Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“She expects him back this evening. Oh, Jack, Bridget was sent for this morning before the breakfast things were cleared away. She really didn’t want to go off this time, but that mother of hers—! The children were more troublesome than usual, and _had_ to be taken care of. They’re all asleep now but the baby. I sent them off earlier than usual on account of the cold. Katy is _no_ good around the house, and we’ve had such a day! The furnace—”

“I see that it’s out.”

“Both fires were out, but the range is going now. The wind was all wrong. We made up the furnace three times, but I couldn’t remember how to turn the dampers; they never seemed to be the right way. There’s a grate fire in the nursery, though.”

“The water hasn’t frozen in the pipes, I hope?”

There was an ominous sound in his voice.

She nodded speechlessly, and looked at him, her eyes large with unshed tears.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” He rose for action. “You should have sent for the plumber at once.”

“There wasn’t anyone to send, and it was so late when I found it out; he wouldn’t have come until to-morrow, anyway.”

There was a certain look in his wife’s face at times which filled Atterbury with extreme tenderness. In the seven years of their wedded life she had explained to him every varying grade of emotion which the sight of him caused her, but there were many things which he had never thought of telling her, or even consciously formulating to himself. He went over to the closet, poured out some cordial in a small glass and brought it to her to drink, watching narrowly until a faint tinge of color relieved the bluish pallor around her mouth. Then he poured out another small glass for himself, and spread the down coverlet more closely over her, frustrating her evident desire to rise.

“You lie still.” He passed a heavy, affectionate hand over her forehead, and she rested her cheek against it with a passionate helplessness. “What on earth did you want to do all the work for, to-day? Why didn’t you get the McCaffrey woman? You’ve no business to tire yourself out like this, Agnes. I don’t see how you’re ever going out this evening!”

“Oh, I can go, I’m so much better now. I thought—I know that we have so little money—I wanted to economize; other women seem to do such things without any trouble at all.”

“Well, we won’t economize that way. Always get what help is necessary.” He spoke with the quick, matter-of-fact decision of a man used to affairs, temporarily regardless of the financial situation, whose cramping iron restrictions could be felt at every turn. “I’ll go down now and start things up!”

“Your dinner is in the oven. I’ll send Katy to you as soon as Herbert is asleep. She can’t leave him now, for he crawls over the crib and drops out.”

“All right! Don’t you worry, I’ll get it.”

He ran downstairs, arrayed for service, and Agnes listened to his receding footsteps, a warm comfort in her heart despite that racking of the bones, as of one “smote hip and thigh,” which comes to the delicately-born with unaccustomed kitchen-work. After some moments—spent, as she guiltily divined, in searching for the coal shovel—the clatter and rattle of the furnace showed that a master hand had taken it in charge.

Atterbury stoked and shoveled with every quick sense suddenly concentrated on a deep and hidden care. If anything should happen to his wife—vague, yet awful phrase—if anything should “happen” to his wife! She was not made for struggle; the doctor had told him that before. He knew, none better! how brave, loving, yet sensitive a spirit was housed in that tender and fragile body. If she were to leave him and their little children—

No mist came over his eyes at the phantasm, but a sobered keenness of vision gleamed there. There were certain things which it behooved a man to do. He walked over to the coal bins—they were nearly empty. Well, more coal must be ordered at once; he would himself speak about it to Murphy, and make arrangements to pay that last bill—somehow.

A catalogue of indebtedness unrolled itself before him, but he gazed at it steadily. The fog-like depression was gone. He felt in his veins the first tingling of that bitter wine of necessity which invigorates the strong spirit.

And there was Harrington, at whose house the card party was to be held to-night. He drew a long breath, and his heart beat quicker. He had not told his wife how much he counted on seeing Harrington, but he was sure that she had divined it—nothing else would have taken him out again on such a night. This wealthy and genial neighbor had held out great hopes of furthering one scheme of Atterbury’s in that trip out West from which he had just returned. Atterbury had helped Harrington about his patent, and the latter professed himself eager to repay the service. If Harrington had used his influence—as he could use it—and had got the company to look at the land, why, it was as good as sold. Atterbury knew that it held the very qualities for which they were looking. If the plan were a success, then what had been started first as an attractive “flyer” might prove to be a main dependence when most needed. He felt a little bitterly that the friends on whom he had most counted had failed him. Callender—Nichols—Waring—in their plans there was no room for him. This meeting with Harrington was the crucial point on which the future hung.

When Atterbury went back to his wife, warmed with his work, she was standing before the mirror, dressing; a faint, smoky smell arose from the register. The wind was still evidently in the wrong direction for chimneys. An infant’s prattle, mixed with an occasional whimper, came from the nursery.

“I’ve wrapped hot cloths around the pipes,” he said cheerfully, “and left a couple of kerosene lamps lighted on the floor near them. We’ll have to take our chances now. What’s this envelope on the mantelpiece?” His face fell. “Another assessment from the Association? That makes the eleventh this month, besides the regular insurance, that was due on the first.”

“But you can’t pay it!” She had looked bright when he came in, but now her lips quivered.

“Oh, I’ll have to pay that; don’t you worry about it. I tell you, though, Agnes, I’d be worth a good deal more to you dead than I am now.”

“Don’t! You know I hate to hear you talk like that. I’d never _take_ your old insurance money.” She grasped him by her two slender, cold hands and tried ineffectually to shake him while he smiled down at her, and then hid her head on his breast, raising it, however, to say,

“Did you eat your dinner? I hope that it wasn’t burned.”

“I ate—some of it!”

“Oh,” she groaned, “and on such a night!”

“Never mind, I’m counting on a good hot little supper at Harrington’s. And, Agnes—” having none of the care of the children, he had a habit of intervening at inopportune moments with well-meant suggestions—“just listen to that child! Don’t you think he might go to sleep better if I brought him in here with us for a few moments?”

“_No_,” said his wife. She added afterward, sweetly in token of renewed amity, “He’s such a darling, and he looks more like you every day. He’ll be asleep soon. But I’m sure Gwendolen will have the croup to-night, the house has been so cold.”

“Oh, of course,” said Atterbury grimly. By some weird fatality the festive hour abroad was almost inevitably followed by harrowing attendance on one or other of the infants in the long watches of the night. Husband and wife looked at each other and laughed, and then kissed in silence, like two children, in simple accord.

It was with many instructions to Katy that the Atterburys finally left the house, instructions that comprehended the dampers, the babies, and the pipes.

“I don’t suppose that she will remember a word that we have told her,” said Agnes resignedly.

“Well, we are only going three doors away; I’ll run back after a while and see.”

“I’m so glad I’m going with _you_,” she whispered as they walked the few steps, he trying to shield her from the violence of the wind.

“Ah, yes,” he jibed, “it’s such a new thing, isn’t it, to be with me! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The Harringtons’ house was certainly a change from the one they had left. Delicious warmth radiated from it as the ample doors unclosed to let the guests in; the crimson-shaded lights were reflected on the card tables and the polished floor, and laughing voices greeted the newcomers.

“You are late,” said the hostess, who was considered handsome, with heavy black eyebrows, dimples in her white, rounded cheeks, and a petulant expression. She wore a bunch of violets in the belt of her light blue gown. “You are late, but not so late as my husband. I expected him home to dinner, and he hasn’t come yet. It’s the way I’m always treated,” she pouted engagingly; “you other men will have to be very, very nice to me.”

She stared with public audacity into the eyes of the man nearest her, and then let her long black lashes sweep her cheek. It pleased her to pose as the attractive young married woman, and by tacit consent the suburban husbands were allowed by their wives to go through the motions of flirting with her.

Atterbury settled down to the strain of waiting. The company was composed of couples who saw each other daily, the men on the trains, the women in their small social rounds. Every event that happened in their little circle was common property, to be discussed by all. The evolution of Mrs. Oliver’s black spangled gown, the expensive house which the new doctor was erecting under the auspices of the Building Loan Association, Totty Jenkins’ stirring experiences in the kindergarten, and Mr. Waring’s sudden substitution of the seven-thirty-one morning train for the eight-fourteen, were subjects interspersed with, and of the same calibre, as discussions on the presidential candidate, the last new book, or affairs in Africa.

In spite of this pooling of interests, so to speak, the weekly gathering at the houses of different members always took on an aspect of novelty. Everyone dressed for the occasion, and there was usually a good game of cards, and a modest little supper afterwards, and the women met other men besides their husbands, and the men met each other and smoked after supper. The only real variety in the programme was that the simple and hearty friendliness beneath all this was more apparent at some houses than at others.

The Harringtons—somewhat new arrivals—were the confessedly rich people of the set, and the entertainments which they gave were characterized with a little more pomp and circumstance. Mrs. Harrington, for all her perfunctory belleship, was a lively and entertaining hostess. Everyone strove to make up to her for Harrington’s absence, and a particularly cordial spirit prevailed. It was always a secret trial to Agnes not to play cards at the same table as her husband in the progressive game, but to-night she did not mind, for his steel-blue eyes met hers in a kind, remembering glance whenever she looked for it, that spoke of a sweet and intimate companionship, with which outside events had nothing to do.

In one of the intermissions of the game Atterbury heard Henry Waring say to Nichols,

“Did you see the little item in one of the evening papers about that Western Company to whom Harrington sold his patent?”

“No, what was it?” asked Nichols.

“They’re going to start up the plant at once near some town in Missouri, I’ve forgotten the name—paid fifty thousand for the ground. You see, they required peculiar natural facilities; that’s what’s kept them back so long. It seems a good deal of money to pay for a clay-bank. Of course, Harrington’s in a hurry to start them up; he’ll get a big royalty.”

“You are _not_ to talk business,” said Mrs. Harrington’s gay voice.

Atterbury felt the room swirl around with him; _he_ knew the name of the town well enough! He had been sure from the first that those barren acres of his held just what the Company was looking for, but he had never dreamed of getting more than ten or fifteen thousand for them. A warm gratitude to Harrington filled him, and then a chill of doubt. The newspaper only chronicled a rumor, not a certainty, for no real sale could take place without his knowledge.

He did not know how he played after this, and it was a tremendous relief when the players left the tables and stood or sat in little home-like groups, all talking and laughing at once in a merry tumult. There was in the air that fragrant aroma of newly-made coffee which is so peculiarly convivial in the suburbs, and the absence of Harrington, who was nevertheless considered to be a jolly good fellow, had ceased to be noticed by anyone but Atterbury, when the sound of wheels was heard grating on the driveway outside. He clutched the chair he stood by, although his face was impassive. The hour he had been waiting for was here—Harrington had come.

Mrs. Harrington ran into the hall with an exclamation of pleasure, as the door opened, letting in a flood of cold air and a large man heavily wrapped in fur. The listening company heard him say,

“What in—time—have you got this crowd here to-night for?” The words were respectable, but the tone cursed.

There was a stiffening change in her voice. “Hush! Didn’t you get my letter?”

“What letter? No, if I had I wouldn’t have been fool enough to come home for a quiet night’s rest; I might have known I couldn’t get it here. You can’t live without a lot of people cackling around you.”

“Go to bed, then. Nobody wants to see you!” It was the quick thrust of a rapier.

“Much rest I’d get with that mob in there.”

The woman flashed back at him with a white heat,

“You have your men’s dinners and your wine parties—and you grudge me a little pleasure like this! It’s like you; it’s like—” For very shame’s sake, the guests were hurriedly talking to cover the sounds of strife.

“Harrington’s trip evidently hasn’t done him much good,” said Nichols to Atterbury. “I doubt his success. He has too many large schemes on hand; what he makes in one way he uses to float something else.”

“It’s possible,” said Atterbury thoughtfully.

“It doesn’t do to take things like that; if you lose your grip you can’t get on.”

“That’s what I’m finding out now. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Nichols, that I’m in a hole. But you have no experience in that way; your business is secure.”

The two men had drawn to one side and were talking in low and confidential tones.

“Is it? I tell you, Atterbury, the time I went through five years ago was awful, simply awful. No, I never said a word to a soul here; nobody even suspected. There was one time when I thought I’d have to send Sue and the babies home to her father, and light out for the Klondike.”

“But you didn’t,” said Atterbury, his own pulse leaping to the courage of the other man with a sudden kinship.

“No, I didn’t go. You _can’t_ be discouraged when you have a wife and children to support. Things turned out—it was most unexpected. I’ll tell you all about it some day. It’s well that the opportunities of life are not bounded by our knowledge of them, Atterbury.”

They looked at each other in silence with a large assent.

“By the way, we are rather at a standstill at present,” said Nichols after a pause. “We’ve got to get some one to represent us in South Africa at once—business possibilities are opening up there tremendously. You don’t happen to know of the right person?”

“Myself,” said Atterbury.

“I wish it were possible,” said Nichols politely. “But of course that’s out of the question. We must have some one who thoroughly understands the business, and the machines—one who can take the initiative. The fact is, either Callender or I ought to go, but we can’t leave. We virtually need a third man in the firm, but he must have capital.”

“Please come into the other room, all of you,” said the hostess with a forced playfulness, pulling aside the porti—res which had concealed the little feast. There was a heightened color in her face, and her eyes were hard. “Mr. Harrington says that he is going to stay in here until we have finished, but I know you won’t miss _him_!”

“Oh, come along in, Harrington,” said Nichols good-naturedly. “Tell us of your travels in the wild and woolly West.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Harrington shortly, turning away from the instinctive question in Atterbury’s look with almost brutal rudeness, and pushing past him to an armchair, where he sat down and closed his eyes wearily. He was a big man, with thick, black hair, and a black mustache, which dropped over a heavy chin.

“I’ve passed the nights in beastly sleeping cars, and the days in dining and wining a lot of low, greasy politicians. I’m _dog_-tired.” There were deep lines in his low forehead and under his eyes—and his large, white, powerful hand clasped and unclasped nervously.

“You go in there, both of you. I’m all broke up. My wife will entertain you; her damn chatter drives me mad!”

“I’ll stay here with you,” said Atterbury resolutely.

“I will send your supper in to you,” called Mrs. Harrington lightly, as she saw him draw up a chair to one of the deserted card tables near which Harrington was sitting with his eyes still closed and his head leaned back against the cushions.

He paid no attention to the dishes, but Atterbury ate and drank quickly, like the hungry man he was, though hardly knowing what he tasted, except that it was warm and good. Then he sat absently looking at the scene in the supper room where the guests were grouped around the table, the wax-lights in the candelabra illumining the women opposite him; Mrs. Harrington’s brilliant eyes and blue gown, the fair hair and scarlet draperies of pretty Mrs. Waring, the white teeth and charming smile of black-robed Mrs. Callender, and the old-rose bodice, slender neck, and dusky, drooping head that belonged to Agnes.

* * * * *

In spite of the festive appearance, there was manifest chill and restraint. The men, all but Callender and Nichols, who talked apart, had shifted over to seats by their wives, a position which does not require due exertion in the matter of entertainment. It is difficult to eat and drink merrily when your host is palpably waiting for your departure. Agnes’s hand shook as she held the cup of hot coffee to which she had been looking forward, and her creamed oysters were untouched while she tried to open a conversation with Mrs. Callender all about the Book Club.

* * * * *

“Well,” said Atterbury suddenly after a while, “what have you got to say to me, Harrington?” The other man’s manner was offensive, but Atterbury was disposed to be conciliating.

Harrington unclosed his heavy, dark-ringed eyes and gazed at him.

“What have I got to say to you?” He gave a short laugh. “Why, nothing that I know of—nothing but that I have an internal headache.” There was an extraordinary undercurrent of insolence in his manner which Atterbury was at a loss to explain.

“I am sorry to have to disturb you if you are ill,” said Atterbury in level tones, “but a word will suffice, Harrington. I know that the land is virtually sold—it was in the evening paper. How much does it bring?”

“What land?”

“My land.”

“I don’t know anything about your property; the ground that the Company bought belonged to me.”

“To you! You never told me that you owned any in Missouri.”

“Do I have to tell you everything?” Harrington’s black eyes were contemptuously defiant.

“No, but you will have to tell me _this_,” said Atterbury.

Harrington shifted uneasily. “Well, then, take the truth if you want it. I meant to keep faith with you fairly enough, and I would have stuck to your interests if I could have afforded to—that’s the whole gist of the matter. And you’ve no case for complaint; we hadn’t signed any agreement.”

“You found another section like mine?”

Harrington nodded. “Nearly as good. I bought it for a song, and the Company sent out a surveyor and a couple of geologists of their own to look it up, and paid me fifty thousand for it—that is, indirectly, of course. I didn’t appear in the sale and by—I lost every cent in a deal yesterday.” He swore under his breath.

“You used the private information I gave you, I suppose?” said Atterbury in dangerously low tones.

A flicker of a smile crossed Harrington’s moody face.

“Well, yes. You gave me the points, and I used them; any man would.”

“You miserable—sneaking—liar!” said Atterbury very slowly. He rose, and brought both hands down on the table with a gesture that did not lose in power because it made no sound. “No man that lives shall cheat me with impunity. I’ll brand you for what you are!”

“You can’t,” said Harrington insolently.

Atterbury smiled with the scorn which disdained reply, and turned on his heel. He did not see the startled glance of Nichols and Callender as he went over to a place beside them. His wife wondered, as they did, at a new royalty in his tall bearing, as of one used to high command, and bowed herself in adoration before it.

He defeated, he cast down! In that moment of tingling indignation he felt himself a conqueror; nor obstacle, nor loss, nor circumstance, nor treachery should stand in his way. This blow had felled the last barrier that confined a free spirit, superbly at one with the elemental force which displaces atoms and creates new worlds.

The current of a mighty strength was in him, dominant, compelling, that strength which in some mysterious way has a volition of its own, apart from him who possesses it, bending men and events to his uses.

There was a vibrant tone in his voice as he said,

“Mr. Nichols, I want to go to South Africa for you.”

The gaze of the two men met with almost an electric shock.

“But you don’t know the business!”

The protest half invited discussion.

“I can learn it.”

“We don’t want a man _to learn_,” said Callender, speaking for the first time. “You must understand that, Atterbury! We can find men on every street corner who would like to learn. We want some one with a good working knowledge, who has had experience, and is familiar with our machines and our methods—one who can leave his family—and has capital—”

Atterbury shook his head. “No! You want a man like me, one who cannot only handle your machines, but handle men, and has had experience outside of your narrow line. Good heavens, Callender, the man you speak of—barring the capital—can almost be picked up at the street corners. Your house is full of such as he—good, plodding, trustworthy men, who understand what they have been taught about your machines and your accounts and your methods, and who understand nothing else; who stick to their desks year in and year out. Will one like that do for you? You know that it will not! Granted that I _don’t_ know the business as you do—that’s but a detail; I know what business really _is_. Granted that I’ve got no capital—I’ve got the one thing you really need, and that’s the brains and energy to get it for _you_. Take me into your conferences, give me a fighting knowledge of what you want, and I’ll bring in the capital.

“The export trade has a tremendous future; my mind’s been full of it lately. You send me to South Africa—to China—to the Philippines, and I’ll undertake to double the business in three years, but you mustn’t confine yourself to one narrow line; you must broaden out. You ought to be able to distance all your competitors; you ought to be able to merge them in your own company. For many reasons I can be worth more to you than any other man you know. Great Scott, Nichols, can’t you _see_ that I’m the opportunity you want?”

Nichols sat immovable, holding on to the arms of his chair with both hands. Facing the light of Atterbury’s face, the answering light shone in his own. Callender still objected, although plainly under great excitement.

“You haven’t managed your own affairs so well.”

“No,” said Atterbury, turning on him like lightning, “and you know why. You know just what claims the death of Anderson laid upon me, and how I’ve tried to carry them. They will be paid off now. Callender, you’re not worth my powder and shot; you’re just _talking_. Mr. Nichols, I’m speaking to _you_. You know I can handle this thing!”

Both men rose unconsciously and looked at each other, with a long breath between them.

“When will you send me out?” asked Atterbury at last with his brilliant smile.

“Come to me to-morrow at ten,” said Nichols, giving his hand to the other, who grasped it silently. “Mind, I don’t promise anything.”

“No, we don’t promise anything,” agreed the excited Callender.

“No,” said Atterbury jubilantly, “that’s all right. We’ve got a great future before us, my friends.”

As he wheeled around he caught sight of Harrington, whom he had momentarily forgotten.

“Ah,” he said airily, “do either of you own any stock in our host’s Company? It may be just as well for you to investigate a little; you may find that as the treasurer he’s been speculating with the funds. I’ll give you my reasons for this also—to-morrow.”

“Come,” he said to Agnes, “we must be going.” As they stepped out once more into the darkness, the wind nearly hurled them off their feet; a million icy points of snow pricked and stung the face. She clung to him, and he put his arm around her and swept her through the storm as a lover might his bride, unknowing of it.

Yet for all that warm clasp, she subtly felt the severance of his thought from her, and when they were safely landed in the hall, she said nervously,

“What was that I heard you saying to Mr. Nichols? You’re not going to _leave_ me!”

Her tone had in it the universal protest of womankind, to whom the bodily desertion is less than the spiritual one that makes it possible.

He bent his ardent eyes upon her with a glow which she had never seen in them even in the earliest days of their love.

“Ah, but it will be only to come back to _you_,” he said with a leap forward to a joy that made parting dim, and she looked up at him with a soul so steeped in love that for the moment she could only desire what he did.

The evidences of a clinging domesticity were again around them; fierce blasts of heat from the furnace showed that Katy had peacefully forgotten the dampers; the water dripped, dripped into the kitchen sink from the thawing pipes. A hollow clanging cough from the upper regions told that poor little Gwendolen’s post-festive croup had indeed set in, but even this no longer appeared a bitter and blasting ill to Atterbury, but merely a temporary discomfort, to be gone with the morrow.

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In the Reign of Quintilia

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In the Reign of Quintilia

AS Mr. Nichols sped on his homeward way to the suburbs by boat and train, the abstraction which the clerks had noted grew upon him. At forty-six, his leonine locks streaked with gray, the comfortable, solid, prosperous father of a family, the president of one corporation and member of Heaven only knows how many governing boards, Mr. Nichols was in love—deeply and irremediably in love—with his youngest daughter, an infant of parts.

She was the sixth child, not the seventh, whom tradition surrounds with the mysterious opportunities of good fortune. She was, moreover, the fifth girl in unbroken succession, and her father, like many another man in like case, had not even looked at the baby until she was nearly a week old, only to fall a victim to the charms of the little warm, helpless being after he had once held it in his arms and felt the tiny rose-leaf fingers close over one of his. As he gazed intently at the face with its miniature features, the blue eyes suddenly opened and gazed at him unwinkingly for a space of seconds. Then the lids closed over them peacefully, and a long sigh issued from the parted lips, in its reflex breathing giving the indication of a ridiculous dimple at one corner of the mouth. When Mr. Nichols looked at his wife, who had been observing him, they both smiled, with a tightening of a new bond of affection between them.

“Pretty nice sort of a girl, isn’t she?” he remarked as he handed the child back to the waiting nurse, and when he went downstairs his wife heard him whistling a tune that had been a part of their early betrothal days, and hid her face in the pillow with a happy glow on it, although she was a staid and respectable matron.

It was noticed after this that Mr. Nichols contracted a habit of coming in each night and gazing at the child intently when he thought himself unobserved, and that he seemed to derive great and increasing satisfaction from the perusal. As the baby grew older her face lighted up for him as for no one else, and before she had reached her present age of two years they were sweethearts indeed, with a passion on his part which made it unbearable pain to him if she bumped her head or pinched her finger.

“How is Quintilia?”

The voice of a near neighbor arrested Mr. Nichols’s attention. A slow smile overspread his countenance at the mention of the beloved name, with which the doctor had playfully christened this fifth girl, to the exclusion of her lawful cognomen.

“Oh, she’s all right. At least I hope she is to-night—she hasn’t been very well for a couple of days; it’s bothered me a good deal.”

“My wife says that she grows prettier every day,” continued the obliging neighbor.

Mr. Nichols beamed. “She does. I’m coming home a little earlier to-night to see how she is. Her mother usually keeps her up for me when she’s well.”

He could not tell how much he hoped against hope that she _would_ be up and looking out for him. He knew so well how the little lovely white thing with the starry eyes and glinting curls would run to the stairway in her nightgown, and sitting down on the top step with all the delicious fluttering and sidling motions of her babyhood, would thrust her plump, bare pink foot up against his rough cheek with the delighted cry of,

“Pa-pa, _kiss_ a footie! Kiss a footie, pa-pa!”

Then how he would mumble and kiss that darling foot, and pretend to eat it, finally snatching the adored baby in his arms, laughing and struggling, to cuddle close to him when he pressed her to his heart, with the infinitely tender gentleness of the strong, as he carried her to her crib and laid her in it. His wife was always there, too, watching him with an indulgent smile. All love between them seemed to have grown deeper since it merged in this sixth child, whose advent had called forth a large offering of honest condolence from mistaken friends, and who had brought a joy which at first the parents decorously—nay, guiltily—concealed, to revel in it almost indecently afterwards.

The novelty of the first-born, a boy, had hindered complete enjoyment, and with him, as with the four girls who followed close after, it was a matter of such supreme importance that all the small rules which governed the infantile world should be strictly observed.

Even as a young woman Mrs. Nichols was a serious and conscientious mother, who read all the literature bearing on family health and education. The infants were trained with adamantine firmness from their birth, and as they grew older Mrs. Nichols attended kindergarten meetings where the child was meditated upon with deep graspings of the intellect, and also painstakingly sat through recitations mixed with exasperating calisthenics in the higher schools. In fine, she so ordered her days that when pussy-cats were under discussion in the morning classes to which Ethel and Edith belonged, she could still lead their thoughts intelligently pussywards in the afternoon, besides holding the fourteen-year-old Stan to that hour’s exercise in spelling which was also like an exercise in breaking stone.

To the higher rule Quintilia promised from the first to be an exception. She made her own laws. When she lifted her little arms to be “taken up” it was not in the heart of mortal to resist her; food was given her when she cried for it, and for the life of her Mrs. Nichols could not always combat the temptation to hold the dear little clinging form in her arms, with the damp head and its thistledown curls nestling on her shoulder, and rock and sing her baby to sleep in the old-fashioned way.

“No, I don’t think she’s any worse.” Mr. Nichols’s wife had met him at the door with the peaceful kiss of possession before reassuring him for the non-appearance of Quintilia. She was a woman of medium height, rather stout, with somewhat large features, a fresh complexion, thick black hair, brown eyes, and an expression that was at once pleasant and capable. The heart of her husband trusted in her implicitly, and her tone was a relief to him.

“What did the doctor say?”

“He thinks that it’s only a cold, but she must be kept very quiet. The nurse came this afternoon, but she doesn’t seem very—What is it, Miss Candy?”

Mr. Nichols looked up at the stairs, and his tense gaze involuntarily softened. A pretty girl in a blue and white cambric uniform appears to most men as an angel of healing. This one had large and appealing eyes, and little brown fuzzy curls in front under her white cap. There was a slip of paper in the hand held forward.

“Would you kindly have this prescription filled at once? I forgot it when you sent out last.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Nichols with alacrity. “I’ve got my coat on. I’ll go for it now.”

“Oh, thank you! And would you mind bringing home some alcohol? I think there ought to be some in the house.”

“There is a bottle of alcohol,” interpolated Mrs. Nichols.

“I’m so sorry, but I just tipped it over accidentally. Would you please send one of the maids to sweep up the broken glass? Thank you.”

The vision of the pretty face supported Mr. Nichols but insubstantially while he waited half an hour in the drug-store in contemplation of a deserted soda fountain, fly-specked packages of brown headache cure, a white and bony array of tooth-brushes, and some open boxes of flabby cigars in a glass case under an electric lighter. A suburban drug-store is not exactly an enlivening spot, and he was to become fatally well acquainted with it in the next few days.

To-night he went up and looked at the baby on his return; she was asleep, with cheeks flushed to a beautiful rose. She was breathing very hard, but still she slept, with her head thrown back, and the soft rings of hair spread out over the pillow; the curves of the little round body were carved out in the white bedclothes. The light in the room was shaded, and the nurse sat by the table under it, writing out her official report with a gold pencil held in her taper fingers; but his wife sat and watched the child. A sudden ache invaded the man’s heart.

“Is she all right?” he whispered.

His wife nodded. “Oh, yes. Doesn’t she look _darling_?”

But Mr. Nichols did not answer. The nurse came forward and smoothed little Quintilia’s pillow professionally.

“She seems to take an interest,” he whispered to his wife as they left the room. He felt the tenderness which a good man has for a young girl who has to earn her own living; she is somewhat on the same plane as himself, and it is a state of being of which he appreciates the difficulties. He realized that his wife’s silence was distinctly unsympathetic.

The children were very noisy that evening, without their mother’s presence, in the hour allotted them before bedtime. The youngest, Loulou, who was next to the baby, was seven years old—a stubby, chubby, black-haired child, with that genius for saying the wrong thing in the wrong place which is a mother’s woe. As she climbed on her father’s knee to-night she kept saying:

“Quintilia’s sick, father. Quintilia’s sick! Do you think she’ll be worse, to-morrow, father?” she grinned at him pleasantly, showing a mouth with three front teeth missing.

Mr. Nichols resisted a strong impulse to set her down forcibly. His attitude toward Loulou was a continual reproach to him. He knew, as his wife often reminded him, that Loulou had been his pet when she was a baby; he knew that he really loved her, and that if she were ill his fatherly affection would assert itself in the utmost care for her; but now her presence in rude and awkward health annoyed and irritated him beyond expression.

“If Quintilia dies, I’ll be the baby!”

“For shame, Loulou!” said the eldest girl, Christine, who had her mother’s own gentle manner. “You mustn’t talk like that. Ethel and Edith, don’t make so much noise. They can’t go to bed, father dear, until Ann comes back; she’s just gone to the village for something Miss Candy wanted.”

“Miss Candy is awful pretty!” said the bounding Loulou. “Stan waited by the stairs to-night to see her come down. She calls him Mr. Stanley, and he’s been going errands for her all the afternoon. And he put on his best jacket!”

“I didn’t,” blurted Stan, with a very red face, regardless of the chorus of horrified ohos! from the rest of the children. “Well, if I did, it was because the old one was torn.”

“If Quintilia dies, I’ll be the baby.” Loulou reverted to the first idea.

Stan cried, “Shut up, will you?” and threw his book at her, being a boy on whom years of training had had no appreciable effect; but Christine came and put her arm around her father’s neck and kissed him, with her soft braid of yellow hair falling across his shoulder, and he pressed the little comforter to him fondly.

Anxiety about Quintilia had grown by morning. Mrs. Nichols came down to breakfast in a brown cambric gown, with her hair brushed severely back from her forehead, and hurriedly drank a cup of coffee. The tense expression of her face, which she strove to render cheerful, took some of the charm for Mr. Nichols from Miss Candy’s curls and crispness. He left the house with a load upon him, which grew heavier—and lighter—heavier—and lighter, with rhythmical regularity, as hope or fear predominated.

Nearly a week passed, and still the baby’s life hung wavering in the balance; the president had come down town every day, looking grayer and quieter each morning.

He came to the office mechanically, and attended mechanically to the business that had to be transacted. He was dulled to a strange and abnormal gentleness both there and at home. He thanked those who performed the usual services for him in the office with punctilious politeness.

The children at home went unreproved by him. The chatter of poor little Loulou had ceased to irritate, although it occasionally gave him a spasm of pain. They were nothing to him, mere simulacrums of what had once power to please or displease. Even Stan did not come in for the usual disapprobation on the dirty hands, the slouching walk, or the uncouth expressions which characterized him. To Mr. Nichols his wife was the only real person in the house, and there was but one thought between them—the thought of Quintilia.

The mother worked untiringly, while Miss Candy curled her hair, and wrote interminable reports, and stood in charming professional attitudes when the doctor was present, and sent the household individually and collectively for belated prescriptions, and bottles that were “just out,” and glycerine, and boracic acid, and camphorated oil, and disinfectants, and oiled silk, and medicine-droppers, and rubber water-bags, and absorbent cotton, and whisky, and malted milk, and biscuits, and candles, and lime-water, and all the various foods so chemically prepared that they are warranted to be retained by the weakest stomach, and of which no invalid can ever be persuaded to swallow more than the first teaspoonful. The doctor studied Miss Candy’s reports—patently composed from memory—with an imperturbable face, and questioned Mrs. Nichols closely afterwards. Mr. Nichols, as a mortal man, still derived a vague satisfaction in her presence, although he spent his tired evenings in going errands for her; she looked so pretty that he always felt as if Quintilia must be better.

Sometimes he was allowed to sit by the child while his wife took a short rest. He knew, most humbly, his deficiencies in the sick-room—by some ulterior influence when he moved fire-irons fell over, bottles broke, papers rattled, his shoes made an earthquake, whatever he touched creaked. He would sit in a rigidly quiet attitude until his wife returned, with his head on his hand, watching the little pinched face, the half-closed eyes, listening to the breathing, the rise and fall of the little chest. Oh, God, the hours by a sick child!

A night came that was long to be remembered in the Nichols household—a night of ringing bells and shutting doors and hurried running up and down stairs, with the scared children in their white night-gowns peeping out of the bedroom door after their tearful prayers for little sister.

In the small hours the doctor’s steady tread could be heard in the sick-room, or on the landing where he came to give brief orders. Mr. Nichols sat on a couch in the wide hall outside the door. Sometimes his wife came from the sick-room and sat down by him for a few seconds, and they were together in an anguish of dreadful love. When she was gone he remained with his head on his breast thinking.

He thought of the years of happiness they had had; he thought of the beloved sleeping children around them and of honest, clumsy Stan, and troublesome, inconsequent Loulou with special tenderness; he thought of all the blessings that had been his.

It was as if life were brought to a close, and he humbly confessed to himself the unfaithfulness of his own part in it, his faults of temper, his neglect of opportunities to make others happy. He might have been drowning. His gaze, brought back to land once more, questioned those who passed him in the hall. Miss Candy went by once with red eyes, her cap pushed to one side, and her pretty hair all out of curl. She did not even see him as she passed.

“Father dear!”

He looked up—it was the little eldest daughter of the house, Christine. “Father dear, I can’t go to sleep, and I’ve been lying in bed so long!”

She sat down beside him and slipped her hand into his; her blue eyes had the depth that comes from lying awake in darkness. “I’m thinking all the time of baby. Mayn’t I stay here with you, father dear? I want to stay with you so much.”

“Yes, my darling.” He took the steamer-rugs his wife had left beside him and wrapped them around the woman-child, yellow braid and all, and they stayed there together. Once she whispered,

“You’re praying, too, father dear, aren’t you? I feel that you’re praying;” and he held her closer and whispered, “Yes.” By-and-by she fell asleep, and he held her still.

The first streaks of dawn filtered through the rooms, strange to those who sat bound in darkness and the shadow of death, a household prepared only for the night. Then an electric current seemed to run through the breathing souls in it.

The doctor came out in the hall and said, “She will live!” A door opened farther down—one flashed to another, “She will live!” The message flew from lip to lip, from heart to heart. The returning breath of the little ruler of the house revivified all within it. The awakened children ran out for a moment to whisper the gladness, the servants stole down the back stairs to clatter in the kitchen and make preparations for an early breakfast, one could hear the cocks crowing, and the sunshine grew strong and gathered into a long bar of light. Quintilia would live.

“You may come in and see her for just a minute,” said Mrs. Nichols to her husband, leading him in as one leads the blind. He fell on his knees by the bed, awestricken. Was _this_ the little rosy darling of his love? But she would live—she would live! As he looked the eyes opened recognizingly; there was a faint roguish smile on the beautiful lips, and the faintest movement under the bedclothes.

“She wants you to kiss her foot,” said the divining mother.

“Just hearken to the voice of himself in there,” said Ellen, the waitress, as she came into the kitchen from the breakfast-room. “He says you’re to make some more coffee, for this isn’t fit to be drank. Oh, he’s ragin’! He’s sent Loulou from the table for spilling her milk, and the boy’s not to play golf for a week on account of the dirty hands of him, the poor child; and he’s got Miss Christine crying into the porridge, telling her how she’d oughter look after her little sisters better. Oh, he’s the holy terror the morn, and herself not downstairs to quaite him! Take your time with the coffee, Ann; sure he’ll murder me when I get back.”

“The pore man!” said the cook indulgently, pouring out a fresh installment of the fragrant brown liquid into the coffee-pot. “’Tis the way wid ’em all; sure ’tis drunk wid sorrow he’s been! What can ye expict? The big sobs was rindin’ him whin he come from the child’s room early, and sure he’s got to take it out of somebody. Run you wid the coffee now!”

“_Please_ don’t go down town to-day,” his wife implored him afterwards. “You look so horribly tired. Stay at home and rest.” She put her arms round him tenderly, feeling that now was the opportunity for the happiness of mutual thanksgiving; and he unconsciously pushed her away from him as he answered,

“Nonsense! There’s no reason why I should rest.”

She smothered her disappointment at his rebuff. “You won’t be any good at all at the office; I _know_ you have a dreadful headache. Go upstairs and lie down in the blue room for a while, and nobody will disturb you there.”

“Well!” He gave a grudging assent.

The blue room was white and chilly and unlived in. The stiff pillow-shams rattled down off the pillows as he touched them. He liked his own room, his own bed. The light glared down from the windows. But it was a place where he could be let alone, without those eyes continually waiting upon him to see how he felt. After his debauch of misery all feeling was nauseous to him. He lay stiffly on the cold, straight, unaccustomed bed, and looked with burning eyes at the pictures on the wall. Gradually the rack in his head slackened a little, his eyelids fell shut, he discerned the far-off approach of a blessed ease.

The door opened and his wife came quietly in, unselfishly remembering his needs in the midst of her own fatigue; she had brought a warm coverlet to throw over him. She lowered the shades and went softly out again, taking with her every atom of the peace that he had begun to wrest from a torturing universe.

The younger children talked in the hall; he heard them say,

“Don’t wake father. Hush! Don’t talk so _loud_.”

Then Loulou screamed, and some one came and took them away forcibly.

Ellen, the waitress, knocked at the door to say that the man had come for the gas bill, and would he pay it? And Miss Candy came afterwards professionally with a cup of hot broth, which she thought he had better drink.

Then Mr. Nichols rose up and took a bath and shaved and went down town.

That day was long remembered in the rooms of the Electrographic Company. Worried heads of departments consulted together; scared clerks went hurrying hither and thither; mistakes were routed out, abuses which had the sanction of custom sternly reformed, lapses from punctuality clinched by new and stringent rules. There was a large arrearage of his own affairs to be attended to, by which he had lost money.

The intellect of Mr. Nichols revolted fiercely against the sentiment to which it had been subjugated; he saw every fact at last stripped bare.

As the afternoon waned and the rush of business was over, Mr. Nichols leaned forward over his desk and tried to make up his mind to get up and go home. He was weary. That blessed assurance that he had longed for so unutterably yesterday was his, yet it seemed no longer a new bliss, but a fact that he had always known. The pendulum had been set swinging so hard toward the extreme of grief that it could not at once reverse its motion and swing toward happiness. He felt indescribably worn, indescribably old. There are times in all lives that are safely passed through, but take something out of one which no after-delight can put back again; some of those delicate sinews are broken which make the unthinking strength of youth. In his sickness of soul Mr. Nichols sought mechanically for some bright ray in the gray around him—something to bring back his accustomed pleasure in living. Quintilia’s recovery—his wife—children—friends—success—even dinner—all were but words.

In this gloom of effort he half drowsed off; some fleeting wave of a dream showed a spot of light before him; it grew larger and larger, and with it a figure grew also, until it was plainly revealed—the figure of the sixth child, a lovely rounded thing with starry eyes and thistledown curls, dimpling and laughing and thrusting a delicious little pink foot in his bearded face. He could hear the baby voice crying,

“Pa-pa, kiss a footie. Kiss a footie, pa-pa!”

A foolish smile overspread the countenance of the president of the Electrographic Company. In the rapture of love he forgot that he had been disloyal even for a moment to this Sovereign Joy.

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The Happiest Time

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The Happiest Time

“AREN’T you coming to church with me this morning?”

“Well—not _this_ morning, I think, petty.”

“You _said_ you would.”

“Yes, I know I did, but I have a slight cold. I don’t think it would be best for me, really, petty. I’ve been working pretty hard this week.” Mr. Belmore carefully deposited a pile of newspapers beside his armchair upon the floor of the little library, removing and opening the top layer for perusal as he spoke, his eyes already glued to the headlines. “A quiet day will do me lots of good. I’ll tell you what it is: I’ll promise to go with you next Sunday, if you say so.”

“You always promise you’ll go next Sunday.” Mrs. Belmore, a brown-haired, clear-eyed young woman in a blue and white spotted morning gown, looked doubtfully, yet with manifest yielding, at her husband. Mr. Belmore presented the radiantly clean and peaceful aspect of the man who has risen at nine o’clock instead of the customary seven, and bathed and dressed in the sweet unhurried calm that belongs only to the first day of the week, poking dilatorily among chiffonier drawers, discovering hitherto forgotten garments in his closet, and leisurely fumbling over a change of shirt-studs before coming down to consume the breakfast kept waiting for him.