. I remember that she was on the blond side of the grand division line. But she was not blond. She was--Priscilla. I mean to say that since you never lived in that dear old-fogy Ohio River village of New Geneva, and since, consequently, you never knew our Priscilla, no words of mine can make you exactly understand her. Was she handsome? No--yes. She was "jimber-jawed"--that is, her lower teeth shut a little outside her upper. Her complexion was not faultless. Her face would not bear criticism. And yet there is not one of her old schoolmates that will not vow that she was beautiful. And indeed she was. For she was Priscilla. And I never can make you understand it.

As Priscilla was always willing to oblige any one, it was only natural that Mrs. Leston should send for her to help entertain the marquis. It was a curious chance that threw the young Marquis d'Entremont for a whole summer into the society of our little village. His uncle, who was his guardian, a pious _abbé_, wishing to remove him from Paris to get him out of socialistic influences, had sent him to New Orleans, consigned to the care of the great banking house of Challeau, Lafort & Company. Not liking to take the chances of yellow fever in the summer, he had resolved to journey to the North, and as Challeau, Lafort & Company had a correspondent in Henry Leston, the young lawyer, and as French was abundantly spoken in our Swiss village of New Geneva, what more natural than that they should dispatch the marquis to our pleasant town of vineyards, giving him a letter of introduction to their attorney, who fortunately spoke some book French. He had presented the letter, had been invited to dinner, and Priscilla Haines, who had learned French in childhood, though she was not Swiss, was sent for to help entertain the guest.

I can not but fancy that D'Entremont was surprised at meeting just such a girl as Priscilla in a rustic village. She was not abashed at finding herself face to face with a nobleman, nor did she seem at all anxious to attract his notice. The vanity of the marquis must have been a little hurt at finding a lady that did not court his attention. But wounded vanity soon gave place to another surprise. Even Mrs. Leston, who understood not one word of the conversation between her husband, the marquis, and Priscilla, was watching for this second surprise, and did not fail to read it in D'Entremont's eyes. Here was a young woman who had read. She could admire Corinne, which was much in vogue in those days among English-speaking students of French; she could oppose Saint Simon. The Marquis d'Entremont had resigned himself to the ennui of talking to Swiss farmers about their vineyards, of listening to Swiss grandmothers telling stories of their childhood in Neufchatel and Vaud. But to find in this young village school-teacher one who could speak, and listen while he spoke, of his favorite writers, was to him very strange. Not that Priscilla had read many French books, for there were not many within her reach. But she had read Grimm's Correspondence, and he who reads this has heard the echo of many of the great voices in French literature. And while David Haines had lived his daughter had wanted nothing he could get to help her to the highest culture.

But I think what amazed the marquis most was that Priscilla showed no consciousness of the unusual character of her attainments. She spoke easily and naturally of what she knew, as if it were a matter of course that the teacher of a primary school should have read Corneille, and should be able to combat Saint Simonism. As the dinner drew to a close, Leston lifted his chair round to where his wife sat and interpreted the bright talk at the other side of the table.

I suspect that Saint Simon had lost some of his hold upon the marquis since his arrival in a country where life was more simple and the manner of thought more practical. But he dated the decline of his socialistic opinions from his discussion with Priscilla Haines.

The next Sunday morning he strolled out of the Le Vert House, breathing the sweet air perfumed with the blossoms of a thousand apple trees. For what yard is there in New Geneva that has not apple trees and grapevines? And every family in the village keeps a cow, and every cow wears a bell, and every bell is on a different key; so that the three things that penetrated the senses of the marquis on this Sunday morning were the high hills that stood sentinels on every hand about the valley in which New Geneva stood, the smell of the superabundant apple blossoms, and the _tinkle_ and _tankle_ and _tonkle_ of hundreds of bells on the cows grazing on the "commons," as the open lots were called. On this almost painfully quiet morning D'Entremont noticed the people going one way and another to the early Sunday schools in the three churches. Just as he came to the pump that stood in front of the "public square" he met Priscilla. At her heels were ten ragged little ruffians, whom she was accustomed to have come to her house every Sunday morning and walk with her to Sunday school.

"You are then a Sister of Charity also," he said in French, bowing low with sincere admiration as he passed her. And then to himself the young marquis reflected: "We Saint Simonists theorize and build castles in Spain for poor people, but we do not take hold of them." He walked clear round the square, and then followed the steps of Priscilla into the little brick Methodist church which in that day had neither steeple nor bell nor anything churchlike about it except the two arched front windows. There was not even a fence to inclose it, nor an evergreen nor an ivy about it; only a few straggling black locusts. For the puritanism of New England was never so hard a puritanism as the Methodist puritanism of a generation ago in the West--a puritanism that forbade jewelry, that stripped the artificial flowers out of the bonnets of country girls, that expelled, and even yet expels, a country boy for looking with wonder at a man hanging head downward from a trapeze in a circus tent. No other church, not even the Quaker, ever laid its hand more entirely upon the whole life of its members. The dead hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of any pope.

Upon the hard, open-backed, unpainted and unvarnished oak benches, which seemed devised to produce discomfort, sat the Sunday-school classes, and upon one of these, near the door, D'Entremont sat down. He looked at the bare walls, at the white pulpit, at the carpetless floors, at the general ugliness of things, the box stove, which stood in the only aisle, the tin chandeliers with their half-burned candles, the eight-by-ten lights of glass in the windows, and he was favorably impressed. With a quick conscience he had often felt the frivolous emptiness of a worldly life, and had turned toward the religion of his uncle the _abbé_ only to turn away again antagonized by what seemed to him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but none could doubt the strength of a religious conviction that submitted to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, with all her gifts, sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered from that part of the village known as "Slabtown." Yes, there must be something genuine in this religious life, and its entire contrast to all that the marquis had known and grown weary of attracted him.

As eleven o'clock drew on, the little church filled with people. The men sat on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. The old brethren and sisters, and generally those who prayed in prayer meeting and spoke in love feast, sat near the front, many of them on the cross seats near the pulpit, which were thence said by scoffers to be the "Amen corners." Any one other than a leader of the hosts of Israel would as soon have thought of taking a seat in the pulpit as on one of these chief seats in the synagogue. The marquis sat still and watched the audience gather, while one of the good brethren led the congregation in singing

"When I can read my title clear,"

which hymn was the usual voluntary at the opening of service. Then the old minister said, "Let us continue the worship of God by singing the hymn on page 554." He "lined" the hymn--that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. With the coming in of hymn books and other newfangled things the good old custom of "lining the hymn" has disappeared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful than these simple melodies sung thus lustily by earnest voices. The reading of each couplet by the minister before it was sung seemed to him a sort of recitative. He knew enough of English to find that the singing was hopeful and triumphant. Wearied with philosophy and _blasé_ with the pomp of the world, he wished that he had been a villager in New Geneva, and that he might have had the faith to sing of the

"--land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign,"

with as much earnestness as his friend Priscilla on the other side of the aisle. In the prayer that followed D'Entremont noticed that all the church members knelt, and that the hearty _amens_ were not intoned, but were as spontaneous as the rest of the service. After reverently reading a chapter the old minister said: "Please sing without lining,

"'A charge to keep I have,'"

and then the old time of "Kentucky" was sung with animation, after which came the sermon, of which the marquis understood but few words, though he understood the pantomime by which the venerable minister represented the return of the prodigal and the welcome he received. When he saw the tears in the eyes of the hearers, and heard the half-repressed "Bless the Lord!" of an old brother or sister, and saw them glance joyfully at one another's faces as the sermon went on, he was strangely impressed with the genuineness of the feeling.

But the class meeting that followed, to which he remained, impressed him still more. The venerable Scotchman who led it had a face that beamed with sweetness and intelligence. It was fortunate that the marquis saw so good a specimen. In fact, Priscilla trembled lest Mr. Boreas, the stern, hard-featured "exhorter," should have been invited to lead. But as the sweet-faced old leader called upon one and another to speak, and as many spoke with streaming eyes, D'Entremont quivered with sympathy. He was not so blind that he could not see the sham and cant of some of the speeches, but in general there was much earnestness and truth. When Priscilla rose in her turn and spoke, with downcast eyes, he felt the beauty and simplicity of her religious life. And he rightly judged that from the soil of a cult so severe there must grow some noble and heroic lives. Last of all the class leader reached the marquis, whom he did not know.

"Will our strange brother tell us how it is with him to-day?" he asked.

Priscilla trembled. What awful thing might happen when a class leader invited a marquis, who could speak no English, and who was a disciple of Saint Simon, to tell his religious experience, was more than she could divine. If the world had come to an end in consequence of such a concatenation, I think she would hardly have been surprised. But nothing of the sort occurred. To her astonishment the marquis rose and said:

"Is it that any one can speak French?"

A brother who was a member of one of the old Swiss families volunteered his services as interpreter, and D'Entremont proceeded to tell them how much he had been interested in the exercises; that it was the first time he had ever been in such a meeting, and that he wished he had the simple faith which they showed.

Then the old leader said, "Let us engage in prayer for our strange brother."

And the marquis bowed his knees upon the hard floor.

He could not understand much that was said, but he knew that they were praying for him; that this white-haired class leader, and the old ladies in the corner, and Priscilla, were interceding with the Father of all for him. He felt more confidence in the efficacy of their prayers than he had ever had in all the intercessions of the saints of which he was told when a boy. For surely God would hear such as Priscilla!

It happened not long after this that D'Entremont was drawn even nearer to this simple Methodist life, which had already made such an impression on his imagination, by an incident which would make a chapter if this story were intended for the New York Weekly Dexter. Indeed, the story of his peril in a storm and freshet on Indian Creek, and of his deliverance by the courage of Henry Stevens, is so well suited to that periodical and others of its class, that I am almost sorry that Mrs. Eden, or Cobb, Jr., is not the author of this story. Either of them could make a chapter which would bear the title of "A Thrilling Incident." But with an unconquerable aversion to anything and everything "thrilling," the present writer can only say in plainest prose that this incident made the young marquis the grateful friend of his deliverer, Henry Stevens, who happened to be a zealous Methodist, and about his own age.

The effort of the two friends to hold intercourse was a curious spectacle. Not only did they speak different languages, but they lived in different worlds. Not only did D'Entremont speak a very limited English, while Stevens spoke no French, but D'Entremont's life and thought had nothing in common with the life of Stevens, except the one thing that made a friendship possible. They were both generous, manly men, and each felt a strong drawing to the other. So it came about that when they tired of the marquis's English and of the gulf between their ideas, they used to call on Priscilla at her home with her mother in the outskirts of the village. She was an interpreter indeed! For with the keenest sympathy she entered into the world in which the marquis lived, which had always been a sort of intellectual paradise to her. It was strange indeed to meet a living denizen of a world that seemed to her impossible except in books. And as for the sphere in which Stevens moved, it was her own. He and she had been schoolmates from childhood, had looked on the same green hills, known the same people, been molded of the same strong religious feeling. Nothing was more delightful to D'Entremont than to be able to talk to Stevens, unless it was to have so good an excuse for conversation with Priscilla; and nothing was so pleasant to Henry Stevens as to be able to understand the marquis, unless it was to talk with Priscilla; while to Priscilla those were golden moments, in which she passed like a quick-winged messenger between her own native world and the world that she knew only in books, between the soul of one friend and that of another. And thus grew up a triple friendship, a friendship afterward sorely tried. For how strange it is that what brings together at one time may be a wall of division at another.

I can not pretend to explain just how it came about. Doubtless Henry Stevens's influence had something to do with it, though I feel sure Priscilla's had more. Doubtless the marquis was naturally susceptible to religions influences. Certain it is that the socialistic opinions, never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction, disappeared, and there came a religious sentiment like that of his friends. He was drawn to the little class meeting, which seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former notions of "liberty, fraternity, and equality" were satisfied by it. I believe he became a "probationer," but his creed was never quite settled enough for him to accept "full membership."

Some of the old folks could not refrain from expressions of triumph that "the Lord had got a hold of that French infidel": and old Sister Goodenough seized his hand, and, with many sighs and much upturning of the eyes, exhorted him: "Brother Markus, give up everything! give up everything, and come out from the world and be separated!" Which led D'Entremont to remark to Stevens, as they walked away, that "Madame Goodenough was vare curus indeed!" And Brother Boreas, the exhorter, who had the misfortune not to have a business reputation without blemish, but who made up for it by rigid scruples in regard to a melodeon in the church, and by a vicarious conscience which was kindly kept at everybody's service but his own--old Brother Boreas always remarked in regard to the marquis, that "as for his part he liked a deeper repentance and a sounder conversion." But the gray-haired old Scotch class leader, whose piety was at a premium everywhere, would take D'Entremont's hand and talk of indifferent subjects while he _beamed_ on him his affection and Christian fellowship.

To the marquis Priscilla was a perpetual marvel. More brilliant women he had known in Paris, more devout women he had seen there, but a woman so gifted and so devout, and, above all, a woman so true, so modest, and of such perfect delicacy of feeling he had never known. And how poorly these words describe her! For she was Priscilla; and all who knew her will understand how much more that means than any adjectives of mine. Certainly Henry Stevens did, for he had known her always, and would have loved her always had he dared. It was only now, as she interpreted him to the marquis and the marquis to him, idealizing and elevating the thoughts of both, that he surrendered himself to hope. And so, toward the close of the summer, affairs came to this awkward posture that these two sworn friends loved the same woman.

D'Entremont discovered this first. More a man of the world than Henry Stevens, he read the other's face and voice. He was perturbed. Had it occurred two years before, he might have settled the matter easily by a duel, for instance. And even now his passion got the better for a while of all his good feelings and Christian resolutions. When he got back to the Le Vert House with his unpleasant discovery he was burning like a furnace. In spite of a rain storm just beginning and a dark night, he strode out and walked he knew not whither. He found himself, he knew not how, on the bank of the Ohio. He untied a skiff and pushed out into the river. How to advance himself over his rival was his first thought. But this darkness and this beating rain and this fierce loneliness reminded him of that night when he had clung desperately to the abutment of the bridge that spanned Indian Creek, and when the courage and self-possession of Henry Stevens had rescued him. Could he be the rival of a man who had gone down into the flood that he might save the exhausted marquis?

Then he hated himself. Why had he not drowned that night? And with this feeling of self-disgust added to his general mental misery and the physical misery that the rain brought to him, there came the great temptation to write "_Fin_," in French fashion, by jumping into the water. But something in the influence of Priscilla and that class meeting caused him to take a better resolution, and he returned to the hotel.

The next day he sent for Henry Stevens to come to his room.

"Henry, I am going to leave to-night on the mail boat. I am going back to New Orleans, and thence to France. You love Priscilla. You are a noble man; you will make her happy. I have read your love in your face. Meet me at the river to-night. When you are ready to be married, let me know, that I may send some token of my love for both. Do not tell mademoiselle that I am going; but tell her good-by for me afterward. Now, I must pack."

Henry went out stupefied. What did it mean? And why was he half glad that D'Entremont was going? By degrees he got the better of his selfishness.

"Marquis d'Entremont," he said, breaking into his room, "you must not go away. You love Priscilla. You have everything--learning, money, travel. I have nothing."

"Nothing but a good heart, which I have not," said D'Entremont.

"I will never marry Priscilla," said Henry, "unless she deliberately chooses to have me in preference to you."

To this arrangement, so equitable, the marquis consented, and the matter was submitted to Priscilla by letter. Could she love either, and if either, which? She asked a week for deliberation.

It was not easy to decide. By all her habits of thought and feeling, by all her prejudices, by all her religious life, she was drawn toward the peaceful and perhaps prosperous life that opened before her as the wife of Henry Stevens, living in her native village, near to her mother, surrounded by her old friends, and with the best of men for a husband. But by all the clamor of her intellectual nature for something better than her narrow life, by all her joy in the conversation of D'Entremont, the only man her equal in culture she had ever known, she felt drawn to be the wife of the marquis. Yet if there were roses, there were thorns in such a path. The village girl knew that _madame la marquise_ must lead a life very different from any she had known. She must bear with a husband whose mind was ever in a state of unrest and skepticism, and she must meet the great world.

In truth there were two Priscillas. There was the Priscilla that her neighbors knew, the Priscilla that went to church, the Priscilla that taught Primary School No. 3. There was the other Priscilla, that read Chaucer and Shakespeare, Molière and De Staël. With this Priscilla New Geneva had nothing to do. And it was the doubleness of her nature that caused her indecision.

Then her conscience came in. Because there might be worldly attractions on one side, she leaned to the other. To reject a poor suitor and accept a rich and titled one, had something of treason in it.

At the end of a week she sent for them both. Henry Stevens's flatboat had been ready to start for New Orleans for two days. And Challeau, Lafort & Company were expecting the marquis, who was in some sort a ward of theirs. Henry Stevens and the Marquis Antoine d'Entremont walked side by side, in an awkward silence, to the little vine-covered cottage. Of that interview I do not know enough to write fully. But I know that Priscilla said such words as these:

"This is an awful responsibility. I suppose a judge trembles when he must pass sentence of death. But I must make a decision that involves the happiness of both my friends and myself. I can not do it now. Will you wait until you both return in the spring? I have a reason that I can not explain for wishing this matter postponed. It will be decided for me, perhaps."

I do not know that she said just these words, and I know she did not say them all at once. But so they parted. And Miss Nancy More, who retailed ribbons and scandal, and whose only effort at mental improvement had been the plucking out of the hairs contiguous to her forehead, that she might look intellectual--Miss Nancy More from her lookout at the window descried the two friends walking away from Mrs. Haines's cottage, and remarked, as she had often remarked before, that it was "absolutely scandalious for a young woman who was a professor to have two beaux at once, and such good friends, too!"

Gifted girls like Priscilla usually have a background in some friend, intelligent, quiet, restful. Anna Poindexter, a dark, thoughtful girl, was sometimes spoken of as "Priscilla's double"; but she was rather Priscilla's opposite: her traits were complementary to those of her friend. The two were all but inseparable; and so, when Priscilla found herself the next evening on the bank of the river, she naturally found Anna with her. Slowly the flatboat of which Henry Stevens was owner and master drifted by, while the three or four men at each long oar strode back and forward on the deck as they urged the boat on. Henry was standing on the elevated bench made for the pilot, holding the long "steering oar" and guiding the craft. As his manly form in the western sunlight attracted their attention, both the girls were struck with admiration. Both waved their handkerchiefs, and Henry returned the adieu by swinging his hat. So intent was he on watching them that he forgot his duty, and one of the men was obliged to call out, "Swing her round, captain, or the mail boat'll sink us."

Hardly was the boat swung out of the way when the tall-chimneyed mail boat swept by.

"See the marquis!" cried Anna, and again adieux were waved. And the marquis stepped to the guard and called out to Henry, "I'll see you in New Orleans," and the swift steamer immediately bore him out of speaking distance. And Henry watched him disappear with a choking feeling that thus the nobleman was to outstrip him in life.

"See!" said Anna, "you are a lucky girl. You have your choice; you can go through life on the steamboat or on the flatboat. Of course you'll go by steam."

"There are explosions on steamboats sometimes," said Priscilla. Then turning, she noticed a singular expression on Anna's face. Her insight was quick, and she said, "Confess that _you_ would choose the flat-float." And Anna turned away.

"Two strings to her bow, or two beaux to her string, I should say," and she did say it, for this was Miss More's comment on the fact which she had just learned, that Miss Haines had received letters from "the lower country," the handwriting of the directions of which indicated that she had advices from both her friends. But poor Miss More, with never a string to her bow and never a beau to her string, might be forgiven for shooting popguns that did no harm.