Chapter X: Part II (5)

"We did not lay up so much as we hoped to; we neither of us had a trace of the instinct of economy or saving. I could not help buying a geranium or fuchsia to set in the windows; Nat could not help asking me to buy a book or a picture sometimes, and his paints and pencils and brushes and paper cost a good deal in the course of six months. Still we were very happy and very comfortable, and the days flew by. Our little room was so cozy and pretty, that Miss Penstock's customers used often to come in to see it; and if they happened to come when Nat was there, they almost always sent him something afterward; so, at the end of two years you never would have known the bare little room. We had flowers in both windows, and as each window had sun, the flowers prospered; and we had a great many pretty pictures on the walls, and Nat's sketches pinned up in all sorts of odd places. A big beam ran across the ceiling in the middle, and that was hung full of charcoal sketches, with here and there a sheet just painted in bars of bright color--no meaning to them, except to 'light up,' Nat said. I did not understand him then, but I could see how differently all the rest looked after the scarlet and yellow were put by their side. Some of our pictures had lovely frames to them, which Nat had carved out of old cigar-boxes that Patrick brought him. Sometimes he used to do nothing but carve for a week, and he would say, 'Dot, I do not believe drawing is the thing I want to do, after all. I want more; I hate to have everything flat.' Then he would get discouraged and think all he had done was good for nothing. 'I never can do anything except to draw till I go somewhere to be taught,' he would say, and turn back to the old calico patterns with fresh zeal.

"One day a customer of Miss Penstock's brought Nat a book about grapes, which had some pictures of the different methods of grape-culture in different countries. One of these pictures pleased him very much. It showed the grape-vines looped on low trees, in swinging festoons. He had the book propped up open at that picture day after day, and kept drawing it over and over on the blackboard and on paper till I was tired of the sight of it. It did not seem to me remarkably pretty. But Nat said one day, when I told him so,--

"'It isn't the picture itself, but what I want to make from it. Don't you see that the trees look a little like dancers whirling round, holding each other by the hand--one-legged dancers?'

"I could not see it. 'Well,' said Nat, 'look at this, and see if you can see it any better;' and he drew out of his portfolio a sheet with a rough charcoal sketch of six or seven low, gnarled, bare trees, with their boughs inter-locked in such a fantastic manner that the trees seemed absolutely reeling about in a crazy dance. I laughed as soon as I saw it. 'There!' said Nat triumphantly; 'now, if I can only get the vines to go just as I want them to, in and out, you see that will dress up the dancers.' He worked long over this design. The fancy seemed to have taken possession of his brain. He gave names to the trees, but he called them all men: 'It's a jolly crew of old kings,' he said; 'that's Sesostris at the head, and there's Herod; that old fellow with the gouty stomach under his left arm.' Nat was now so full of freaks and fun, that our little room rang with laughter night after night. Patrick used to sit on the floor sometimes, with his broad Irish mouth stiffened into a perpetual grin at the sight of the mirth, which, though he could not comprehend it, he found contagious.

"'But what will you do with it, Nat?' said I. 'It will never do for a calico pattern.'

"'I don't know,' said he reflectively; 'I might make it smaller and hide the faces, and not make the limbs of the trees look so much like legs, and call it the "vine pattern," and I guess old Wilkins would think it was graceful, and I dare say Miss Wilkins would wear it, if nobody else did.'

"'Oh! Nat, Nat, how can you,' exclaimed I, 'when they have been so good to pay us so much money?'

"'I know it,' said Nat, 'it's too bad; I'm ashamed now. But doesn't this look like the two Wilkins brothers? You said they looked like frogs?' he ran on, holding up a most ludicrous picture of two tall, lank frogs standing behind a counter, and stretching out four front legs like greedy hands across the counter, with a motto coming out of the right-hand frog's mouth: 'More designs, if you please, Mr. Kent--something light and graceful for summer wear.'

"These were the words of a note which Mr. Wilkins had sent to Nat a few weeks before. I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, for really the frogs did look like the brothers Wilkins. The picture haunted my mind for weeks afterward, and seemed somehow to revive my old distrust of them.

"A few days after this Nat had finished a set of designs 'for summer wear,' as the order said, and among them he had put in the 'One-Legged Dancers.'

"'It'll do no harm to try it,' said he. 'I think it would be lovely printed in bright-green on a white ground, and nobody but you and me would ever see the kings' legs in it.'

"It really was pretty; still I could not help seeing legs and heads and King Herod's stomach in it; and, moreover, it was entirely too large a figure for that year's fashions in calico or muslin. However, I said nothing and carried it with the rest. When I went the next day, Mr. Wilkins said, as he handed me the money,--

"'Oh, by the way, Miss Kent, one of the drawings has been mislaid. I suppose it is of no consequence; we could not use it; it was quite too large a figure, and seemed less graceful than your brother's work usually is; it was a picture of grape-vines.'

"'Oh,' said I, 'I told Nat I didn't believe that would be good for anything. No, it is not of the least consequence.'

"When I repeated this to Nat, he did not seem surprised at their refusal of the design; they had already refused several others in the course of the year. But he seemed singularly disturbed at the loss of the drawing. At last he urged me to go and ask if it had not been found.

"'I may do something with it yet, Dot,' he said. 'I know it is a good design for something, if not for calico, and I don't believe they have lost it. It is very queer.'

"But Mr. Wilkins assured me, with great civility and many expressions of regret, that the design was lost: that they had made careful search for it everywhere.

"The thing would have passed out of my mind in a short time but for Nat's pertinacious reference to it. Every few days he would say, 'It is very queer, Dot, about the One-Legged Dancers. How could such a thing be lost? They never lost a drawing before. I believe Miss Wilkins has got it, and is going to paint a big picture from it herself!'

"'Why, Nat!' I exclaimed, 'aren't you ashamed? that would be stealing.'

"'I don't care, Dot,' he said again and again, 'I never shall believe that paper was lost.'

"I grew almost out of patience with him; I never knew him to be unjust to any one, and it grieved me that he should be so to people who had been our benefactors.

"About four months later, one warm day in April, I walked over to the town after my day's work was done, to buy a gown for myself, and a new box of paints for Nat. I did not go to town more than two or three times a year, and the shop-windows delighted me as much as if I had been only eleven years old. As I walked slowly up and down, looking at everything, I suddenly started back at the sight of a glossy green and white chintz, which was displayed conspicuously in the central window of one of the largest shops. There they were, just as Nat had drawn them on the missing paper, 'The One-Legged Dancers!' Nat was right. It was a pretty pattern, a very pretty pattern for a chintz; and there was--I laughed out in spite of myself, as I stood in the crowd on the sidewalk--yes, there was the ugly great knot in one of the trees which had made King Herod's stomach. But what did it mean? No chintzes were made in any of Mr. Maynard's mills, nor, so far as I knew, in any mill in that neighborhood. I was hot with indignation. Plainly Nat's instinct had been a true one. The Wilkinses had stolen the design and had sold it to some other manufacturers, not dreaming that the theft could ever be discovered by two such helpless children as Nat and I.

"I went into the shop and asked the price of the chintz in the window.

"'Oh, the grape-vine pattern? that is a new pattern, just out this spring; it is one of the most popular patterns we ever had. A lovely thing, miss,' said the clerk, as he lifted down another piece of it.

"'I will take one yard,' said I with a choking voice. I was afraid I should cry in the shop. 'Do you know where this chintz is made?' I added.

"The clerk glanced at the price-ticket and read me the name. It was made by a firm I had never heard of, in another State. No wonder the Wilkinses thought themselves safe.

"When I showed Nat the chintz he seemed much less excited than I expected. He was not so very much surprised; and, to my great astonishment, he was not at first sure that it would be best to let the Wilkinses know that we had discovered their cheating. But I was firm; I would have no more to do with them. My impulse was to go to Mr. Maynard. Although during these three years he had never come to see us, I felt sure that, in the bottom of his heart, there still was a strong affection for us; and, above all, he was a just man. He would never keep in his employ for one day any person capable of such wrong as the Wilkinses had done us.

"'But,' persisted Nat, 'you do not know that either of the Mr. Wilkinses had anything to do with it. They may both have honestly supposed it was lost. It's much more likely that their sister stole it.'

"I had not thought of this before. Poor Miss Wilkins! Nat's artistic soul had been so outraged by some of her flagrant calicoes that he believed her capable of any crime.

"At last I consented to go first to the Wilkinses themselves, and I promised to speak very calmly and gently in the beginning, and betray no suspicion of them. I carried the chintz. When I entered the office, the overseer was talking in one corner with a gentleman whose back was turned to me. The agent sat by the counter.

"'Mr. Wilkins,' said I, 'do you remember the grape-vine pattern my brother drew last winter--the one which you refused?'

"The instant I spoke, I saw that he did remember. I saw that he was guilty, and I saw it all with such certainty that it enabled me to be very calm.

"'Let me see,' said he, trying to pretend to be racking his memory; 'the grape-vine pattern? It seems to me that I do recall something about a design with that name. Did you say we refused it?'

"'Yes, you refused it, but you did not return the drawing. You said it had been lost,' I replied.

"'Ah, yes, yes--now I recollect,' he said, recovering himself somewhat; 'we made great search for the drawing; I remember all about it now;' and he paused as if waiting civilly to know what more there could possibly be to be said on that point. But I watched him closely and saw that he was agitated. I looked him steadily in the eye and did not speak, while I slowly opened my little bundle and unrolled the piece of chintz.

"'Can you possibly explain this mystery, then, sir, that here is my brother's design printed on this chintz?' said I, in a clear, distinct tone, holding out the yard of chintz at its full length. As I said the words 'my brother's design,' the gentleman who had been talking with the overseer turned quickly round, and I saw that it was Mr. Maynard's youngest son Robert, who a year before had come home from Germany, and had recently been taken into the firm as partner. He stepped a little nearer me, and was evidently listening to my words.

"'Come into this room, Mr. Maynard, if you please, and we will finish discussing the matter we were speaking of,' said Overseer Wilkins, turning pale, and speaking very hurriedly, and trying to draw Mr. Maynard into the inner office-room.

"'And--if you will call some other time, Miss Kent,' said Agent Wilkins, turning away from me and walking toward Mr. Maynard, in his anxiety to prevent my being seen or heard, 'I will try to attend to this matter; but just now I have not another moment to spare,' and he began at once to talk in a loud and voluble manner.

"I do not know how I had strength and courage to do what I did then; I do not know where the voice came from with which I spoke then; Robert has always said that I looked like a young lioness, and that my voice sounded like the voice of one crying 'fire.' I stepped swiftly up to him, and before the astounded Wilkins could speak a word, I had held up the chintz and exclaimed, 'But Mr. Maynard will have time to spare, and I thank God he is here. Mr. Maynard, this design is one of my brother's drawing; he has made most of the calico designs printed in your father's mills for a year and a half: I brought this one to the agent; he said it was not good for anything, but he stole the paper and sold it, and here it is!' and then suddenly my strength all disappeared, great terror seized me, and I burst into tears. Both the agent and the overseer began to speak at once.

"'Be silent,' thundered Robert, in the most commanding tone I ever heard out of human lips. 'Be silent, both of you!' Then he took the chintz away from me, and taking both my hands in his, led me to a chair, saying, in a voice as sweet and gentle as the other was terrible, 'Pray be calm, my dear young lady--this matter shall be looked into. Sit down and do not try to speak for a few minutes.'

"Then he walked over to the brothers; even through my tears I could see how terrified they looked; they seemed struck dumb with fright; he spoke to them now in the most courteous manner, but the courtesy was almost worse than the anger had been before.

"'I shall have to ask you for the use of the office for a short time, gentlemen. This is an affair I prefer to investigate immediately, and I would like to see this young lady alone.' They both began to speak again, but he interrupted them.

"'I will send for you presently; not a word more now, if you please;' and in spite of themselves they were obliged to walk out of the room. As they turned to shut the door their faces frightened me.

"'Oh!' I exclaimed; 'oh, Mr. Maynard, they will kill Nat I must go home at once,' and I rose trembling in every nerve. He made me sit down again, and brought me a glass of wine, and said, 'Do not be afraid, my dear child, they will not dare harm your brother. Drink this, and tell me your whole story.'

"Then I told him all. He interrupted me only once, to ask me about the prices paid us for two or three especial patterns which he happened to recollect. When I stopped, he jumped up from his chair and walked up and down in front of me, ejaculating, 'By Jove! this is infernal--I never heard of such a contemptible bit of rascality in my life. I have told my father ever since I came home that these men had bad faces, and I have looked carefully for traces of cheating in their accounts. But they were too cowardly to try it on a large scale.'

"He then told me that the originality and beauty of the designs which the Wilkinses had furnished the firm of late had attracted general attention; that they had said the best ones were the work of a sister in England, the others of the sister living with them. When he told me the prices which had been paid for them, I could not help groaning aloud and burying my face in my hands. 'Oh, my poor Nat!' I exclaimed, 'you might have had everything you wanted for that.'

"'But he shall have it still, Miss Kent,' said Robert--'I shall give you a check for the whole amount before you leave this room, and I do assure you that your brother has a fortune in his talent for drawing. Probably this work is only the beginning of what he will do.'

"As Robert opened the office-door for me to pass out, I saw the two Mr. Wilkinses standing together at the gate through which I must go. Robert answered my look of alarm by saying, 'I shall walk home with you, Miss Kent. They shall not annoy you.'

"As we came near, they both lifted their hats with obsequious, angry bows. Robert did not look at them, but said in a low tone, as we passed, 'Go to the office and wait there till I return.'

"When he bade me good-by at my door, he said, 'I shall go now to find my father, and if he is at home the brothers Wilkins will be dismissed from our employ in less than one hour,' I looked after him as long as I could see him. Then I went into our little sitting-room, sank into a chair, and sat motionless, turning the check over and over in my hand, and wondering if I really were awake and alive, or if all were a dream. In a few moments Nat came home. As Patrick lifted the wagon up over the door-steps, and Nat caught sight of my face, he called out, 'Oh, sister, what is the matter--are you ill?' I ran to him and put the check into his hands, but it was some minutes before I could speak. The wonderful fortune did not overwhelm Nat as it had me. He was much stronger than I. Every stroke of his pencil during the last year had developed and perfected his soul. He was fast coming to have that consciousness of power which belongs to the true artist, and makes a life self-centred.

"'I have felt that all this would come, dear,' he said, 'and more than this too,' he added dreamily, 'we shall go on; this is only the outer gate of our lives,'

"He prophesied more truly than he knew when he said that--my dear blessed artist-souled martyr!

"I need not dwell on the details of the next half-year. A few words can tell them; and then, again, worlds of words could not tell them.

"Three months from the day I carried the piece of chintz into the overseer's office, Robert and I were married in the beautiful chapel where papa used to preach. All the mills were shut, and the little chapel was crowded with the workmen and workwomen. When we came out they were all drawn up in lines on the green, and Robert and Mr. Maynard both made them little speeches. Nat and Miss Penstock and Patrick were in Mr. Maynard's carriage, and Robert and I stood on the ground by the carriage-door. After the people had gone, Mr. Maynard came up to me and put both his hands on my shoulders, just as he had done three years before, and said, 'You were a brave girl, but you had to take me for your father, after all.'

"Nat's wedding-present to me was a wood-carving of the 'One-Legged Dancers'--the one which stands on the little gilt table. I shall never be separated from it.

"When I first found out how very rich Robert was, I was afraid; it seemed to me almost wrong to have so much money. But I hope we shall not grow selfish. And I cannot but be grateful for it, when I see what it has done for my darling brother. He is living now in a beautiful apartment in New York. Patrick is with him, his devoted servant, and Miss Penstock has gone to keep house for them. Nat is studying and working hard; the best artists in the city are his friends, and his pictures are already known and sought. When Robert first proposed this arrangement, Nat said, 'Oh no, no! I cannot accept such a weight of obligation from any man, not even from a brother.'

"Robert rose and knelt down by Nat's chair, and even then he was so far above him he had to bend over.

"'Nat,' said he, in a low tone, 'I never knelt to any human being before: I didn't kneel to Dora when I asked her to give herself to me, for I was sure I could so give myself to her as to make her happy; but it is to you, after all, that I owe it that she is mine; I never can forget it for an hour, and I never can repay you--no, not in my whole life-time, nor with all my fortune.'

"Then he told him that the sum which it would need to support him and Miss Penstock and Patrick in this way was so small, in comparison with our whole income, that it was not worth mentioning. 'And at any rate,' he said, 'it is useless for you to remonstrate, Nat, for I have already made fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock so entirely yours, that you cannot escape from it. The papers are all in my father's hands, and the income will be paid to you, or left subject to your order, quarterly. If you do not spend it, nobody else will;' and then Robert bent down lower, and lifting Nat's thin hands tenderly in his, pressed them both against his check, in the way I often did. It was one of the few caresses Nat loved. I stood the other side of the chair, and I stooped down and kissed him, and said:--

"'And, Nat, I cannot be quite happy in any other way.'

"So Nat yielded.

"It was hard to come away and leave him. For some time I clung to the hope that he might come with us; but the physicians all said it would be madness for him to run the risk of a sea-voyage. However, I know that for him, the next best thing to seeing Europe himself is to see it through my eyes. I write to him every week, and I shall carry home to him such art-treasures as he has never dreamed of possessing.

"Next year we shall go home, and then he will come back to Maynard's Mills and live with us. Robert is having a large studio built for him on the north side of the house, with a bed-room and little sitting-room opening out of it. Miss Penstock, too, will always live with us; we shall call her 'housekeeper,' to keep her contented, and Patrick is to stay as Nat's attendant. Poor fellow, he is not quite full-witted, we think; but he loves Nat so devotedly that he makes a far better servant than a cleverer boy would with a shade less affection.

"And now you have heard the story of my life, dear friend," said Dora, as she rose from the seat and lighted the rose-colored tapers in two low swinging Etruscan candlesticks just above our heads--"all that I can tell you," she added slowly. "You will understand that I cannot speak about the happiest part of it. But you have seen Robert. The only thing that troubles me is that I have no sorrow. It seems dangerous. Dear Nat, although he has all he ever hoped for, need not fear being too happy, because he has the ever-present pain, to make him earnest and keep him ready for more pain. I said so to him the day before I came away, and he gave me those verses I told you of, called 'The Angel of Pain,'"

Then she repeated them to me:--

The Angel of Pain.

Angel of Pain, I think thy face
Will be, in all the heavenly place,
The sweetest face that I shall see,
The swiftest face to smile on me.
All other angels faint and tire;
Joy wearies, and forsakes desire;
Hope falters, face to face with Fate,
And dies because it cannot wait;
And Love cuts short each loving day,
Because fond hearts cannot obey
That subtlest law which measures bliss
By what it is content to miss.
But thou, O loving, faithful Pain--
Hated, reproached, rejected, slain--
Dost only closer cling and bless
In sweeter, stronger steadfastness.
Dear, patient angel, to thine own
Thou comest, and art never known
Till late, in some lone twilight place
The light of thy transfigured face
Sudden shines out, and, speechless, they
Know they have walked with Christ all day.

When she had done we sat for some time silent. Then I rose, and kissing her, still silent, went out into the unlighted room where the gilt table stood. A beam of moonlight fell, broad and white, across its top, and flickered on the vine-leaves and the ferns. In the dim weird light their shapes were more fantastic than ever.

The door into the outer hall stood open. As I went toward it, I saw old Anita toiling slowly up the stairs, with a flat basket on her head. Her wrinkled face was all aglow with delight. As soon as she reached the threshold she set the basket down, and exclaiming, "Oh look, look, Signora!" lifted off the cover. It was full of fresh and beautiful anemones of all colors. She moved a few on top and showed me that those beneath were chiefly purple ones.

"Iddio mio! will not the dearest of Signoras be pleased now!" she said. "The saints wish that she shall have all she desires; did not my Biagio's brother come in from Albano this morning? and as I was in the Piazza Navona, buying oranges, I heard him calling from a long way off, 'Ho Anita, my Anita, here are anemones for your beautiful Signora with the bright hair.'

"They grow around an old tomb a mile away from his vineyard, and he set out from his home long before light to get them for me; for he once saw the Signora and he had heard me say that she never could have enough of anemones. Iddio mio! but my heart is glad of them. Ah, the dearest of Signoras!" and, with a tender touch, Anita laid the cool vine-leaves lightly back upon the anemones and hurried on in search of Dora.

How One Woman Kept Her Husband.

Why my sister married John Gray, I never could understand. I was twenty-two and she was eighteen when the marriage took place. They had known each other just one year. He had been passionately in love with her from the first day of their meeting. She had come more slowly to loving him: but love him she did, with a love of such depth and fervor as are rarely seen. He was her equal in nothing except position and wealth. He had a singular mixture of faults of opposite temperaments. He had the reticent, dreamy, procrastinating inertia of the bilious melancholic man, side by side with the impressionable sensuousness, the sensitiveness and sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd, vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness. She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity, so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of religion than to its obligations. My sister would have gone to the stake rather than tell a lie. He would tell a lie unhesitatingly, rather than give anybody pain. My sister lived earnestly, fully, actively, in each moment of the present. It never seemed quite clear whether he were thinking of to-day, yesterday, or to-morrow. She was upright because she could not help it. He was upright,--when he was upright,--because of custom, taste, and the fitness of things. What fatal discrepancies! what hopeless lack of real moral strength, enduring purpose, or principle in such a nature as John Gray's! When I said these things to my sister, she answered always, with a quiet smile, "I love him." She neither admitted nor denied my accusations. The strongest expression she ever used, the one which came nearest to being an indignant repelling of what I had said, was one day, when I exclaimed:--

"Ellen, I would die before I'd risk my happiness in the keeping of such a man."

"My happiness is already in his keeping," said she in a steady voice, "and I believe his is in mine. He is to be my husband and not yours, dear; you do not know him as I do. You do not understand him."

But it is not to give an analysis of her character or of his, nor to give a narrative of their family history, that I write this tale. It is only one episode of their life that I shall try to reproduce here, and I do it because I believe that its lesson is of priceless worth to women.

Ellen had been married fourteen years, and was the mother of five children, when my story begins. The years had gone in the main peacefully and pleasantly. The children, three girls and two boys, were fair and strong. Their life had been a very quiet one, for our village was far removed from excitements of all kinds. It was one of the suburban villages of ----, and most of the families living there were the families of merchants or lawyers doing business in the town, going in early in the morning, and returning late at night. There is usually in such communities a strange lack of social intercourse; whether it be that the daily departure and return of the head of the family keeps up a perpetual succession of small crises of interest to the exclusion of others, or that the night finds all the fathers and brothers too tired to enjoy anything but slippers and cigars, I know not; but certain it is that all such suburban villages are unspeakably dull and lifeless. There is barely feeling enough of good neighborhood to keep up the ordinary interchange of the commonest civilities.

Except for long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the brightest points in John Gray's character and life.

Such monotony was not good for either of them. He grew more and more dreamy and inert. She insensibly but continually narrowed and hardened, and, without dreaming of such a thing, really came to be less and less a part of her husband's inner life. Faithful, busy, absorbed herself in the cares of each day, she never observed that he was living more and more in his children and his reveries, and withdrawing more and more from her. She did not need constant play and interchange of sentiment as he did. Affectionate, loyal, devoted as she was, there was a side of husband's nature which she did not see nor satisfy, perhaps, never could. But neither of them knew it.

At this time Mr. Gray was offered a position of importance in the city, and it became necessary for them to move there to live. How I rejoiced in the change. How bitterly I regretted it before two years had passed.

Their city home was a beautiful one, and their connections and associations were such as to surround them at once with the most desirable companionships. At first it was hard for Ellen to readjust her system of living and to accustom herself to the demands of even a moderately social life. But she was by nature very fond of all such pleasures, and her house soon became one of the pleasantest centres, in a quiet way, of the comparatively quiet city. John Gray expanded and brightened in the new atmosphere; he had always been a man of influence among men. All his friends,--even his acquaintances,--loved him, and asked his advice. It was a strange thing that a man so inert and procrastinating in his own affairs, should be so shrewd and practical and influential in the affairs of others, or in public affairs. This, however, was no stranger than many other puzzling incongruities in John Gray's character. Since his college days he had never mingled at all in general society until this winter, after their removal to town; and it was with delight that I watched his enjoyment of people, and their evident liking and admiration for him. His manners were singularly simple and direct; his face, which was not wholly pleasing in repose, was superbly handsome when animated in conversation; its inscrutable reticence which baffled the keenest observation when he was silent, all disappeared and melted in the glow of cordial good-fellowship which lighted every feature when he talked. I grew very proud of my brother as I watched him in his new sphere and surroundings; and I also enjoyed most keenly seeing Ellen in a wider and more appreciative circle. I spent a large part of the first winter in their house, and shared all their social pleasures, and looked forward to ever increasing delight, as my nieces should grow old enough to enter into society.

Early in the spring I went to the West and passed the entire summer with relatives; I heard from my sister every week; her letters were always cheerful and natural, and I returned to her in the autumn, full of anticipations of another gay and pleasant winter.

They met me in New York, and I remembered afterwards, though in the excitement of the moment I gave it no second thought, that when John Gray's eyes first met mine, there was in them a singular and indefinable expression, which roused in me an instant sense of distrust and antagonism. He had never thoroughly liked me. He had always had an undercurrent of fear of me. He knew I thought him weak: he felt that I had never put full confidence in him. That I really and truly loved him was small offset for this. Would it not be so to all of us?

This part of my story is best told in few words. I had not been at home one week before I found that rumor had been for some months coupling John Gray's name with the name of Mrs. Emma Long, a widow who had but just returned to----, after twelve years of married life in Cuba. John had known her in her girlhood, but there had never been any intimacy or even friendship between them. My sister, however, had known her well, had corresponded with her during all her life at the South, and had invited her to her house immediately upon her return to----. Emma Long was a singularly fascinating woman. Plain and sharp and self-asserting at twenty-two, she had become at thirty-five magnetic and winning, full of tact, and almost beautiful. We see such surprising developments continually: it seems as if nature did her best to give every woman one period of triumph and conquest; perhaps only they know its full sweetness to whom it comes late. In early youth it is accepted unthinkingly, as is the sunshine,--enjoyed without deliberation, and only weighed at its fullness when it is over. But a woman who begins at thirty to feel for the first time what it is to have power over men, must be more or less than woman not to find the knowledge and the consciousness dangerously sweet.

I never knew--I do not know to-day, whether Emma Long could be justly called a coquette. That she keenly enjoyed the admiration of men, there was no doubt. Whether she ever were conscious of even a possible harm to them from their relation to her, there was always doubt, even in the minds of her bitterest enemies. I myself have never doubted that in the affair between her and John Gray she was the one who suffered most; she was the one who had a true, deep sentiment, and not only never meant a wrong, but would have shrunk, for his sake, if not for her own, from the dangers which she did not foresee, but which were inevitable in their intimacy. I think that her whole life afterward proved this. I think that even my sister believed it.

Mrs. Long had spent six weeks in my sister's house, and had then established herself in a very beautiful furnished house on the same street. Almost every day Mrs. Long's carriage was at my sister's door, to take my sister or the children to drive. Almost every evening Mrs. Long came with the easy familiarity of an habituated guest in the house, to sit in my sister's parlor, or sent with the easy familiarity of an old friend for my sister and her husband to come to her, or to go with her to the theatre or to the opera.

What could be more natural?--what could be more delightful, had the relation been one which centred around my sister instead of around my sister's husband? What could be done, what offense could be taken, what obstacle interposed, so long as the relation appeared to be one which included the whole family? Yet no human being could see John Gray five minutes in Emma Long's presence without observing that his eyes, his words, his consciousness were hers. And no one could observe her in his presence without seeing that she was kindled, stimulated, as she was in no other companionship.

All this the city had been seeing and gossiping over for four months. All this, with weary detail, was poured into my ears by kind friends.

My sister said no word. For the first time in my life there was a barrier between us I dared not pass. Her every allusion to Mrs. Long was in the kindest and most unembarrassed manner. She fell heartily and graciously into every plan which brought them together: she not only did this, she also fully reciprocated all entertainments and invitations; it was as often by Ellen's arrangement as by Mrs. Long's that an evening or a day was spent by the two families together. Her manner to Mrs. Long was absolutely unaltered. Her manner to John was absolutely unaltered. When during an entire evening he sat almost motionless and often quite speechless, listening to Mrs. Long's conversation with others, Ellen's face never changed. She could not have seemed more unconscious if she had been blind. There were many bonds of sympathy between John Gray and Emma Long, which had never existed between him and his wife. They were both passionately fond of art, and had studied it. Ellen's taste was undeveloped, and her instinctive likings those of a child. But she listened with apparent satisfaction and pleasure to long hours of conversation, about statues, pictures, principles of art, of which she was as unable to speak as one of her own babies would have been. Mrs. Long was also a woman who understood affairs; and one of her great charms to men of mind was the clear, logical, and yet picturesque and piquant way in which she talked of men and events. Ellen listened and laughed as heartily as any member of the circle at her repartee, her brilliant characterization, her off-hand description.

To John Gray all this was a new revelation. He had never known this sort of woman. That a woman could be clever as men are clever, and also be graceful, adorned, and tender with womanliness, he had not supposed.

Ah, poor Emma Long! not all my loyalty to my sister ever quite stifled in my heart the question whether there was not in Mrs. Long's nature something which John Gray really needed--something which Ellen, affectionate, wise, upright, womanly woman as she was, could never give to any man.

The winter wore on. Idle and malicious tongues grew busier and busier. Nothing except the constant presence of my sister wherever her husband and Mrs. Long were seen together, prevented the scandal from taking the most offensive shape. But Ellen was so wise, so watchful, that not even the most malignant gossip-monger, could point to anything like a clandestine intercourse between the two.

In fact, they met so constantly either in Mrs. Long's house or my sister's, that there was small opportunity for them to meet elsewhere. I alone knew that on many occasions when Mrs. Long was spending the evening at our house, Ellen availed herself of one excuse and another to leave them alone for a great part of the time. But she did this so naturally, that is, with such perfect art, that not until long afterward did I know that it had been intentional. This was one great reason of my silence during all these months. In her apparent ignorance and unsuspiciousness of the whole thing, she seemed so gay, so happy, so sweet and loving, how could I give her a pain? And if she did not see it now, she might never see it. It could never surely become any more apparent. No man could give, so far as simple manner was concerned, more unmistakable proof of being absorbed in passionate love for a woman, than John Gray gave in Emma Long's presence. I began to do Ellen injustice in my thoughts. I said, "After all, she has not much heart; no woman who loved a man passionately could look on unmoved and see him so absorbed in another."

How little I knew! Towards spring Ellen suddenly began to look ill. She lost color and strength, and a slight cough which she had had all winter became very severe. Her husband was alarmed. We all were distressed. Our old family physician, Dr. Willis, changed color when he felt Ellen's pulse, and said, involuntarily,--

"My dear child, how long have you had such fever as this?"

Ellen changed color too, under his steady look, and replied,--

"I think, doctor, I have had a little fever for some weeks. I have not felt really well since the autumn, and I have been meaning for some time to have a long consultation with you. But we will not have it now," she added playfully, "I have a great deal to tell you which these good people are not to hear. We will talk it over some other time," and she looked at him so meaningly that he understood the subject must be dropped.

That night she told me that she wished me to propose to John to go over with me and spend the evening at Mrs. Long's; that she had sent for Dr. Willis, and she wished to have a long talk with him without John's knowing it.

"Dear," said I hastily, "I will not go to Mrs. Long's with John. I hate Mrs. Long."

"Why, Sally, what do you mean! I never heard you so unjust. Emma is one of the very sweetest women I ever saw in my life. How can you say such a thing! Everybody loves and admires her. Don't go if you feel so. I never dreamed that you disliked her. But I thought John would be less likely to suspect me of any desire to have him away, if you proposed going there; and I must have him out of the house. I cannot talk with the doctor if he is under the roof." She said these last words with an excited emphasis so unlike her usual manner, that it frightened me. But I thought only of her physical state; I feared that she suspected the existence of some terrible disease.

I went with John to Mrs. Long's almost immediately after tea. He accepted the proposal with unconcealed delight; and I wondered if Ellen observed the very nonchalant way in which he replied when she said she did not feel well enough to go. He already liked better to see Mrs. Long without his wife's presence, cordial and unembarrassed as her manner always was. His secret consciousness was always disturbed by it.

When we reached Mrs. Long's house, we learned that she had gone out to dinner. John's face became black with the sudden disappointment, and quite forgetting himself, he exclaimed: "Why, what does that mean? She did not tell me she was going."

The servant stared, but made no reply. I was confused and indignant; but John went on: "We will come in and wait. I am sure it is some very informal dinner, and Mrs. Long will soon be at home."

I made no remonstrance, knowing that it might annoy and disturb Ellen to have us return. John threw himself into a chair in front of the fire, and looked moodily into the coals, making no attempt at conversation. I took up a book. Very soon John rose, sauntered abstractedly about the room, took up Mrs. Long's work-basket, and examined every article in it, and at last sat down before her little writing-desk, which stood open. Presently I saw that he was writing. More than an hour passed. I pretended to read; but I watched my brother-in-law's face. I could not mistake its language. Suddenly there came a low cry of delight from the door, "Why, John!"

Mrs. Long had entered the house by a side door, and having met no servant before reaching the drawing-room, was unprepared for finding any one there. From the door she could see John, but could not see me, except in the long mirror, to which she did not raise her eyes, but in which I saw her swift movement, her outstretched hands, her look of unspeakable gladness. In less than a second, however, she had seen me, and with no perceptible change of manner had come rapidly towards me, holding out her left hand familiarly to him, as she passed him. Emma Long was not a hypocrite at heart, but she had an almost superhuman power of acting. It was all lost upon me, however, on that occasion. I observed the quick motion with which John thrust into a compartment of the desk, the sheet on which he had been writing; I observed the clasp of their hands as she glided by him; I observed her face; I observed his; and I knew as I had never fully known before how intensely they loved each other.

My resolution was taken. Cost what it might, come what might, I would speak fully and frankly to my sister the next day. I would not longer stand by and see this thing go on. At that moment I hated both John Gray and Emma Long. No possible pain to Ellen seemed to me to weigh for a moment against my impulse to part them.

I could not talk. I availed myself of the freedom warranted by the intimacy between the families, and continued to seem absorbed in my book. But I lost no word, no look, which passed between the two who sat opposite me. I never saw Emma Long look so nearly beautiful as she did that night. She wore a black velvet dress, with fine white lace ruffles at the throat and wrists. Her hair was fair, and her complexion of that soft pale tint, with a slight undertone of brown in it, which is at once fair and warm, and which can kindle in moments of excitement into a brilliance far outshining any brunette skin. She talked rapidly with much gesture. She was giving John an account of the stupidity of the people with whom she had been dining. Her imitative faculty amounted almost to genius. No smallest peculiarity of manner or speech escaped her, and she could become a dozen different persons in a minute. John laughed as he listened, but not so heartily as he was wont to laugh at her humorous sayings. He had been too deeply stirred in the long interval of solitude before she returned. His cheeks were flushed and his voice unsteady. She soon felt the effect of his manner, and her gayety died away; before long they were sitting in silence, each looking at the fire. I knew I ought to make the proposition to go home, but I seemed under a spell; I was conscious of a morbid desire to watch and wait. At length Mrs. Long rose, saying,--

"If it will not disturb Sally's reading, I will play for you a lovely little thing I learned yesterday."

"Oh, no," said I. "But we must go as soon as I finish this chapter."

She passed into the music-room and looked back for John to follow her; but he threw himself at full length on the sofa, and said,--

"No, I will listen here."

My quickened instinct saw that he dared not go; also that he had laid his cheek in an abandonment of ecstasy on the arm of the sofa on which her hand had been resting. Even in that moment I had a sharp pang of pity for him, and the same old misgiving of question, whether my good and sweet and almost faultless Ellen could be loved just in the same way in which Emma Long would be!

As soon as she had finished the nocturne, a sad, low sweet strain, she came back to the parlor. Not even for the pleasure of giving John the delight of the music he loved would she stay where she could not see his face.

But I had already put down my book, and was ready to go. Our good-nights were short and more formal than usual. All three were conscious of an undefined constraint in the air. Mrs. Long glanced up uneasily in John's face as we left the room. Her eyes were unutterably tender and childlike when a look of grieved perplexity shadowed them. Again my heart ached for her and for him. This was no idle caprice, no mere entanglement of senses between two unemployed and unprincipled hearts. It was a subtle harmony, organic, spiritual, intellectual, between two susceptible and intense natures. The bond was as natural and inevitable as any other fact of nature. And in this very fact lay the terrible danger.

We walked home in silence. A few steps from our house we met Dr. Willis walking very rapidly. He did not recognize us at first. When he did, he half stopped as if about to speak, then suddenly changed his mind, and merely bowing, passed on. A bright light was burning in Ellen's room.

"Why, Ellen has not gone to bed!" exclaimed John.

"Perhaps some one called," said I, guiltily.

"Oh, I dare say," replied he; "perhaps the doctor has been there. But it is half-past twelve," added he, pulling out his watch as we entered the hall. "He could not have stayed until this time."

I went to my own room immediately. In a few moments I heard John come up, say a few words to Ellen, and then go down-stairs, calling back, as he left her room,--

"Don't keep awake for me, wifie, I have a huge batch of letters to answer. I shall not get through before three o'clock."