Chapter XIII: Book III: For the People (3)

"It's for money--money--money!" he cried, and he smote the unstable little desk with his fist, making it rock. "What is everything for in these days!" His breath came hard and fast, the blue crescents in which his eyes burned deepened perceptibly, and his eyes flamed as if all the fires of all excitement were about to leap out. In his cheeks, now of an unusual pallor, two red spots glowed.

"But what is the money for?" she persisted, still clinging to him as he backed away from her. "Tell me--won't you?"

"It's for votes--votes--votes! Votes that I need more to-day than I ever needed them!"

"Oh, Jerome!" she cried. "Don't--don't say that, don't talk that way! Wait--wait, dear, sit down until you're calmer."

"Calmer!" he roared. "Calmer! With all my enemies at my heels?"

"But, dear, I don't like the sound of that. It would be better if you were beaten honorably."

"Honorably!" he sneered. "Honorably! Do you know what it would mean to me to be beaten now? Do you know what it would mean to _you_! Do you want to go to the poor-house?"

He stopped in his mad rush of words and flung out his jaw at her pugnaciously.

Emily stood trying to hold her husband's wild, unsteady eyes in her own gaze for a moment.

"Why, Jerome," she said in low, even accents, "it would be as bad as--as--as that story they told of you in your first campaign!"

His face without relaxing took on the mockery of a smile, then he laughed harshly. The tone of the laugh shuddered through Emily. She had released her hold on him, and now she took a step backward. Her lips were parted and at last she spoke, her words coming reluctantly from her throat. It was scarcely above a whisper that she said:

"Was that all--true?"

She saw the conviction in his eyes before it came to its verification on his lips. He laughed again, the same harsh laugh as before.

"True!" he cried. "Of course it was true, you poor little fool!"

The words brought a cry from her, and, clasping her hands before her face, she turned and sank into the chair and put her head down on the desk.

Garwood stared at her awhile, then took a step toward her. He drew nearer and bent over her, tried to draw her at last up into his arms.

"Emily!" he said. "Don't--it's all--I was--I was--crazy--"

Her head shook slowly from side to side.

"Go away," she said. "Go away--oh, please go away!"

She burst into tears, and relinquishing his hold of her he drew himself up, swayed an instant, steadied himself by the desk, and then said:

"All right, then, I'll go."

And he left the room and the house, trying to reclaim his dignity with the erectness with which he took his careful steps down from the veranda and to the waiting carriage. Then Emily heard the hack roll away.

XI

Emily leaned at evening against the casement of the western window in her room upstairs. The rain had ceased, and though the clouds were still as gray and cold as stone, the air was becoming luminous, and from somewhere had received a new inspiration, fresh and pure and light. As she gazed listlessly away across the vacant lots that lay beyond her home, she saw, along the rounded tree tops and the chimneyed roofs that made for her the western sky line, that the blanket of cloud was slowly rolling back upon itself, until at last it revealed a long, thin strip of open sky, clear and blue as some remembered stretch of summer sea. In the middle of this, far over on the west side of the town, the low square tower, built like an Italian belvedere on the Ursuline Sisters' Convent, was silhouetted, and below and all around, the masses of foliage became vivid green in the new light that fell upon them.

As all the world about shrank in the shades of the coming night, the clouds deepened to a purple, and in the slow and silent changes that went constantly forward, their edges above were softly tinged with ashes of roses, while below, the reflected green of the trees changed their drab to pink. Then there was traced for her a long, wavy thread of glistening silver, the billowed top of some white cloud floating deep in the illimitable distances behind that opening in the sky. And then suddenly, the sun sinking into this proscenium illumined its infinite and glorious vistas with a flood of golden light.

But it was all subconsciously that this woman followed the varying shades and tones of color in the sunset of grays and golds, and if by a strangely divided intelligence she noted the physical changes that were being wrought in the world outside her, her thoughts within surged in a great ocean, of feeling against the cold and desolate shore that now bounded life for her. Otherwise, as she stood there at the close of this fateful day, and saw the gold grow brighter and the pink deepen to crimson, she might easily have worked out a poetic analogy between that little sunset, with the convent tower to give it gloom, and her own life; she would have done so once, and found a sweet exquisite sadness in it, but now--a grief at last had come to her too real and too tragic in its great reality for any such romanticism, a grief that sounded deeper than any tears.

Other griefs could be borne; they could be voiced; they could find comfort in the ministrations of sympathetic friends, in the consolations of religion; more than all in the healing balm that nature stores in the woods and fields. But here was a grief that was the more intense because she had so long dreaded it, known it even, though she had fought the recognition off, and never admitted it to herself before. She saw all that now, and it made clear so many little passages in her later life; passages that had been dark to her, and filled with vague troubles.

Here was a grief that was no new thing, but an old thing, that had been there all the time, like some fatal disease; she had felt its pains and it had put its restraints and its limitations and its renunciations upon her; now it had been correctly diagnosed at last, that was all; and it could not be changed, nor cured, nor alleviated even; but she must bear it alone and in silence, walking straight-lipped and dry-eyed the long way that stretched before.

In some such mode as this her thoughts had been rushing on ever since that moment downstairs in the afternoon when the whole truth had been at last revealed to her. She had thought it out along every line she could trace; she had analyzed and synthesized; she had viewed it from every possible standpoint; she had built up elaborate schemes of repair, of rehabilitation; she had planned a new life to be begun when the wreck of the old had been cleared away by forgiveness and new resolve; but in the end, it had all come to the same remorseless conviction--her faith had been destroyed, it lay dead at her feet; nothing could ever change that fact any more.

The colors were slowly dying out of the narrow strip of sky along the horizon and it had become opalescent and serene with evening. A new life seemed suddenly to awake in the world below her. A robin, that should have been in bed, went springing across the yard, swelling its red breast, and Emily was vaguely conscious of wondering if it were the one she had heard that afternoon singing in the rain. Something moved her to raise the window, something in the new and vital pulse that thrilled the world.

With the inrushing air came the sickening odor of the late-flowering locust tree, and there were borne to her as well the gentle sounds of evening, the endless trilling of insects in the wet grass; the lowing of a cow; by and by the belated crow of some rooster. The world was alive and awake; it seemed to be stretching itself after its long prostration in the rain, and now it enjoyed this breath of keen air before it went to sleep, impatient for the hopeful morning when it might take up once more its glad ambitious life. But for her--so Emily's thoughts ran--there was no hope and no to-morrow.

The sun had trailed the last of his splendors across that narrow opening in the sky. The opalescence swam into a new sea of silver, then suddenly a bar of yellow broke it, there was a rush of violet, then purple shadows dissolved the convent tower and the sky closed, cold and dark and still. And there came into Emily's mind the lines:

"Life's night begins: let him never come back
to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain.
Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!"

She closed her window and turned wearily away. She had her duties, her little duties; John Ethan was calling, and the supper was to be laid; life somehow after all must be lived.

She was going down the stairs, when suddenly from the little habits of existence that persist sometimes ludicrously, sometimes irritatingly, sometimes comfortingly, even in the most tragic moments of life, she thought of the evening papers lying at that moment damp and limp against the front door. The primaries--she stopped and steadied herself by the baluster--what had been the result of the primaries? She shook her head impatiently for thinking of them in that moment. What were primaries to her now? And yet--would he win?

She went on down the stairs, she found the papers, and now when the truth could no longer be hidden, or distorted to any one's advantage, they printed the truth at last--none could tell the result at that hour; it was the hardest political battle ever waged in Polk County, and on it hung the political future of Jerome B. Garwood.

Something of the old excitement came back to her for a moment. He was there in the thick of it, fighting hard; he was desperate; he had risked all again for that political future--she stopped herself with a gasp--if, indeed, his future alone were all that was involved! To her it was his past that was involved; his past that meant more than all to her now. He had, indeed, risked all upon this battle, and all had been lost before the battle was begun!

She ate her lonely supper, she put her babies to bed, she prolonged all her evening duties that they might fill up her thoughts and the slow hours. Each sound, each foot-fall on the sidewalk startled her, and yet no one came. The evening passed. At last she went to bed, but all the noises of the night alarmed her, and in the darkness the burden of her thoughts became insupportable.

At last she got up and went to the window that gave a view of Sangamon Avenue and stood there watching and listening. She went back to bed, but sleep was far from her that night and time and time again she rose and went to her window. Finally, she wrapped herself in a shawl and huddled on the floor at the low sill, and still watched and listened. The night went by, hour after hour. Now and then she heard the baby sighing in his sleep--the poor little baby--and she straightened up, a dim, rigid, attentive figure there in the darkness. Once when the elder child awoke, sleepily calling for a drink, she went to him, but she could not stay; she came back again and resumed her lonely vigil.

And still the hours went by. The low night brooded over the slumbering town. Far down that black and silent street, its shapes distorted and unfamiliar in the shadows, she knew that his fate had been decided. The early hours of the morning brought their chill, and she shrugged herself more closely in her shawl, clutched it more tightly to her breast. And there in the window, alone, she watched and waited while the night grew old and waned.

XII

The crowd of men that filled Chris Steisfloss's saloon were not reckoning the time that night. They pressed, as many of them as could, against the bar, and those who were huddled behind this front rank stretched their arms between the brushing shoulders for the glasses that Chris himself and his bartender, both on duty, made haste to fill each time some voice shouted an order for drink. The long bar-room was stifling, and the gas jets flared sickly, uncertainly, in their efforts to keep alive in an atmosphere from which the oxygen was so quickly exhausted.

Above the tilted hats of the gathering a cloud of smoke drifted in thin, gray currents along the low ceiling, following the drafts that puffed aimlessly whenever the outer door opened, and let the cool night air rush in with its sane and sanitary freshness. Over all, as though a part of the low hanging cloud of smoke, as though an element of the feculent atmosphere, hung almost palpably the mass of oaths and epithets, disjointed words and empty phrases that were poured out in a mad débâcle by all those excited voices. To this were added the scrape and shuffle of boots, moving unsteadily on the floor, and the click of glasses as these men pledged anew a cause which by all the defiance of their angry tones was evidently lost.

In the midst of them all, with his broad back leaning against the rail that guarded the bar, was Garwood himself. His rumpled shirt was open at the throat, his cravat was gone, his soiled cuffs had come unlinked and he fittingly portrayed in his whole appearance the utter rout and demoralization which had that day overtaken his political faction. His eyes blazed now with the confused emotions that ran riot in his soul, and now they lost all their luster and seemed to be set in a filmy stare, until their swollen lids fell heavily over them, to be raised again only by an effort.

He had laid his hat down on the bar, where its brim, flattening to the walnut surface, was soaking up the liquor that had been spilled from an overturned glass. In a strange whim of his disordered mind he had commanded every one to let the hat lie where it was, and they had all obeyed, with the seriousness of drinking men. And there it reposed, all its grace and expression gone, strangely typifying the wreck of its wearer's fortunes.

As Garwood stood there, his black hair matted to his brow, his cheeks and chin blue with a long day's growth of the stubble of his beard, he suddenly flung over his shoulder a peremptory order to Steisfloss to fill the glasses again, and when the saloon-keeper pushed the tall bottle toward him, he turned half around and splashed a drink out of it with an unsteady hand. Then holding the little tumbler in a precarious grasp, he faced about again and with elbows resting on the bar behind him, he broke forth in a thick voice:

"Don't you think I'm beaten! Don't you think it, I tell you! I may be beaten _now_, you understand, but I'm not _beaten_! No, sir! I've only begun. I tell you, I've only begun. They can keep me off the delegation, what do _I_ care? I'll be at Springfield just the same. They can send that Singed Cat to Congress if they want to, what do I care? Jim Rankin--Jim Rankin--who's he? I'll lick 'em, I'll lick 'em _all_, every one, _yet_. You'll see, you wait and see. You hear me? You wait and see. I'll lick 'em all, every one, yet. I'll drive 'em out of the district. I'll drive 'em out of the state, from the Wabash on the east to the Mississippi on the west, from Dunleith to Cairo. I'll set the buffalo grass on fire and sweep the state clean of them. You will not find one of them o'er all the rolling prairies of Illinois."

As he rolled out the word "Illinois," in the tone the orators of that state use when they wish to show their state pride, he swung his arm in an all-embracing circle, and his auditors dodged the slopping whisky.

Then he stood and blinked at them.

"Why don't you fellows drink?" he broke forth again. "What do you want to stand around that way for? What are you afraid of? Jim Rankin? Think I'm licked, do you? Think I'm dead politically, do you? Well, I'll show 'em. I'll show 'em all. Why don't you drink, Pusey; why don't you drink up? Think I ain't got any money? Well, I'll show you--Chris here knows me. I'll show you--"

He fumbled in his pockets, produced a crumpled mass of green bills, and held them forth in his fist.

"I tell you there isn't room for them and me on all the broad expanse of Illinois--"

Some one struck up a favorite song of the campaign platforms:

"Not without thy wondrous story, Illinois, Illinois; Shall be writ the nation's glory, Illinois, Illinois; In the record of the years, Abr'ham Lincoln's name appears, Grant and Logan--and our tears, Illinois, Illinois."

The crowd huddled more closely together, and with heavy voices joined in the song. Some of the men, with serio-comical expressions, essayed the tenor, others the bass, though the bass predominated, and they sang over and over the few words of the song they could remember.

During this maudlin exhibition, the door opened, and Rankin, with Bailey by his side, entered. Rankin was bespattered from hat to heel, even his face was freckled with the little spots where the viscous mud had dried. His huge body was flaccid with fatigue, and his appearance was enough to show how heavily he had toiled at the polls that day in his determination to defeat Garwood. Bailey showed no sign of the equally hard day he had spent. He walked with the same awkward, shambling gait, his little eyes looked out from their narrowed lids and roved about him with their customary cunning. He showed neither signs of exhaustion, though he always looked tired, nor of the elation that probably was in his breast at the great victory which that day had been his.

Rankin, when he saw the crowd with Garwood as its center, halted suddenly and jerked his hat down over his eyes. He drew Bailey hurriedly to the bar near the mirrored partition that screened the scene within from the street without, and made a sign to Steisfloss. The saloon-keeper, with an alert appreciation of the situation which his long experience with men in their cups had taught him, silently moved that way, and bent a listening ear toward the newcomers.

"Give us a little drink--an' hurry. We'll get out--don't let him see," said Rankin.

Steisfloss's heavy German face showed none of the gratitude he felt, and quietly, almost surreptitiously, he set glasses and bottle before the successful candidate at that day's primaries and the man who had brought his success to pass.

Before they could take their liquor, some one at the edge of the crowd near Rankin noticed him. Rankin's quick eye detected the recognition, and he pulled the fellow toward him.

"Sh!" he whispered. "Don't let him see us. I didn't know he's here, or we'd not come in. We'll duck. How long's he been in here?"

"Oh," said the man, "ever since he got that last news from the First Ward."

Rankin could not restrain the gleam of pleasure that shot from his eye at the memory of that triumph, but the gleam softened as he stole a look at Garwood, and then, at last, died quite away, and there came in its stead an expression of pain and pity.

"Poor Jerry!" he said, "I thought he's a little off when he came--" he checked himself, and then--"when I saw him this afternoon," he continued.

He looked at him for another moment, and then he said, angrily, to the man whom all the time he kept between him and the crowd:

"Why don't some o' you fellers get him out o' here? What do you want to let him disgrace himself that-away fer?"

The man looked at Rankin and shrugged his shoulders to tell how helpless they all were.

"We've tried," he said. He looked around toward Garwood, who, having concluded another speech, was tipping his glass into his mouth, his head toppling on his neck as he did so. The man turned back again to Rankin, still with that helpless look, but, suddenly, with a flash of the eye as if a new thought had just come to him, he said:

"You try, Jim; you could do it. He thinks more of you to-day than of all the rest put together."

Rankin faced the bar and hastily swallowed his bourbon.

"No," he said; "that's past."

And then he and Bailey slipped away.

"Poor Jerry!" sighed Rankin, as they went out the door.

But the Singed Cat, whose personality was destined so soon to become the passion of the cartoonists, turned and cast back at his defeated rival one of those glances from his unsearchable little eyes.

XIII

At the close of a day late in November Emily Garwood came down the walk from the old house that had been her home so long, and at the gate paused for a backward glance of farewell. The oaks under which for so many years she had watched the coming and going of all she loved, were barren, save for the few bronzed leaves that clung with the tenacity of their species to the gnarled boughs. Other leaves, withered and yellow, that had succumbed to the common fate of things, strewed the ground everywhere. Here and there they had been pressed into wet mats by the cold autumnal rains; otherwise they rustled with the wind that ranged through the wide yard.

The night was falling swiftly, the darkness increasing by visible degrees as if with the gradual closing of some automatic shutter that was ultimately to exclude the light. Black shadows rose unexpectedly from the ground and silently enfolded objects Emily had known so long that they had become a part of her very life, so intimately associated with all its experiences that she realized her own affection for them but now, when she was leaving them. The old home, to her sensitive imagination, seemed to regard her out of its vacant, lifeless windows with a cold and distant stare, as if already it had begun to forget her.

And so she closed the gate softly, as if the clash of its latch might arouse memories that were making ready to pursue her out of the old homestead, drew more snugly into the hollow of her arm the bundle of odds and ends she had gathered up in her final inspection of its dismantled rooms, and hurried away along Sangamon Avenue. The atmosphere held in suspension many more autumnal rains, with such a chill besides that her little figure seemed to shrink with the cold, as it dissolved in the shadows and disappeared.

The day of the primaries had marked the fall of the last of Emily's ideals, and she felt, with her old habit of fixing a formal duty for every occasion that she must recognize the change by some definite, decisive act. But as she gradually revolved the problem life had set for her, and one after another weighed all the common solutions that men and women consider at such times--perhaps because of sheer inability to grapple with such monstrous spiritual difficulties--she shrank from them, finding them all so sordid, so squalid, so inadequate to a nature like hers. And so she lived on from day to day, trying to reason it out, and failing in that, awaiting the next scene in her domestic tragedy.

But nothing happened. Life went on somehow as before. If at times she reproached herself with what seemed her indecision, she strove with all conscience to perform the little duties of each day, until the great duty could be revealed clearly to her, yet self-consciously wondering how it was that she could think of common things, and do common things, just as she had wondered, at the time her father died, how it was, for instance, that she could leave the solemn twilight of the chamber where she had just witnessed the mystery of death, and straightway go and eat her supper. She did not see that her spirit was thus unconsciously struggling to reassert itself; to identify itself anew with the common, the real; to be like all else about it, for it had not yet been given her to appreciate the love for the normal, the abhorrence of the exceptional, the passion for equality that nature reveals in her dealings with her children.

She was convinced that she must have some kind of reckoning with Jerome; something in a way forensic and legal, with all the conventional elements of trial, judgment and retribution or forgiveness; at times she even dramatized the forms and terms of this proceeding, which would atone for the past, and leave them where they had been before. But the auspicious moment never presented itself; she realized at last that it could not come; that the old ground had been lost, and lost forever; that there could be nothing like resumption; that they must begin, if at all, anew.

And so the summer had passed. She watched Jerome narrowly, noting every change in humor, in whim, in expression, thinking it possible that he might broach the subject that lay so near the hearts of both. At first, in a remorse that was evident, he had been showing for her a new consideration; a furtive consideration that was likely to exaggerate its tenderness at times. He had sent her flowers and brought her candy, like a lover, and if these silent appeals--while they touched her--did not altogether reassure her, they must abundantly have reassured him, for in the course of weeks he seemed to have forgotten all save his own defeat. One afternoon he had come home, silent and preoccupied, and had moodily chosen to sit alone, staring out the window, though seemingly oblivious to the wonder and beauty of the October day, dying, like the year, in serene and majestic dignity. His immovable figure, there in the gloom, gradually oppressed her, got on her nerves, and at last drew her irresistibly into the room where he was. She sat down quietly, without disturbing him, in the hope that he would speak. She looked at him long, but he did not speak, he did not move. Finally this attitude became insupportable, and she at length broke the stillness.

"What is it, Jerome?" she asked.

"What?" he said.

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter," he answered in an aggrieved tone that altogether belied his words.

"But there is," she insisted, quite in the old way. "You are blue."

He was silent a moment longer, in an ugly reluctance to speak, and then,

"Well," he said, savagely, "debts, if you want to know."

She sighed. The old sordid struggle after all! He waited awhile longer, desiring her to coax him out of his mood, but she said nothing, and at last he was impelled to speak once more himself.

"I don't know what we are going to do," he said, "my creditors, now that I've been beaten, are making my office a rendezvous."

He spoke bitterly, as debtors do. He had leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and he looked more gloomily than ever out of the window. The light was just sufficient to mark the outlines of his really fine head, while the shadows of evening softened the lines in his face, the harsh, unpleasant lines that a few years had drawn there. She studied his profile, her eye caressing his curls, the curls she remembered so well--remembered, because she had a troubled sense of thinking now of Jerome as in the past. She gazed until the changes wrought by the short years of their common life passed away, and she saw again the Jerome of old--her own, her lost ideal.... If he had only gone down in some glorious conflict, through some mighty sacrifice, some great devotion to principle! Why had he failed? Had she not tried to do all that a wife could to help and guide him? If he had married some other woman, some woman of courser fiber, who would not have tried to keep him continually up to such high ideals? She paused, some sudden shock smote her, she felt her face grow cold and pale. Another woman married to Jerome Garwood! She caught her breath, her face burned as the blood rushed back to her cheeks again, and then suddenly, impulsively, she spoke, as much to herself, it seemed, as to her husband:

"I _do_ love you still, Jerome!"

Her heart beat with a new fierce joy. A revelation had come to her, a revelation that had solved her problem in an instant, a thing her reason had not been able to do in long months. She loved him still! There was the solution to her riddle of life! And this, this was the auspicious, the psychological moment, come at last! She waited in agony for him to speak, she leaned forward expectantly, and he half turned his head. Her eyes widened, almost flamed forth, as she felt, to meet his there in the darkness that had suddenly become all light for her. And then he laughed, a little laugh, that came harsh on the stillness, and he said:

"Why of course you do."

Her eyes fell. He took it then, quite in the old matter of course way! She turned her face aside, sick with disappointment.

But the revelation of that passionate moment had not been lost. It was to her, sure and certain. She could not doubt it. That Jerome had taken it all as he had could make no difference now to her. For the revelation had solved her problem, made her duty clear, and that was enough. The results of the solution had not been those of her heart's desire, but she could wait for that, for now she beheld the light of a new theory, a new ideal, that quickly glowed into an incandescence that illumined her whole soul. Loving Jerome still, she must live for him still, and this without any regard to what attitude he might take.

Her own happiness was of no importance; it must come, if at all, as a secondary and indirect result. The old ideal and the old ambition had been, after all, but selfish, and so had failed not only of realization, but of that nobler success that comes through failure in the high endeavors of life. She saw it all clearly now; when they had together dreamed of a career, it was not with the idea of being of real help to those about them, but merely of lifting themselves to some place that would distinguish them artificially from those about them. And in time, pondering on her relations to others in the world besides Jerome, she found that what was true of her relation to him was true of her relations to them; that her duty was to live for them as well as for him.

Here was at last a worthy plan of existence, an ideal, not of self, but service. It was simple when she put it to herself in this literal way, so very simple that it was almost trite, yet she had a conviction that it was none the less mightily true. She would not judge Jerome, but love him; she would not expose his faults, but cover them with a mantle of charity; a mantle so wide that it would cover as well all others groping through the world with their sins and their sufferings, their pitiable failures and their lamentable mistakes, and if, even by the slow and loving work of years, she could win Jerome in time to this new ideal that had arisen out of her darkness as the light of an autumn morning without clouds after long days of rain, then, indeed, could his talents worthily be devoted to the people he already thought he loved. Now she had found the faith in life so necessary to her existence. It was a new and better faith, and she could wait long and patiently, if need be, for its complete fulfilment.

Under the stimulus of this new-found faith in life, in an almost pathetic determination to be practical--since the sentimental seemed to be denied her--she decided first that their affairs be placed at once on a secure foundation. So with a touch of her father's own uncompromising rigor in business matters, she relentlessly cast up all their accounts, and if she winced when the amount of Jerome's debts stared her in the face, she nevertheless bravely set about paying them off, devoting to the purpose all her own income, now grown small with the periodical return of hard times. And then, last heroism of all, she resolved that they must give up their old home. Jerome demurred a little, but presently acquiesced.

He was interested anew in affairs, he had perhaps had revelations of his own, and if he did not have resolutions, he nevertheless had hopes. The campaign was on again, and, in a spirit of what he called party loyalty--as one who, winning or losing, honorably lives up to all the rules of the game--he was stumping the district, and making speeches for the ticket with as much of his old fire as if he had been on the ticket himself. Long before election his old self-satisfaction had returned, he was as full of splendid schemes as a bumblebee, and if his disinterestedness was not so apparent after election, when he felt that his chances of being appointed to a territorial judgeship were increasing more and more as the short session of Congress drew near, it may have been discovered in the fact that, as an alternative, he had revived his old project of going to Chicago to practise law. If he got the territorial judgeship, they would have to move West; in either event, he said, it did not matter much where they lived for the time being. He thought that if they went to Chicago he might go to Congress from some of the Chicago districts--it was not hard to get into politics there. But Emily only smiled.

She found through Morton, a tenant for the old home. She sent away the maids, even the nurse, for whom the children cried, and Jasper, who cried himself, until his very despair drove him to refuse to accept the discharge at all. And then she found a smaller house.

The last load of furniture had rumbled away in a covered van that afternoon; as the early twilight came she gave a final look into the empty corners of the old home, picking up little things that had been overlooked, and then, with an ache at the heart for its emptiness and loneliness, she bade it farewell. The moving had been an ordeal. She had had all the care of it, though Jerome's mother had helped, but beyond this was the spiritual agony of coming across old things she had not seen for years, things of her childhood, things of her girlhood; the dress she had worn when first she met Jerome--he had told her to preserve it, though he did not know where it was--things, too, of her mother's--a trying time for a soul already so heavily laden.

Now, hurrying along in the gloom of this November evening, she glanced at the big houses of the prosperous, and they repelled her with the flat austerity of their own provincial exclusiveness. As she advanced, these residences that had the effect of casting her off, gradually gave way to homes, rows of cottages, decreasing in size and importance; but as they grew smaller, Emily observed that they grew more companionable. Lights were beginning to show in their windows, the men were getting in from their work, and she could hear the homely sounds of evening chores.

By the time she reached the humbler street where she was henceforth to live, she felt a sympathy with these unambitious homes, finding a welcome, as it were, in the honest faces they presented in the dusk. She gave them back a brave little smile, reflecting her wish that she might find the peace they seemed to shelter. Pursued along those silent streets by the memories of the old home, she sought refuge in planning the furnishing of the new, mentally compressing the too abundant furniture into the smaller compass with which they must now content themselves.

And in her determination to begin anew, she simulated for the sake of her own courage the pride and joy of a bride's anticipation in setting up housekeeping. Were they not really beginning after all? Had not the years since their marriage been years of make-shift and make-believe? Were not those years even now falling away behind her, while brighter ones rose before? In the spring she would have a little garden; she could imagine John Ethan and his little sister playing among the flowers that would riot there, their little heads bobbing in the yellow sunlight. At the thought of the children she quickened her steps.

The house at last came into sight, standing in a small yard with a low picket fence about it. Some boy was passing by, showing his neighborliness by rattling a stick along the palings. John Ethan must have known her step, light and hurried as it was, for as she turned in at the gate the door of the house opened, and he stood there in the light that came from behind him. He was waiting for her. He called to her to hurry, and she ran up the walk, caught him in her arms, and hugged his little body to her breast. The baby bad gone to sleep, too tired to await her mother's coming. The grandmother was cooking supper amidst the disorder of the furniture and the boxes that had been crowded into the kitchen. As Emily held her boy to her breast, she felt the tears welling to her eyes, but she told herself that this was not the time for tears, for here began that new unselfish life in which she hoped at some far off distant day to find the peace and the happiness of which she had dreamed.

THE END

A LIST OF RECENT FICTION OF THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY

THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE

_How the star of good fortune rose and set and rose again, by a woman's grace, for one John Law, of Lauriston_

A Novel by EMERSON HOUGH

Emerson Hough has written one of the best novels that has come out in America in many a day. It is an exciting story, with the literary touch on every page.--JEANNETTE L. GILDER, of _The Critic_.

In "The Mississippi Bubble" Emerson Hough has taken John Law and certain known events in his career, and about them he has woven a web of romance full of brilliant coloring and cunning work. It proves conclusively that Mr. Hough is a novelist of no extraordinary quality.--_The Brooklyn Eagle._

As a novel embodying a wonderful period in the growth of America "The Mississippi Bubble" is of intense interest. As a love story it is rarely and beautifully told. John Law, as drawn in this novel, is a great character, cool, debonair, audacious, he is an Admirable Crichton in his personality, and a Napoleon in his far-reaching wisdom.--_The Chicago American._

The Illustrations by Henry Hutt 12 mo. 452 pages, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

_It is fresh and spontaneous, having nothing of that wooden quality which is becoming associated with the term "historical novel."_

HEARTS COURAGEOUS

By HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES

"Hearts Courageous" is made of new material, a picturesque yet delicate style, yet good plot and very dramatic situations. The best in the book are the defence of George Washington by the Marquis; the duel between the English officer and the Marquis; and Patrick Henry flinging the brand of war into the burgesses of Virginia.

Williamsburg, Virginia, the country round about, and the life led in that locality just before the Revolution, form an attractive setting for the action of the story.

With six illustrations by A. B. Wenzell 12mo. Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

AN INTERESTING STORY OF FAMILY LIFE.

THE FIGHTING BISHOP

By HERBERT M. HOPKINS

"The Fighting Bishop" is drawn with firm, bold strokes and with a sufficiently scholarly atmosphere to make the picture life like. There is wisdom too, in the attitude of the author toward his characters; and the entire atmosphere of the book is of fine quality. The general accuracy and vividness of the portraiture are likely to impress everyone. * * * It contains passages and characterizations that some readers will find it difficult to forget.--_The Hartford Courant._

The Bishop's musical son, Stephen's, obstinate vanity, his irritable nervous nature, his impatience of advice and his wonderful confidence in his own genius are admirably brought out in the course of the narrative and the chapter containing his letters to his brother is one of the best in the book. It shows his character humorously and without exaggeration, and this is typical of the whole story. The author sees his personages with a human sympathic eye.--_New York Sun._

12 mo. Cloth, ornamental, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_.

"NOTHING BUT PRAISE"

LAZARRE

By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

Glorified by a beautiful love story.--_Chicago Tribune._

We feel quite justified in predicting a wide-spread and prolonged popularity for this latest comer into the ranks of historical fiction.--_The N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._

After all the material for the story had been collected a year was required for the writing of it. It is an historical romance of the better sort, with stirring situations, good bits of character drawing and a satisfactory knowledge of the tone and atmosphere of the period involved.--_N. Y. Herald._

Lazarre, is no less a person than the Dauphin, Louis XVII. of France, and a right royal hero he makes. A prince who, for the sake of his lady, scorns perils in two hemispheres, facing the wrath of kings in Europe and the bullets of savages in America; who at the last spurns a kingdom that he may wed her freely--here is one to redeem the sins of even those who "never learn and never forget."--_Philadelphia North American._

With six Illustrations by André Castaigne 12 mo. Price, $1.50.

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

A VIVACIOUS ROMANCE OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS

ALICE _of_ OLD VINCENNES

By MAURICE THOMPSON

_The Atlanta Constitution says_:

"Mr. Thompson, whose delightful writings in prose and verse have made his reputation national, has achieved his master stroke of genius in this historical novel of revolutionary days in the West."

_The Denver Daily News says_:

"There are three great chapters of fiction: Scott's tournament on Ashby field, General Wallace's chariot race, and now Maurice Thompson's duel scene and the raising of Alice's flag over old Fort Vincennes."

_The Chicago Times-Herald says_:

"More original than 'Richard Carvel,' more cohesive than 'To Have and To Hold,' more vital than 'Janice Meredith,' such is Maurice Thompson's superb American romance, 'Alice of Old Vincennes.' It is, in addition, more artistic and spontaneous than any of its rivals."

VIRGINIA HARNED EDITION

12 mo., with six illustrations drawn by F. C. Yohn and a frontispiece in color by Howard Chandler Christy Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

A STORY BY THE "MARCH KING"

THE FIFTH STRING

By JOHN PHILIP SOUSA

The "March King" has written much in a musical way, but "The Fifth String" is his first published story. In the choice of his subject, as the title indicates, Mr. Sousa has remained faithful to his art; and the great public, that has learned to love him for the marches he has made, will be as delighted with his pen as with his baton.

"The Fifth String" has a strong and clearly defined plot which shows in its treatment the author's artistically sensitive temperament and his tremendous dramatic power. It is a story of a marvelous violin, of a wonderful love and of a strange temptation.

A cover, especially designed, and six full-page illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy, serve to give the distinguishing decorative embellishments that this first book by Mr. Sousa so richly deserves.

With Pictures by Howard Chandler Christy 12 mo. Price, $1.25

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"A NOVEL THAT'S WORTH WHILE"

_The_ REDEMPTION _of_ DAVID CORSON

By CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS

A Mid-century American Novel of Intense Power and Interest

_The Interior Says_:

"This is a book that is worth while. Though it tells of weakness and wickedness, of love and license, of revenge and remorse in an intensely interesting way, yet it is above all else a clean and pure story. No one can read it and honestly ask 'what's the use.'"

_Newell Dwight Hillis, Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, says_:

"'The Redemption of David Corson' strikes a strong, healthy buoyant note."

_Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus, President Armour Institute, says_:

"Mr. Goss writes with the truthfulness of light. He has told a story in which the fact of sin is illuminated with the utmost truthfulness and the fact of redemption is portrayed with extraordinary power. There are lines of greatness in the book which I shall never forget."

_President M. W. Stryker, Hamilton College, says_:

"It is a victory in writing for one whose head seems at last to have matched his big human heart. There is ten times as much of reality in it as there is in 'David Harum,' which does not value lightly that admirable charcoal sketch."

Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"THE MERRIEST NOVEL OF MANY, MANY MOONS."

MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN

By FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS

The Daintiest and Most Delightful Book of the Season.

A heroine almost too charming to be true is Peggy, and it were a churlish reader who is not, at the end of the first chapter, prostrate before her red slippers.--_Washington Post._

To make a comparison would be to rank "My Lady Peggy" with "Monsieur Beaucaire" in points of attraction, and to applaud as heartily as that delicate romance, this picture of the days "When patches nestled o'er sweet lips at chocolate times."--_N. Y. Mail and Express._

12 mo. Beautifully illustrated and bound. Price, $1.25 net

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"AS CRISP AND CLEAN CUT AS A NEW MINTAGE."

THE PUPPET CROWN

BY HAROLD MacGRATH

A princess rarely beautiful; a duchess magnificent and heartless; a villain revengeful and courageous; a hero youthful, humorous, fearless and truly American;--such are the principal characters of this delightful story.--_Syracuse Post-Standard._

Harold MacGrath has attained the highest point achievable in recent fiction. We have the climax of romance and adventure in "The Puppet Crown."--_The Philadelphia North American._

Superior to most of the great successes.--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._

"The Puppet Crown" is a profusion of cleverness.--_Baltimore American._

Challenges comparison with authors whose names have become immortal.--_Chicago American._

Latest entry in the list of winners.--_Cleveland World._

With illustrations by R. Martine Reay 12mo. Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"AN ADMIRABLE SOCIAL STUDY"

THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN

By HAROLD BEGBIE

The purpose of this brilliant story of modern English life is to show that a human being, well brought-up, carefully trained in the outward appearances of religion, with a keen intellectual perception of the difference between right and wrong, may still not have goodness, and that ambition may easily become the dominating force in such a character. So the book may be called a purpose novel, but in reading it, one no more thinks of applying so discredited an epithet to it than one would think of applying it to "Vanity Fair."

The author possesses an admirable style, clear, unaffected, strong. To the discriminating public, the book is certain to give far more pleasure than that public usually gets from a new novel.

With a Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert Cloth, 12 mo. Ornamental, $1.25 Net. Postage, 12 Cents

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

FULL _of_ INCIDENT, ACTION & COLOR

LIKE ANOTHER HELEN

By GEORGE HORTON

Mr. Horton's powerful romance stands in a new field and brings an almost unknown world in reality before the reader--the world of conflict between Greek and Turk.

The island of Crete seems real and genuine after reading this book; not a mere spot on the map. The tragic and pathetic troubles of this people are told with sympathetic force.

Mr. Horton employs a vivid style that keeps the interest alive and many passages are filled with delicate poetic feeling.

Things happen and the story moves. The characters are well conceived and are human and convincing. Beyond question Mr. Horton's fine story is destined to take high rank among the books of the day.

With illustrations by C. M. Relyea 12mo. Cloth bound Price, $1.50

_The Chicago Times-Herald says_:

"Here are chapters that are Stephen Crane plus sympathy; chapters of illuminated description fragrant with the atmosphere of art."

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"A CHRONICLE OF MARVELS"

THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON

By H. G. WELLS

Author of "The War of the Worlds" and "Tales of Time and Space."

Mr. Wells writes to entertain and in this tale of the invention of "cavorite," and the subsequent remarkable journey made to the moon by its inventor, he has succeeded beyond measure in alternately astounding, convincing and delighting his readers. Told in a straightforward way, with an air of ingenuousness that disarms doubt, the story chronicles the most marvelous discoveries and adventures on the mysterious planet. Mr. Hering's many illustrations are admirable. Altogether the book is one of the most original and entertaining volumes that has appeared in many a day.

Profusely Illustrated by E. Hering 12mo. Cloth, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"AN INDIANA LOVE STORY"

ROSALYNDE'S LOVERS

By MAURICE THOMPSON

Author of "Alice of Old Vincennes"

As Mr. Thompson avers, this is "only a love story," but it is a story of such sweetness and wholesome life that it will at once claim a permanent home in our affections. The love of nature, so prominent a characteristic of Mr. Thompson, is reflected throughout and the thunderstorm and following gleam of sun, the country garden and southern lake are each in turn invested with a personality that wins our instant sympathy. Rosalynde Banderet is winsome and artless, her lovers are human and manly, and her final happiness is ours. Mr. Peirson's many pictures are entirely worthy.

With many Illustrations and Decorations by G. Alden Peirson Ornamental 12mo. Cloth Bound, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL HISTORICAL NOVEL

THE BLACK WOLF'S BREED

By HARRIS DICKSON

_From the Boston Globe_:

"A vigorous tale of France in the old and new world during the reign of Louis XIV."

_From the Philadelphia Press_:

"As delightfully seductive as certain mint-flavored beverages they make down South."

_From the Los Angeles Herald_:

"The sword-play is great, even finer than in the pictures in 'To Have and To Hold.'"

_From the San Francisco Chronicle_:

"As fine a piece of sustained adventure as has appeared in recent fiction."

_From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat_:

"There is action, vivid description and intensely dramatic situations."

_From the Indianapolis News_:

"So full of tender love-making, of gallant fighting that one regrets it's no longer."

Illustrated by C. M. Relyea. Price $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

"IN LONDON OF LONG AGO"

THE FICKLE WHEEL

By HENRY THEW STEPHENSON

In this tale of merry England, of the time when Shakespeare jested and Ben Jonson blustered, Mr. Stephenson has painted for us a picture informing and above all entertaining. His is not a story of counts and crowns, but of ever interesting common people. Without seeming to do so the author shows us many interesting bits of the life of the day. We go to Paul's walk, we see Shakespeare at the Globe theatre and other such glimpses of old time London are deftly added to our experiences. Throughout the book is an evanescent charm, a spirit of wholesome gaiety. It is well worth while.

With illustrations by C. M. Relyea Cloth, Ornamental, 12 mo. Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

A FINE STORY OF THE COWBOY AT HIS BEST

WITH HOOPS _of_ STEEL

By FLORENCE FINCH KELLY

"The friends though hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel"

_From the San Francisco Chronicle_:

"Western men and women will read it because it paints faithfully the life which they know so well, and because it gives us three big, manly fellows, fine types of the cowboy at his best. Eastern readers will be attracted by its splendid realism."

_From Julian Hawthorne_:

"For my own part, I finished it in one day, and dreamt it over again that night. And I am an old hand, heaven knows."

_From the Denver Times_:

"Mrs. Kelly's characters stand out from the background of the New Mexican plains, desert and mountain with all the distinctness of a Remington sketch."

With 6 illustrations, in color, by Dan Smith Price, $1.50

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

VIGOROUS, ELEMENTAL, DRAMATIC