Chapter III: Part 3

Hilda suddenly finished the description of a distant lighthouse, and turning, walked straight up to her brother, who was still lost in critical approval of the noble lines and curves of her guest's tall figure.

"But come," she said, smiling with significant sauciness into his face. "We cannot live entirely on the beautiful things we can take in through our eyes. I fancy there is some dinner downstairs somewhere."

"Yes," agreed Page, stirring. He had finished his soup before he realized that there had been any personal intention in her speech.

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*THE TELEGRAM.*

Mrs. Page promised herself to keep a sharp lookout in behalf of the young girl of whom she had assumed temporary charge. At the very first of those exclusive walks and sails which she foresaw, she meant to reason with her brother, and indirectly to warn Mildred of his idiosyncrasy. Her guest seemed wonderfully well-poised and self-possessed for a girl of her age. Doubtless she had already become accustomed to admiration; but Gorham's attentions would be of an unusual sort. Mrs. Page meant to keep an eye on him.

She was disappointed, however. The very day following, he mentioned his intention of returning to the city.

"You must have known that I only came down to call on you," he replied to Hilda's expressions of surprise and dismay. "After such a prolonged holiday as I have had, you surely didn't suppose I was going to idle away more time here."

"I think it is very shabby of you," pouted Mrs. Page, with no thought of her own inconsistency. "Miss Bryant and I need you to entertain us while Robert is away. Don't we, Miss Bryant?"

Mildred assented. "It is hard to be deprived of both Blitzen and Mr. Page," she said feelingly, and her hostess wished she had not appealed to her.

Page regarded his sister thoughtfully. "Shall I send you some books?" he asked. "Miss Bryant said last night that she had not brought any books with her."

"You needn't trouble yourself," returned Hilda quickly. "His first symptom of interest," she noted mentally. "I know you," she added aloud. "The lightest entertainment we could hope for would be Buckle's 'History of Civilization.' No. Leave us if you must; but don't send us any literature!"

So he departed, and Mrs. Page was left to sound his praises instead of his defects, to her friend. After Mildred's saucy speech, she was determined that the girl should appreciate how far above the common run of men this _rara avis_ of a brother was; and she rang the changes upon his high principle, his conscientiousness, his unselfishness, until the faint light of ironical amusement in her guest's eyes arrested her.

"I wouldn't have you think Gorham a prig," she added hastily. "He is the furthest from it."

Mildred's week at the beach slipped quickly and pleasantly away, and then she was recalled to Pearfield by her sister, who wrote that Mr. Van Tassel felt so much stronger that he wished to return home at once.

Mrs. Page received one letter from the girl, after they reached Chicago, descriptive of the journey, and the parting from Pearfield. Blitzen, she said, they were obliged to leave behind, as on the day of departure he was nowhere to be found. Humiliating as it was to confess it, they all believed he had heard the plans for his removal, and had gone into hiding.

September passed and October was nearly gone, when one morning as he opened his mail in his office, Gorham Page found a letter from his cousin Jack.

It began by responding to some theories and warnings, which Page had recently written him, relative to the unwholesomeness of beer-drinking.

DEAR GORHAM,--Your interesting and instructive letter just received. It has been an unusual length of time on the road, and it was an ill fate that delayed your temperance lecture, and deprived me of that aid to sobriety any longer than was necessary, in view of the rapidity with which I am traveling the downward road. It arrived, however, at a critical period. A friend in the pension, whose besotted fancy could not rise from the miry slough in which intemperance has sunk her, has just made me a philopena present. Instead of bestowing upon me some airy and diverting German philosophy, or fascinating English tract, or an elevating necktie,--instead of finding something which, in the guise of a trifling gift, should have brought to a debauched young man blessed suggestions of a reformed life and renewed respectability, she presented me a beer mug with a painting of Lohengrin, Swan and Co. on the outside, and a line or two of German words around the rim, having some reference to Parsifal and the Holy Grail!

That of course drives the last nail into my coffin! That puts me beyond the pale of--water! In vain do you exclaim, "Be a man! Have some backbone about you! Be content to look at your new beer mug, without making other use of it. Keep it as bric-a-brac, dry, and always perpendicular! Let its rigid uprightness be also that of your moral character. Resist the dreadful power of this unrighteous alliance of a refined taste for aesthetic pottery with a depraved taste for strong drink!"

Alas, I cannot. How appalling and yet how interesting it is to observe how Fate inclines to kick a fellow when he's down. Everything conspires against the reform of one who has fallen.

As to my own case, even if I could overcome my craving for liquor, I should still be obliged to go right on drinking my pint of beer at dinner every day, for it seems that the German words around the rim of my mug are not "fast colors;" they come off gradually as I drink; and after long-drawn-out attempts by the other process, I conclude that this is the only way in which I can ever get any German into me, so I must go on to the bitter end. _Bitte sehr!_

I have decided to come home before the New Year. I dread it, as you know, but the plunge into the new family circle must be taken some time, and I want to see my father. I am sure he wants to see me, too, though he doesn't say much about it. In a recent letter, he admitted that he had not been very well during the summer. Bless him! I suppose _her_ griefs have shaken him very much. Of course I'm sorry for her, but I can't be resigned to father's having had to shoulder the Bryants' affairs. I tell you I am glad to know he is himself again. His letter made me feel an intolerable distance away. Yes, I shall see him by the New Year, whatever happens.

Page was folding this letter into its envelope, when a telegraph boy entered the office.

"Want an answer?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

So while his clerk signed, the lawyer tore open the message. He started as he read it, and a slow color rose over his face.

Taking a blank he scribbled an address, then added:--

Will be with you to-morrow evening.

GORHAM PAGE.

Making hasty preparations at the office and at home, he barely succeeded in catching the limited train for Chicago. When he was seated in his section, he drew forth from his pocket the telegram that had startled him, and read it again.

Mr. Van Tassel died suddenly at nine last night. Can you come to us?

MILDRED BRYANT.

"Poor Jack!" thought Page; and the wheels seemed to repeat the words like a refrain. He disliked his own task, but it did not seem strange to him that he had been summoned. Mr. Van Tassel had no near relatives in Chicago. Page had had charge of his legal affairs in Boston. Doubtless his address had been among the dead man's papers, and Mrs. Van Tassel's advisers had suggested that he be sent for.

Page shrank repugnantly from encountering this woman, whom disaster followed so relentlessly. He tried not to think of her. Perhaps it would not be necessary that they should meet at all; yet try as he might, he could not prevent his imagination from picturing the siren, who had succeeded in capturing the honest, cordial, fine-natured man, whose death it was difficult to realize. How would Jack bear it? How would his highly strung affectionate nature stand the strain? This woman who had brazenly told him that she did not love his father had been the one to stand near the latter's deathbed; while the loving heart of the son had been kept at a distance by her machinations.

For Page was now fully convinced that Jack had been deliberately deceived as to his father's condition, and he blamed himself hotly for obeying his sister and refraining from intermeddling.

He said to himself that he ought to have talked with Miss Bryant about the matter at R----. The thought of Mildred gave him no pleasure. She was sister to the woman who had robbed Jack, and broken his heart. He felt a sudden conviction of Mrs. Van Tassel's appearance. She was an Amazon; tall, commanding, bold-faced, loud-voiced, with a coarser repetition of her sister's beauty; and involuntarily he shuddered with anticipatory disgust, and wished the next few days well over.

But this was being extraordinarily imaginative for Page, and he realized it all at once, and opened the paper which he had bought, with the newsboy shuffling along beside him as he hastened through the depot in Boston. But his thoughts would not concentrate upon the printed page; rather they flew to Jack's brilliant face,--the face which always said that life was good,--and saw it suddenly stamped with white despair, alone in a strange land.

The next day, arrived in Chicago, Page left the train at Hyde Park and went to a hotel. Half an hour afterward, he emerged and walked toward the lake. It was a dreary day, such as seldom comes in Chicago's October. The lake was gray from recent rain, and an east wind was whipping dead leaves from the elms, across the green lawn around the Van Tassel house.

Page looked at the drawn curtains, walked up the steps to the crape-hung door, and an unexpected lump rose in his throat, for he thought of Jack. In that moment, there came to him a new loyal satisfaction in the fact that he had come; that some one beside aliens would stand near Uncle Richard. It was with a strange mixture of grief and resentment that he met the servant, and asked for Miss Bryant.

He looked around the well-remembered parlor, where the maid left him, and noted that it was newly and fashionably furnished; but scarcely five minutes had passed before Mildred entered the room, and walked straight up to him with outstretched hand.

He returned the greeting with cold formality, and even in the shaded room he could see that the girl's eyes were swelled from weeping.

"I am so glad you could come," she said tremulously. "Was it very inconvenient? We thought you would probably wish to attend the funeral any way. Mr. Van Tassel had so few"--she could go no further, but broke down and wept into her handkerchief.

"Crocodile tears!" thought Page. "It is more than likely that they have everything between them.--Certainly, I should have wished to come," he said aloud.

"Then--then," began Mildred, making an effort, "my sister wanted your advice--she thought you would know best--Mr. Van Tassel trusted you--Forgive me, but we have had such a shock"--she tried vainly to go on, once, twice, then with a gesture turned and left the room.

The visitor moved to a window, and looked out through a crack of the blind.

"I'm sorry they think it necessary to go through this sort of thing," he thought cynically. "Now I suppose she will send the other one; and if that was a preface!" A sound behind him caused him to set his teeth, and turn about with the coldest, blankest expression he could assume. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light now, and he saw a straight slight girl in black, standing and regarding him with the saddest, loveliest countenance he had ever looked upon. Her large eyes had shed all their tears, and her delicate lips had never smiled. Her rippled brown hair framed a colorless face, and her effect was less pathetic than awe-inspiring in its pure unconscious dignity.

"This is Mr. Page?" she said, advancing and offering a hand which the young man took mechanically. "It was kind of you to come promptly. I felt that I must see you and you only, about--about Mr. Van Tassel's son."

She spoke in an even, emotionless voice, but Page noted a faint trembling of her lips at the mention of Jack.

"You are the nearest relative, and you can best decide what should be done."

Page was in all the confusion incident upon intense revulsion of feeling. He felt that he had not yet full command of his ideas; but the spontaneous desire to help this exquisite young creature, to let neither himself nor any one else wound her further, constituted his ruling passion for the moment.

"You have sent no word to Jack as yet?"

"No. As soon as your telegram came I decided to wait for you."

She had been waiting for him and he had filled the moments of his coming with brutal contempt and criticism of her.

The tearless sadness of her voice went on: "It is better for the word to go from you than from me." Her eyelids fell. "It will hurt Jack less. I would"--she lifted her eyes again and gave Page a look that his heart received as a pang. "I would gladly give my life if it could procure Jack one hour with his father, alive."

"I believe it sincerely," he answered.

The respect and sympathy of Page's tone seemed to impel her to further explanation. "It was terribly sudden and unexpected," she said. "No one--the doctor himself did not believe in the possibility of such a catastrophe. He was feeling so well for him. He was in the act of speaking of it when he sank back. His last word was 'happy.'"

She stood a moment, her eyelids dropped, in statuesque silence. Page watched her steady her tottering self-control.

"I had thought," she went on finally, "of a succession of cablegrams. Could it be broken to your cousin a little more gently, so?"

"Yes, that will be best."

"And may I ask you to send them, without regard to cost?"

"Certainly. What else can I do? I beg you to let me be useful to you in all ways that I can for Uncle Richard's sake."

"Thank you. I will give you the address of a neighbor, an old and dear friend of Mr. Van Tassel, who has been most kind. Perhaps he would be glad to consult with you."

Page soon took his leave, and until the day after the funeral did not again have opportunity to speak with the young widow. Then she sent for him and he went upstairs to the gay and delicate boudoir which Richard Van Tassel had furnished for his young wife, whose black gown to-day made the one dark spot amid its luxury.

She looked precisely the same as on the occasion of their first meeting except that now, by daylight, Page could see more distinctly her patient, marble beauty.

"I could not let you go East without thanking you," she said, greeting him gravely. "You have been very kind, and a great help to us."

The young man bowed, and murmured a polite platitude. He could think of nothing to say to her.

"Do you--I suppose you do expect your cousin to return home immediately."

"Yes. I think he will come."

"One thing which I wanted to say to you this morning is that my sister and I are going immediately to California to spend the winter. You will meet your cousin, very likely, upon his arrival?"

Page bowed.

"Will you kindly tell him that the house here is ready for him, that we shall not return to it"--Mrs. Van Tassel's even, formal utterance broke, and she suddenly averted her head. "Poor Jack!" she exclaimed. "It will make him suffer afresh to come back here, and who can comfort him? It is the best I can do, though," she added suddenly, turning again toward Page. "You know there is not one person save Mildred to whom I can speak of all this, and it is wrong to dwell upon sad and humiliating subjects with a bright young girl."

She looked scarcely older than Mildred herself, Page thought, but he eagerly offered himself as a confidant.

"I am glad Jack has you," she continued. "I wish, oh, so deeply, that I might do or say anything to alleviate his sorrow; but you see," appealingly, "the only thing I can do is to keep away. Jack and I were good friends once, but that is all over."

As Page a little later came downstairs to leave the house, Mildred Bryant rose from a seat near the fireplace in the hall. Her face looked a little paler than was its wont, and faint shadows about her eyes told of grief; but she was once more the self-possessed girl he had first seen on the train.

"You are returning at once to Boston?" she asked.

"Yes. I leave to-night."

"I saw by your face as you came downstairs that you think my sister looks badly; but of course you do. Well, I believe there is nothing more, there are no more shocks that she can suffer--unless she should lose me, and I fancy I am long for this world;" a shade of the girl's pretty ironical smile flitted over her lips; "but I could lose her," the hazel eyes suddenly became bright with unshed tears; "and," with vehemence, "I will not. I am going, we are going away to search for Clover's girlhood. It must come back. She has been cheated out of it too soon."

"Mrs. Van Tassel told me that you intend going West. Southern California will surely do her good."

"I hope so. I am glad you have been here these last days. It has been a comfort to my sister."

"Do you really think so?" eagerly.

"Without doubt. I observed that she seemed less anxious about--everything, from the moment of your coming."

"The matter of telling Jack had preyed upon her," said Page sympathetically.

He saw an indefinable change come over Mildred's face. "I suppose Jack must bear his troubles like the rest of the world," she answered with a tinge of hardness. "We thank you very much for everything, Mr. Page," she added, holding out her hand, and the other clasped it warmly.

"I would not have failed to be here for any consideration, Miss Bryant. I hope," looking into the girl's eyes earnestly, "that the time may not be far distant when I shall meet you and Mrs. Van Tassel again."

"Thank you," returned Mildred courteously, and the young man left the house with a distinct sensation of disappointment because she had not echoed his wish. He could not avoid the suspicion that these young women would now expect and wish to walk in a separate way from that of all connections of his dear lost uncle. He himself would henceforth be classed with Jack, and, strange new disloyalty, the prospect was unsatisfactory.

He turned his steps toward the office where he was going to await a cablegram, and on his way undertook to analyze his own unreasonable feelings. "They are nothing to me, those girls," he thought, while memory presented in fresh hues that averted head leaning upon a white hand in Clover's spasm of impotent pity for Jack, and all of a sudden, instead of theorizing, Page found himself dwelling with eager pride, as if it were the climax of achievement in his life, on the fact that he had been of assistance, of use, of comfort, to that fair, pale creature, set in a sacred niche apart from all the other women in the world.

He recalled himself with cold surprise from this Scylla, only to fall into the Charybdis of a reverie in which Miss Bryant's face and bearing were regal, as she declared that Jack must bear his trials like the rest of the world.

Page threw back his head in self-impatience. "She is a fine, bright girl, and I should like to know her better," he thought; "but there is this comfort--in a couple of months I shall have forgotten all about her. I couldn't remember her if I tried."

Before evening he received the expected message from his cousin. Jack sailed from Bremen at once.

*CHAPTER IX.*

*A CHRISTMAS VISITOR.*

The national dispute finished regarding the location of the World's Fair, a local contest at once arose among Chicago's citizens as to which portion of the city was best fitted for the display. The debate was long drawn out. Several sites were energetically lauded by their several partisans, and their respective advantages were hotly maintained and as hotly contradicted. It was very interesting to Chicagoans, but to the public outside it was a matter of indifference whether the North Side, the West Side, or the South Side, should win the day.

Meanwhile a good many people--like Miss Berry, for instance--forgot that such a thing as preparation for a World's Fair was going on. She thought it vastly more interesting that Jack Van Tassel had returned from Europe, and that in his desolation instead of going to his father's deserted house he had begun to read law in his cousin's office.

Miss Lovina's association with Mrs. Van Tassel during the summer had brought much food for thought into her quiet life; thought that haunted her after the young wife had become a widow, and after Jack had come home; his sore heart full of cold anger, so Miss Berry surmised, against a woman whom she devoutly declared to be "one of the sweetest of God's creatures."

It was an exciting time to her when one November day she received the letter from Gorham Page giving her hope that she need not always be passive concerning a matter which, in her uneventful life, she had greatly at heart. She read:--

DEAR AUNT LOVE,--Jack Van Tassel has come back and is with me for the present. Of course he is very much shaken; and when I met him at the dock I felt a good deal disturbed about him; but you know his excitable, gay disposition. He will doubtless soon recover from the shock, and react from his present low state. Naturally he wants to blame somebody for his suffering, and I fear he is inclined to accuse Mrs. Van Tassel of inconsiderateness in not sending for him last summer. I never met her excepting on the occasion of the funeral, so my defense has little weight; but I recall that my sister said you esteemed her highly, and it occurred to me to ask you to do what you can toward exonerating her when you see Jack, which I dare say may be soon, as he has spoken of visiting you in order to learn something of the last weeks of his father's life. Use your own discretion about this. Jack will stay with me for a time, and read law in my office for the sake of occupation. His father's affairs were left in perfect shape. His will divided the fortune into three parts: one third is left to charities and certain relatives; one third goes to Jack, and the other to Mrs. Van Tassel, with the exception of an amount sufficient to make her sister independent, which he has left to Miss Bryant.

Please say nothing of this letter, and believe me, with best wishes always,

Cordially yours, GORHAM PAGE.

These lines had not been penned without some uncomfortable recollections on the part of the writer of a day when he had himself received the announcement of Aunt Love's attachment to her young guest in a spirit of impatient skepticism. Now that he discovered the strength of his desire that Jack should be more yielding and credulous, the memory of his own hardness was especially exasperating.

Miss Berry waited for her expected visitor with much interest, and each day altered a little the form of the statement she intended to make him when he came. She had opportunity to make a variety of changes in her programme, for weeks went by without a sign from him, and finally Miss Lovina's faith in his coming wavered.

Christmas day dawned in ideal fashion at Pearfield that year. The sun fell on swelling drifts of virgin snow. The little town sparkled like the village in a Christmas card, and just as the inevitable church spire ornaments that souvenir, so the Congregationalist meeting-house stood in a field of glistening white, as Miss Berry trudged up the shoveled path to attend a service of song planned by the Sunday-school as a fitting festivity for the morning. There was a good attendance, and Miss Lovina gave her neighbors, old and young, cheerful greeting as she regarded complacently the holly wreaths which she had yesterday helped to place in the church windows.

When the exercises were over she moved slowly down the aisle by the side of Miss Getchell with whom she had promised weeks ago to eat her Christmas dinner. If there was something of the martyr concealed under Lovina's benevolent countenance as Miss Ann clutched her arm, the latter would not be allowed to suspect it, and together they emerged from the wide-open door; but once on the porch Miss Berry, with an exclamation of surprise, shook herself free, and Miss Getchell's astonished eyes beheld her friend hasten down the steps towards some one who ascended to meet her.

"It was a reg'lar young prince of a feller with grand eyes," Ann said afterward, dramatizing the occurrence to her old homekeeping mother, "and he took off his hat as he come up to Loviny as though she was somebody great." Miss Getchell's curious ears could not grasp Jack's low-spoken question:--

"Are you going out to dinner anywhere, Aunt Love?"

Miss Lovina's conscience would have done credit to any Puritan of them all, but Jack had said "are" instead of "were," and she considered that in a flash before responding heartily:

"Indeed I am not, Mr. Jack. You're just comin' home with me and I'm delighted. Wait one second till I speak to one o' my neighbors."

Jack suspected her as she turned back to Miss Getchell, but her evident pleasure in his arrival decided him not to press the question. He turned his back while she hurriedly and emphatically accosted her friend.

"I'm sorry it happens so, Ann, but"--

"Oh now, don't say you won't come, Loviny. Fetch the young man along and welcome."

"Hush, don't say a word. It is Mr. Van Tassel's son. You remember. I'll make it up to you sometime,--I mean you'll make it up to me. You see it can't be helped. Now don't coax me, that's a good girl; I can't possibly come, and don't be mad with me, Ann, you see just how it is," and Miss Getchell allowed herself to be twitched into dumbness by Lovina's anxious grasp upon her arm, and departed on her lonely way in a measure consoled by the consideration of two luscious mince pies which Miss Berry had sent her as a gift the day before.

"I'll bet a cookie she wishes she had 'em back now," she reflected as she looked after the erect, tall form moving away beside Miss Berry's stout figure. "I'm glad 't ain't me caught by a city feller like that on Christmas day without any decent dinner to give him."

But Miss Getchell and Miss Berry were two very different people. The latter, as she walked along trying with some preoccupation to talk to her guest, was filled with felicitation that Jack had chosen for his visit the day when each heart is most inclined to gentleness, and in the same breath she rejoiced that there were two roast chickens in the larder at home prepared in a moment of dubiousness regarding Ann Getchell's cooking. "If I don't relish my dinner, I'll have a good supper," Miss Lovina had thought when she roasted them, and now the most devout thanksgiving of the morning arose from her heart in consequence.

"This is my first glimpse of Pearfield in winter," said Jack, surveying the blue-white shadows on the unspotted fields. "I dreaded Christmas this year, Aunt Love. It occurred to me yesterday that I would come to see you. It is as I expected. 'Peace on earth' doesn't seem such a satire here."

"You couldn't please me better," replied Miss Berry. "I've been some expectin' you, for Mr. Gorham told me you laid out to be in Boston a while."

"Yes. I have thought a great deal about Pearfield lately." There was a brief silence as the two moved on between snowy bulwarks thrown up by the village ox-plow that morning. "Do you never become lonely here, Aunt Love?" asked her visitor at last.

"No, I don't know as I do. Pearfield's a nice safe stiddy place and I'm as busy as a bee all the time. Once in a while there's a tramp, but now Blitzen attends to them in short order. We all have our gifts," continued Aunt Love, desiring for the present to keep the conversation impersonal, "and seems if Blitzen's was appearin' to go mad whenever he wants to."

"Rather a questionable accomplishment, I should suppose."

"It is convenient sometimes, though, there ain't any denyin' it. Blitzen does hate a tramp. I believe if he was off in the woods a mile he'd smell one, if he was comin' towards the house; and no sooner does one o' the shif'less critters knock on the door and ask for a meal o' victuals, than Blitzen's there. Even if I haven't seen him for an hour and haven't the least idea where he is, he'll be there soon's the tramp is, and barkin' so the feller can't hardly make himself heard. Blitzen's tramp-bark is queer," continued Aunt Love thoughtfully. "It's mysterious to me where he gets his breath. It ain't just one bark after another, but he runs 'em all together without any let up, and so loud and long, it's curious to me he don't just choke to death and done with it."

"Rather discomposing to the tramp, I imagine."

"Well, 't is," admitted Miss Berry, one corner of her mouth smiling. "Some stand it longer 'n others; but when one o' the critters sticks to it till I'm wore out with him, I never have to do but just one thing. I just look at Blitzen,--he's always jumpin' and whirlin' around enough to make a clock dizzy,--and I say, 'What's the matter with the dog!' Then I close the door a little and look through it at the tramp and holler, 'You'll have to excuse me, but that dog acts so queer I'--then, slam, I shut the door. It never fails to work. Takes away a tramp's appetite every time."

"I should suppose Blitzen might feel the weight of a boot under those circumstances."

"Bless your heart, Mr. Jack, don't you believe it! A man would have to be built like one o' these centerpedes to have any luck tryin' to kick Blitzen when he's on the rampage. No sir, a tramp don't like the idea of a mad dog, and he needs all the legs he's got to get over the fence with. I always step to the winder pretty certain what I'll see. A man just lightin' out for the road, and Blitzen after him, makin' rosettes of himself, bringin' all four feet together at every bound and hollerin' enough to croozle you."

Jack laughed.

"He's a smart dog," went on Miss Berry in the tone of one who gives the devil his due. "He's been a means o' grace to me more 'n once, but I won't deny he's talented. Now after one o' those whirlwind times, you'd think he'd be so tuckered out he'd just have to lay down a spell and get his wind back; but land, he never turns a hair. All the time he's playin' hydrophoby on that tramp he's rememberin' where he buried his last bone, and he hasn't any more 'n seen him over the fence when he switches around mute as a mole, and digs in the ground just as pert as though he'd never used any energy on anything else. He needs nourishment and he knows it."

"I should suppose he would get it some day," remarked Van Tassel, "in the shape of poisoned meat."

"Law, they've tried that," said Miss Berry contemptuously. "I've had to laugh when I've picked it up in the yard and burned it. It was such a simple idea. Why, if a tramp could come into the house and get one o' ma's white China plates with the gold band, and set some victuals o' mine on it and pizen 'em, he might stand some chance. Blitzen puts on more airs and frills every day about what he will eat and what he won't; but as for pickin' up strange doin's! he and I both rather prefer our own cookin' to other folks's, anyway," finished Aunt Love with a little conscious toss of her head.

The oriole elm was still bedecked with diamonds when the two entered Miss Berry's yard, and the branches of the pine trees were weighed down with a soft, white burden.

In the distance, at the sitting-room window, Blitzen's head could be seen, and it bobbed convulsively as he barked an excited welcome to his adored mistress.

"Such a time as I had to get away from him this mornin'," she said. "He knows Sunday as well as you do, but other days he expects to go to the store with me, and from the first I expected trouble. I thought I'd begin to plan about an hour before service, so's to slip off without his knowin' it; but Mr. Jack, I'm glad Salem days are gone and done with, or that dog would be burned for a witch. As sure as I'm talkin' to you this minute, he always knows what I'm thinkin' about. He acted meachin' from the minute breakfast was over. I was unusually clever to him too; told him Merry Christmas, and snapped my finger to him; but sir, he whined. He just sat down and looked at me pitiful and whined. I really believed the critter was sick, and felt of his nose; but it made me jump; 't was as cold's a frog; and law, when I begun to go to church I found he wa'n't confined to the bed by a long chalk. I say _begun_ to go to church, 'cause that's just what it was. I've been back to this house this mornin' three different times," said Aunt Love impressively. "The first time Blitzen wasn't in sight anywheres, so I just thought I'd seize the chance, and I turned the house-door key and hurried down the path, puttin' my shawl on and pinnin' my veil as I went. I hadn't but just got to the cross-roads when I spied him trottin' slowly along as still and pious as though he'd been sent for in a hurry to tend a dyin' friend. I suspicioned mischief, but still I wasn't sure. You can usually tell somethin' about a dog's notions by his tail; but Blitzen not havin' any he gets the best o' me there, and he knows it. I tipped along when I saw him, for thinks says I perhaps he's settin' out to head me off at the store, and if that was his idea it just suited me; for 'twas the other cross-road that was the shortest way to church. Well, he started that path. Now," said Aunt Love argumentatively, as she mechanically broke a long twig from a lilac bush, "I don't s'pose you believe any more 'n I do that Blitzen's got eyes in his back, though why he shouldn't be equally blind in both ends is another o' the mysteries; but the very minute I set my foot, silent as the dead, mind you, into the church road, that dog stopped and looked over his shoulder. It was a hang-dog look, but set. I stopped too, and he smiled,--there, like that," for Miss Berry had unlocked the house door and Blitzen had flung himself upon her in an ecstasy, his white teeth gleaming once and again as he lifted his lip in a canine grin.

The use of the lilac switch now became apparent as Miss Lovina, holding her silk gown away with one hand, with the other belabored her adorer in a business-like manner until he became penetrated with the idea that his addresses were unwelcome.

"If 't wa'n't for whips, I shouldn't have one frock fit to be seen," she explained calmly, as Blitzen, unabashed, preceded them alertly into the sitting-room, where he had been alternately napping and lamenting all the morning.

"Yes, I had to bring that good-for-nothin' home from the cross-roads,--just drop your coat right off, Mr. Jack,--and I shut him up in the shed and hasped the door. Then I started off again. I told you he was a witch. There must be some hole out o' that shed that he's made himself, for I hadn't got ten rods from the house before I found him stealin' along after me. Yes, sir, you remember it very well;" and Blitzen, whom the switching had not dispirited, now crept abjectly under the sofa. "The second time I tried the barn, but that turned out to be a sieve too, so, though it's against my rule, I was forced when I came back the third time to lock him in the house. He hasn't broke a hole through the house yet. Yes, you better stay under there, you scamp! Now you make yourself at home, Mr. Jack, while I put dinner on the table." Miss Berry, as she spoke, shook down the coal-stove, which she had left to burn as little as possible in her absence. She twitched one damper in the back and one in the front. "It's cold as charity here," she remarked, "but we'll soon heat up. There's some o' those bound Harpers you used to like to look at, with the pictures o' the war in 'em; or there's the Christian Union. I'll call you in a little while. Want a few cookies now, just to stay your stomach?"

Jack smiled at the familiar question. Aunt Love was one of those comfortable folk who are always wanting to stay people's stomachs, especially children's. She had never thought it an odd or inconvenient fact that boys are always hungry. What wonder that she was popular? Her visitor assured her that he would prefer to wait, and she hastened out to the kitchen, her brain seething with plans to prepare a meal which should deceive the visitor as to its impromptu nature.

With great celerity she tied a huge apron over her black silk gown, and went to work. Miss Berry's friends, could they have looked on, would have thought she had lost her wits; for never had she been known to pare potatoes to such a reckless depth. She exulted in her own rule never to let the kitchen fire go out, and flew hither and thither with a practiced deftness which allowed of no false move. Once she stumbled over some object and looked down impatiently. It was Blitzen.

"I thought you was under the settin'-room sofa, you rascal. If you dare to hender me to-day!" she said hotly. Blitzen knew there was danger in her voice, but the chickens were beginning to send forth an appetizing fragrance, and all his discretion could not keep him from joining in such a novel romp as his staid mistress was making of getting dinner. The consequence was that in a minute more Miss Lovina trod on his nimble toe. The yelp he gave exasperated her. She threw open the kitchen door.

"Go out!" she ordered sternly.

Blitzen rolled over on his back and lay there, limp, looking like a gigantic caterpillar. Miss Berry spoke once more in vain; then she swooped upon him in a totally unprecedented manner, and in another moment the terrier was picking himself out of a snowdrift to the tune of the slamming of the kitchen door.

Jack could see him from his window, sitting in the path, scratching the snow out of his ears, and reflecting on the mutations of this life.

*CHAPTER X.*

*AUNT LOVE'S INTERCESSION.*

When Van Tassel saw Blitzen describe an arc which had its beginning at the kitchen door and its vanishing point in a snowdrift, the spontaneous laugh which burst from him sounded strangely in his own ears. It was the first time he had laughed in such fashion since that October day when Page's cable messages had found him in Berlin.

He had been wondering, as he stood there by Miss Berry's small-paned window, whether Aunt Love's prattle on the way home from church had been for the express purpose of diverting him. He could not connect even that extent of diplomacy with this friend of two of his childhood's summers; but supposing her anecdotes to have had that purpose, they had been successful. Jack felt content to be here. The cold pure blankness of this outside world, the absence of all necessity for exertion or assumption of an interest he did not feel, were surpassingly restful.

He had known that a merry Christmas was not for him, and had shrunk from either joining in or appearing to avoid the festivities of his Boston friends; hence the idea of this postponed visit had come to him as a deliverance, and been suddenly acted upon.

When Aunt Love finally presented herself again, smiling, red-cheeked, and minus the apron, Jack found it awoke in him something like the appetite of olden days to be led into the dining-room where a tempting meal was spread.

The hostess heroically refrained from apologies concerning a certain dryness of those twice-heated chickens, since it might be hazardous to open the subject; and the cream gravy generously provided, with the delicate mashed potato, hot biscuit, brandied peaches, and other adjuncts of the impromptu meal, were delicious enough to divert the attention of even the hypercritical from complaint. A couple of mince pies, the mates to those in Miss Getchell's possession, and cups of golden coffee with Alderney cream, finished a dinner calculated to put a misanthrope into good humor, provided his pessimism did not arise from a poor digestion.

It was a pleasure in itself to Jack to see what pleasure his presence gave. He had been most kindly and tactfully treated in the Page home; but they were too conscious there of his sorrow, too comprehensive of his state of mind. Aunt Love was jolly. She was so entirely absorbed in the pleasant responsibility of making her guest materially comfortable, that she seemed to have no room at present for other thought; and her own wholesome appetite was infectious. She talked of summers long past, and evaded all reference to recent events. Jack ate a hearty dinner, and as Miss Berry watched him sitting opposite, leisurely drinking and appreciating her coffee, she felt wrapped in an atmosphere of content.

"You are going to let me help you clear this all away and wash the dishes?" said Jack, as he finished.

His hostess laughed deprecatingly, looking at the hand with which he raised his cup to his lips. She had been admiring the slender links in his immaculate cuffs all through the dinner. There was a facet-like cutting in their gold that gave them a glisten which attracted her.

"No. We're both of us too much dressed up to wash dishes," she remarked. "I don't care if they ain't done for a week, Mr. Jack. I'm goin' to enjoy myself with you, this afternoon. You make yourself at home in any part o' the house but the kitchen for twenty minutes, and then I'll sit down with you. I guess you haven't forgotten your way 'round."

Jack regarded her with serious brown eyes. "Are there any moths in your sitting-room carpet, Aunt Love?" he asked.

Miss Berry looked amazement, and even a little anxiety lest her young friend's brain had received more of a shock than she realized. "What makes you ask that?" she demanded, being careful to speak gently.

"I know a sovereign remedy, that's all."

"I did, one time, have some trouble with that carpet," said Miss Berry doubtfully, "but pepper's good; I used that. Camphor, too."

"Tobacco is excellent," declared Van Tassel, looking pensively into the depths of his coffee cup.

A light of comprehension broke over Miss Berry's face.

"Mr. Jack, do you smoke!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "Do you shut those shiny white teeth o' yours on an old pipe-stem! Oh, there never ought a cigar to go into your mouth, never in the world. Do you _smoke_?"

"Well--on Fourth of July's, and New Years, and Christmas, and--birthdays, I do sometimes celebrate, and I thought if you wanted the moths kept out of your carpet-- One thing really, Aunt Love, if cigar smoke is disagreeable to you, you ought to have told me before betraying me into such a dinner."

"It isn't any more disagreeable to me than it is to any other woman of good principles," returned Miss Berry firmly. "'T isn't a question o' that. I can show you statistics, Mr. Jack."

"Yes, I have seen statistics," he answered, mildly. "You haven't time to look them up just now, and I think I'll walk out of doors a while and discuss the movement cure with Blitzen, and ask him what part of the chicken he'll take."

"No, no, Mr. Jack. There ain't enough paths shoveled to make it pleasant to go out around the house. I let Obed go just as soon as he'd done what was absolutely necessary this mornin'. 'T ain't that a cigar's unpleasant to my nose. It's my principles it hurts; but 't ain't so bad if you only smoke one for an occasional recreation. Remember you can't suit me except by makin' yourself entirely at home;" and the hospitable woman arose from the table. "If you don't smoke now in the sittin'-room, I shall feel bad."

So Van Tassel went back to his window and sent a few rings of fragrant smoke into the air before putting on his hat and sallying down the garden path. He had not finished his cigar before he heard himself called.

Miss Berry was standing in the open door, beckoning to him. "Time's up," she said, smiling.

Jack smiled back and held up the cigar explanatorily.

"I know all about that. Come in. It's a good smellin' one," she added, as her guest obediently returned to the piazza. "If folks would burn a few leaves o' tobacco like that occasionally, it would be agreeable enough, some like incense; but it's a pity to have it at the cost of a man's poisonin' his lungs."

Van Tassel followed her back to the sitting-room, where he took the armchair she had arranged for him, and smiled to see that one of the white and gold China saucers had even been sacrificed to receive the ashes of that disapproved cigar.

He thanked her and took from his pocket a little dark velvet box. "Here is something I brought you as a Christmas gift, Aunt Love. I had to get it in a hurry last night and I don't feel sure that it will please you."

Miss Berry opened the case and gazed at a hatpin of onyx set with a conventional design of pearls.

"It's good enough for an empress!" she exclaimed in ingenuous delight. "Why, you're too good, Mr. Jack. I'm just gettin' spoiled this Christmas. I got another present out o' the post-office last night," and Miss Lovina took from her pocket another and smaller box which she put into Jack's hand. "Velvet too, you see," she said, beaming, "and more precious yet inside, just like yours."

Jack opened the case and found a gold thimble.

"And it's big enough for me," announced the happy owner triumphantly; "I didn't know as gold ones grew big enough for workin' hands like mine: but you wouldn't catch Mrs. Van Tassel givin' anybody a thing they couldn't use."

Jack's head was bent above the bauble. "Oh, it is from her?"

"Yes," answered Aunt Love, recalled by his tone from her heedless flight of enthusiasm. "This pin will always make me vain and happy," she added, "and I thank you from my heart, Mr. Jack, for thinkin' about me."

"You have been an important person in my thoughts this fall," said the young man, as he handed her the thimble, "for you can tell me of my father."

Jack looked thoughtfully at his cigar, and Aunt Love, from her neighboring chair, looked at him.

"I will tell you," she said, after waiting a moment to see if her guest wished to proceed. "I will tell you everything I can. Do you want to ask me questions, or shall I just talk to you a little?"

"I want to know just how ill he was through the summer. I was deliberately kept in the dark."

Miss Berry was alert to perceive the resentment in the quiet tone.

"He wasn't ill at all. Not so to say real sick," she replied. "His head didn't feel quite right after that light shock he got in the spring, and he thought he was takin' every precaution by comin' out of all the excitement of his busy life, right to this farm. The doctor said it was just the best thing he could do; and Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"Then he was not confined to his bed here?"

"No, indeed. Not a day. He had a steamer chair out under the big elm, and it never seemed to fret him a bit to be idle; and his wife"--

"He used to write me from under that tree," said Jack thickly.

"Yes, indeed he did; and he liked to be read to, and to play backgammon; and whenever Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"I ought to have been here to wait on him. What I was cheated out of!"

"But, Mr. Jack," Miss Berry spoke pleadingly, "you was trampin' through Switzerland, and just havin' the best time of all. Your father used to have guide-books and atlases, and follow up what you were doin' every day. Why, he entered into it, and enjoyed it just as if it was himself. He didn't know, and Mrs. Van Tassel didn't know, that there wasn't many another summer comin'."

"It makes it especially hard," said Jack, still staring at the forgotten cigar, dropped now into the saucer, "that I had been away from him four years already. The past summer is the one I should have spent with him. It seems as though the regret and the loss could never be forgotten. There never was such a father as mine." The speaker's features worked convulsively an instant. "The world is only a big, barren desert, without him, and I might have had all those months. I might"--

Aunt Love used to feel an especial tenderness for Jack when she tucked him into bed at night, because he had no mother to do it for him, and she had often kissed the child after he was asleep, for the same reason. Now his pale face in its pain and effort at self-mastery appealed to her irresistibly. In a moment she had slipped her arm around his shoulders, and with her other hand drawn his head gently against her breast.

"I know you've been hurt awful bad, dear heart," she said, tears running down her own cheeks, as she softly patted his hair.

For Jack, he did not stop to be astonished. It was too comforting to have the barriers of his self-restraint forcibly broken down. From the time when furtive bitter drops had added to the ocean's brine, as he meditated at evening on board the home-coming ship in cold November, no loving human soul had dared till now to take his grief into full companionship. Aunt Love's primitive, spontaneous method worked well. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her that he should weep in her embrace, on the ample bosom of her black silk gown; and who shall say what a comfort it was to Jack, with no spectators but the haircloth chairs and sofa, to be held close in loving arms after weeks of lonely, speechless heartache under a conventional exterior.

"You are very good to me," he said at last, and though he leaned back in his chair, he continued to hold one of Aunt Love's plump hands as though she were a sort of anchor which he could not let go all at once.

"And now you've got to be patient with me just a minute, dear boy," said his companion, "and listen to something you won't like to hear, perhaps. My conscience wouldn't rest easy unless I told you a little about your father's wife."