Chapter VII: Part 7

“Well, go ahead, for it has just occurred to me that I promised to be home in time for supper.”

Lester turned a pair of bloodshot eyes full on Philip and asked: “You think I have been a fool, don't you?”

Philip shifted his feet uneasily. He felt that truth played such an insignificant part in the exercise of civility.

“You think I have been a fool?” Lester repeated.

“Before I answer that I'd like to know why you ask. You see the reason that prompts an inquiry is more than apt to determine its answer with me. I always wish to give satisfaction.”

“I ask because I'd like to know what you think of me. I don't suppose you have any sort of use for me. You don't know, Philip, how bad I have wanted some one to talk to for days and days—some one who is not like myself. And when I saw you to-night, I made up my mind that you should hear what I have to say. I can't keep it any longer—my head will burst if I do—can you listen?”

“Go ahead,—I'm listening.”

“For the most part it's nothing but what you know. It's just about my being such a fool. Yes, yes—and it's more than that!”

Philip saw that he was powerfully excited, that there were tears in the eyes of this boy, with a man's heavy burden of sin on his shoulders.

“You know about the money I got when I came of age; the money my father left me when he died. I—you know what a circus I made of myself. How every last cent of it is gone?”

“Yes, it's the gossip—and I hear it.”

Lester paced back and forth in front of Philip for a moment, and then leaned dejectedly against a tree.

“When you talked about how it used to be when we were boys, I could have choked you. I wish I were back to it, with these last years to live over!” He paused, trembling with excitement and sorrow. “When I got hold of my money you shook me off and would have nothing more to do with me.”

“I hadn't the time, Lester. I was busy and you were not. Our tastes had ceased to be the same, that was all. You should not bear me a grudge on that score.”

“I don't—I like you the better for it—you are the only fellow I can talk to. I know if you have any sympathy for me it rests on what I was when we tramped around the country in vacation time. How I wish I might go back to it and be a boy once more—once more!”

With a gesture of anguish he drew his hand across his face. Perhaps he sought to hide some part of the pain that was plainly stamped upon his woebegone visage. He had been so proud of his very misdeeds—and now——

“I have a lot of sympathy for you, Lester; just a lot, and I am sorry for you, too.”

“Thank you, Philip; I suppose I deserve all I get. I have been such a cad!—such a cub! I spent in two years and less what it took my father all his life to save. It will be a long while before I get hold of such a lump again, and if I have to make it, probably never. You know how, when I came of age, I was taken up by fellows much older than myself. My head was completely turned by my popularity—well, it lasted for a while then quite suddenly I found myself with empty pockets and no friends. People discovered all at once that I was shockingly immoral. They might have known it all along if they had cared to. I never made any bones about it. I was no better and no worse than those I went with. Now I am an outcast. The fellows who helped me on to this don't see me any more. I have the road to myself when I go down-town: everybody gets out of my way, but this is nothing—if it were no more than this I should not mind.”

“What else is it that's wrong?” said Philip, beginning to find the boy's confession interesting.

He was feeling a certain solicitude for the harvester of wild oats. They had been close friends once, and at not so very long ago either. Lester's plunge into folly had terminated their intimacy—the friendship had become irksome to both—for months they had scarcely exchanged more than greetings when they chanced to meet, and all in an instant Lester was sweeping him back to the years when they had been inseparable. With a palpable effort Lester continued:

“I've got all sorts of habits that are ruining me, as sure as I stand here—they are—and I can't stop. If I can get the money I am going away. Maybe it will be better then.”

“Come, come—brace up! There is no good in running away. I doubt if it will improve matters.”

“No, I can't stay.”

“I should if I were you. I should wait for a fitting opportunity and get even with all my former acquaintances in some dazzling fashion.”

Philip spoke cheerfully enough, but the tone of his voice was pleasantly suggestive of manslaughter as the method he would recommend.

“What do I care for the damned Judases!” Lester burst out. “All I want is to see the last of them.” Then suddenly he relapsed into sullenness; “I don't know that it's worth the trouble,” he said. “I might just as well finish it off and be done with the whole thing one time as another. I have thrown my money to the dogs and my chances with it. I may as well let the rest follow.”

“Nonsense! You don't mean what you're saying. Stop drinking and behave yourself and you'll discover that you have plenty of friends left. It won't benefit you to whine about it. That you have played the fool concerns you alone. You can't make the town responsible for what you've done yourself.”

Philip being the older, had always in a manner dominated Lester. Even in the days of their youth Lester had required a large amount of encouragement to keep within the wide limits of what Philip had marked off as the straight and narrow path in the field of his moral perceptions. For Philip had never aspired to any close companionship with the sterner virtues and he was consistent in advising no lines of conduct he was not himself willing to follow.

“Damn the town and everybody in it! There is not another such spot on the face of the earth.”

Evidently Lester did not find being an outcast agreeable, and he viewed himself as an injured individual, since his behavior had offended no one, until his riches were gone. Philip passed his hand through Lester's arm and led him down the path.

“You go home and when morning comes, bringing with it a clear head, think it over and arrive at the only sensible conclusion within your reach... to go it straight and steady.”

“Do you think I am soft to unburden myself to you like this?” Lester asked.

“My dear boy, I regard you as the opposite of soft.”

On their entering the town, Lester reverted to his former silence and Philip, commenting on the change, thought: “It was the enlivening associations of the tomb that made him talkative.” Neither spoke until they separated in front of Lester's home. Then Philip said: “Good night, don't worry, it won't help you in the least.”

“Good night.”

“If you should happen to want some one to discuss your affairs with, look me up. I shall always be at your service.”

“Thanks,—I will.”

Lester turned from the gate by which he had been standing and went toward the house. Philip followed him with a sympathetic glance.

“Poor boy,” he thought, “he's in hard luck, and though there is no one to blame but himself, it doesn't make it easier to bear.”

Then he called aloud: “Good night. I'll expect to see you soon.”

Lester waved his hand as he paused in the sudden burst of light from the opened door. Then the door closed, and Philip stood alone, staring thoughtfully at the darkness where but a moment before the streaming light had been: “I am sorry for him—but, suppose he avails himself of the proffer of companionship I was rash enough to make and eats up hours and hours of my precious time—what's going to become of my work? This won't do. A wretched creature who has squandered his fortune in riotous living comes along, makes a brutal assault on my feelings, and I weakly succumb—amiable ass that I am!”

There never was a bridge Philip did not cross in advance of his coming to it—never a bridge he did not go back to and recross after he was once safely over. So he stood thinking of the hours he was no doubt destined to waste on the unhappy Lester. At last he went his way reproaching himself with the unwisdom of having displayed a tender and susceptible nature.

He reached home while still engaged in abusing himself; with his hand upon the knob he halted a moment before opening the door. He wished to put his faculties in a state of repose so that he could meet his brother pleasantly and with no outward sign that he desired to kick him. This generally demanded a previous arrangement with himself. Assured that it was accomplished, he pushed open the door. The sitting-room was empty, but the noise coming from the dining-room told him that the family was at supper. His mother, hearing him enter, called: “Is it you, Philip?”

“Yes, mother. I'm late. I really meant to be back long ago.” Then to Anson as he passed from one room to the other: “How are you, old fellow?”

Their mother's eye was upon them and the brothers exchanged greetings in a friendly enough fashion. Anson even declared himself as delighted to see Philip:—a gratuitous bit of lying for which the latter thanked him profusely as he took his seat. About the table was grouped the entire Southard family. Philip, his mother, Anson and the two girls—Katherine and Florence. The “inharmonious whole”—as Philip was wont to call them. Anson was the eldest—his brother's senior by five or six years and verging close on thirty—handsome, too, in his way, by all odds the most prepossessing member of the family. But his original advantages were somewhat marred by his unfortunate mannerisms, the result in part of his occupation—that of confidential clerk in the office of a manufacturing concern. His every act, serious or the reverse, was performed with a petty and aggravating secrecy. It was displayed in everything he did. He even ate in a confidential manner, seeming to tell a business secret to each mouthful he swallowed. Philip, stealing covert glances at him, decided that he had never seen him quite so abominable. Yet, it struck him for the first time that Anson was a disappointed man—the world had not yielded him all that he had been coached to think it would. He had been brought up in the belief that he was a marvel of human perfectibility. As a child, he had been so precocious in pursuit of the virtues, great and small, that much had been predicted of him. Now when the glamour of youthful goodness was changing into the fixity of a shining light, he was held to be a model worthy of prayerful emulation by all right-minded people—and so he was. If he had been stuffed with straw, he could not have been freer from flesh-begotten sin.

Despite this he was a disappointed man. He had been such a remarkable boy that when he reached maturity he was in much the same unhappy plight as a little Alexander with no more worlds to conquer. That which had been so astonishing in the child, that uncanny goodness that caused elderly females to throw up their hands at the mere mention of his name and launch forth in praise of him, excited no especial comment in the man. It never occurred to him that he had been nourished on thin air. His whole education was such a mistake—such an injustice—How could any one thrive beneath the load of useless rectitude he had set out to carry like a fool,—mainly because it placed him in the ranks of other highly proper monstrosities.

Philip, slowly eating his supper, came to a realization of this and something not unlike pity stole into his heart.

It was such a remote chance, so removed from the realm of the possible that Anson would ever succeed in distinguishing himself more than he had done, and what would become of him?

As he speculated on the outcome, the two girls and Anson talked back and forth across the table, and he stopped thinking to listen.

It was the usual discussion of ways and means they carried on. This bill to be met—its fellow to be evaded until the end of the month. The evidences of a not over-lovely existence, but hard and precarious—close to the ragged edge of want. The much spent on the worthless shams—the little on the solid comforts of a good living.

“As if any one is deceived or thinks us richer than we are,” Philip thought. “We are more or less like our neighbors and they estimate our income to the last penny, just as we do theirs.” There was something so hopeless about the aspect life took on, something so perilously near to the perpetual grind of downright poverty, that it made him revolt and he burst out angrily: “Why, in heaven's name, don't you find some more cheerful subject to discuss! Must it forever be debts and bills, as if there was only the one purpose in living—to squirm through somehow until the end of the month!”

“I guess,” Katherine, the elder of the girls, said, her eyes snapping viciously, “that some one has to think of such matters, though I am sure no one wants to; and Anson is here so seldom and he is the——”

“Katherine!” Her mother spoke sharply, warning her not to finish the sentence.

Philip looked down at his plate and bit his lips. He knew what his sister would have said had their mother not interfered—that Anson was the family's mainstay—but her mother's warning stopped her.

It was by no means a loving family, nor was there any special graciousness in their intercourse. Philip barely tolerated his sisters. Katherine was undeniably mean and spiteful. To her natural tendencies she had added an exceedingly bigoted habit of thought which she referred to as “her faith”.

Its acquirement, if she was to be credited with telling the truth, had cost her many sleepless nights and great self-sacrifice. It was exercised chiefly in a rabid criticism of her species in which she recently delighted.

Florence was rather better in sweetness of temper and disposition, but to hear her talk was maddening torture to him. She had all a woman's misplaced and indiscriminate adjectives. Everything was “grand” to her, from hot pop-corn to a clap of thunder.

The connecting link holding the four together was Mrs. Southard, whose force of will kept them united after love and affection had ceased to exist.

The first strong emotion they had known had been hate, one for the other. They were so different in every quality of soul and body; they saw and were on the opposite side of every conceivable question. But one thing they had in common, an admirable tenacity, which rendered them insensible to either courtesy or reason where their prejudices were at stake.

The home, such as it was, existed only by grace of Mrs. Southard's strength of character. For while their mutual dislike reached a degree of bitterness hard to comprehend, they all loved her, each in his or her own way.

“What detained you, Philip?” his mother asked when Katherine was restored to composure.

“I took a walk with Lester Royal.”

“I don't think him a very good person to be seen with,” Katherine interposed. She felt bound to raise a disturbance on moral grounds.

“Don't you?—why not?” Then as a happy after thought: “There are certain people who should be restrained from thinking.”

Katherine ignored his remark and returned to the charge.

“What sort of a reputation has he, I should like to know! But of course you are superior to a trifle like that.”

“I fancy it's what it should be.”

“You know very well he has no reputation at all. But I suppose you don't mind—you are so liberal.”

“Then I am sure there is nothing wrong with it since it doesn't exist.”

“It does exist and is most unsavory!”

“Well, even an unsavory reputation is a decided improvement on no reputation at all.”

“I don't think——” Katherine began.

“I am glad you don't, Kate; it was never intended you should,” Philip made haste to say.

At this point Florence took up the cudgels against Philip:

“I should think you would have been ashamed to let people see you with him—he's simply horrid!”

“I wasn't seen with him, so don't distress your conscience with the idea that I was.”

“No thanks to you that you weren't,” said Katherine.

“Your penetration does you credit, Kate. I don't happen to possess your inordinate respect for appearances.” He was waiting to make a telling retort. This always stimulated him.

“I suppose you can't select men of good character for your friends,” Katherine snapped.

“Freedom from vice is more a question of ignorance than anything else.” Unconsciously he glanced at Anson as he spoke.

“I should be ashamed to think it,” said Katherine.

“Perhaps my spiritual insight has become blunted by my unfavorable surroundings.”

“I suppose that's a covert slur at me and my religion,” with heat. “The things you say are disgraceful!”

“I don't see how mother can permit it,” Florence said, bent on being in the row.

“For pity's sake, girls, can't you let Philip finish his supper in peace, without going out of your way to complain of what is no affair of yours?” It was Mrs. Southard who spoke.

Philip pushed back his plate. “I am through and will take myself off,” he said. He kissed his mother, and with an indifferent good night to the rest, left the room. A moment later the street door closed with a bang.

“I wish to gracious he was already married to Barbara. I'll bet he'd know pretty quick he wasn't any better off,” said Florence.

“There—there,” Mrs. Southard objected wearily. “Can't you find something else to talk about?” II

The Southard's belonged to that great division of the human family—the eminently respectable. As far as they went they were above reproach—nor were they without a certain prestige. As Katherine was wont to remark: “They knew the best.”

Furthermore, it was tradition that once upon a time they had been very rich, or rather their remote ancestors had been so blessed, and vouching for this former grandeur, there remained to them a considerable and distinguished connection.

These distinguished relatives, whom Philip hated cordially, were much addicted to the habit—while on their periodic gyrations about the country—of stopping with his mother, when by so doing they could break long and possibly fatiguing trips.

On these occasions the relatives spent most of their time in curl-papers or smoking jackets. Whenever Mrs. Southard ventured to suggest some mild festivity in their honor they refused to be entertained, with: “We beg you won't, Cousin Jane. We are here simply for a nice quiet visit with you and the children. Later on we shall be forced to be so very gay, you know....” On these occasions when the guests divided their time about equally between eating and sleeping, their entertainers' mode of living was ordered on such a scale of magnificence and reckless extravagance that they were almost invariably brought to the verge of ruin, and they generally atoned for the temporary burst of luxury by months of close economy. Then when the rich and distinguished relatives had taken their leave, the Southards would cut down expenses and try to convince themselves that the departed guests were the most charming people imaginable. Some little fiction of the kind was positively indispensable when the grocery bill came in.

One member of this contingent happening to die—the only disinterested action of a singularly selfish career—had bethought him of the Southards in his last moments and had strangely enough remembered them in his will with a legacy for each of the children. It was a matter of some hundreds apiece and the two girls and Anson had straightway spent their portions.

Philip, at the time of this windfall, was in business: it gave him the opportunity he had long coveted. He planned three years of liberty in which to follow up his inclination to write.

No one appreciated the courage this involved and Philip went his course without help from any one. He told himself that if he came to grief there would be but scant loss—a little money and the waste of days.

He had been by no means a success in commercial pursuits, and if he failed with his pen, why, it was no more than he was apt to do in other things. For a year his labors in the field of literature went unrewarded, and many times he was tempted to give up the struggle in disgust. Then at last, when his small legacy was all but gone, the first meager returns filled him with renewed hope and energy.

Slowly, very slowly, he saw his tiny bank balance swell until it reached the grand total of a thousand dollars. Upon that day there came to him the satisfying though distant vision of success.

It was not to be a selfish success he told himself: he would shirk no obligation when it came—all should profit by it. But he could do so much with a different environment. The appreciation his brother and sisters gave him was so tainted by an indiscriminate disapproval of his aims, and their recognition of his poor triumphs so niggardly, as though any reference to them was an acknowledgment of superiority on his part. In spite of this he would do what he could for them—when he could. Most of all would he do for his mother. She should have the thousand things, big and little, women loved and wanted. She had done so much for him—for all of them. She had brought them up unaided, through a struggle against poverty, the hardness of which he could only dimly divine. He would have counted it the blackest treachery not to have thought of her.

Then when the girls were married—and marry they must—he intended to get husbands for them, even if they had to be bought—she would come and live with him.

They had talked it over a hundred times—he and Barbara—and knew just how it was to be arranged.

He never questioned his ability to do all this, for his faith had become perfect and abiding.

In the kindly benevolence of his castle-building he even wished well to Anson. After all, they were brothers. Anson had a fondness for travel; he would give him the means to indulge that taste, he should travel—more than this, he should travel always—the farther away the better.

When he left home, Philip betook himself into the presence of his betrothed. As he entered the parlor where Barbara sat—idly turning the leaves of a book, she looked up at him and smiled.

“I am glad you came,” she said. “I was just beginning to think I shouldn't see you to-night.” Philip drew a chair near to hers as he answered. “So am I, but I should be at work.”

“Guess who has called this afternoon?”

“Why do you make me exert myself—why don't you tell me at once if I am to know?”

“Mr. Shelden.”

“Well, and what had he to say? Do you know, Barbara, I object, for it just occurs to me that he is without a wife... having already disposed of one. Truly I object to his calling on you.”

“But he is papa's friend——”

“Oh, is he? Well, he is a precious old fool—that's my opinion of him.”

Philip, conscious of the slightness of the claim he had upon her, dreaded a possible rival. He knew the sanction to his suit was only passive—the least thing might bring about the most pronounced opposition.

“He is not so very old: he is only forty-five. He regards himself as still youthful, for he assured me this was the age of the young man,” said Barbara.

“It's the age of the damn fool,” Philip grunted savagely, and then penitently: “That was a case of justifiable damn: it was wrung from me, Barbara. It's so exasperating to hear such twaddle.”

“I believe you're jealous, Philip. I really believe you are!”

“Of course I am! I am no better than a pauper—and he——”

“How inconsistent of you. The other evening you said you should never care whom I saw. Do be consistent.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of an idiot. Because I say or do a thing once, am I to be tied to it for the rest of my days?”

“But it is quite impossible to keep track of your beliefs.”

“Pardon me, I have opinions, but no beliefs. What else did he say?”

“You mean Mr. Shelden?”

“Yes. What other shoddy nineteenth century-ism did he repeat?”

“He said any number of things. He spoke about you.”

“Old gossip! What did he find to say about me?”

“He asked what you were doing.”

“I hope you had the courage to tell him it was none of his business.”

“I didn't do anything so rude. I told him you were writing. He seemed deeply impressed and said he had always liked you.”

“Humph! He's a startling novelty.”

“I thought it very lovely of him to be so sympathetic, for of course he knows. I have an idea papa tells him everything.”

“What else, Barbara? Can't you tell me all?”

“I told him about your book—and then we discussed books in general. He reads a great deal, so he told me.”

“Probably—Thoughts for a Christian on Losing his Hair—for I have observed he is getting bald.”

“How mean of you!”

“Oh, Barbara, what in heaven's name is going to happen if some one comes between us—some one who has money and all that's worth while?”

“You know there is something that no one can have but you.”

She leaned forward, holding out her hand for him to take. “I have given you so much love that you must have it all, or I shall keep it for you untouched forever.”

And Philip, looking into the face so close to his, saw that she meant the words she spoke. But beyond the words he seemed to see that a cloud could not rest long upon her. She was created for love and brightness, and in his heart he knew that they must be together soon or he would lose her.

“What is it, Philip?” she asked after a short silence. “What are you thinking?”

“That I am happy,” he answered, smiling. “Only that?”

“Could it be more? How glad I am that you are as you are. I would not have you changed.”

“It's not because I am so good, is it? For you know I am not.”

Before he could answer a door opened and closed in the adjoining room. The sound had an instantaneous effect on Philip.

“Here is your father, Barbara; we'll speak of the weather. It is a matter upon which I am disposed to agree with any one—always excepting the pious Anson.”

“Why do you pretend to dislike your brother? I think him very nice,—very fine-looking.”

“Hate is as essential to certain natures as love—and much more satisfying.”

“But you can't hate him. You are far from honest.”

“People form such queer notions of me. They are eternally thinking I am not sincere, and yet, Barbara, I mean all I say—while I am saying it. Could integrity carry me to greater lengths?” She looked at him with knitted brows. He was unlike any one she had ever known.

“Are you really afraid of him?—of papa?” she asked.

“The relations existing between us are strained; he may at any moment send me from the house for good and all.”

Barbara laughed. “I am quite sure he is guiltless of any such intention.”

“I regret to say that I am not.”

Philip regarded Mr. Gerard as a person of one idea, and that invariably a wrong one. It was neither safe nor agreeable to be so at his mercy, for he held Philip's happiness in the hollow of his hand, and that young gentleman was much oppressed by the suspicion that he was not popular with Barbara's parent. When he questioned her she always assured him that her father respected him most thoroughly, but Philip doubted this.

It must be admitted that now and then he detected a pugnacious quality in Mr. Gerard's manner toward him, which he stubbornly declined to notice or take exception to, as every other consideration was minor to the great one of gaining time in which to place himself beyond the reach of interference, so he put his pride in his pocket and strove to prevent a clash.

Mr. Gerard appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“I wish you would come with me into the library, Philip,” he said. “There is a little matter I should like to discuss with you. Barbara will, I am sure, excuse you for a few moments.”

Philip came to his feet on the instant. The parable of the spider and the fly presented itself to him.

“How do you do,” he said. He was not at his best when Mr. Gerard was about.

“Just follow me into the library, if you please.” For Philip was gazing stupidly at him.

“Oh, certainly.” From the door he glanced back at Barbara, and she saw that his face was clouded with apprehension.

While she was wondering what it all meant, and what her father could have to say to Philip, there drifted in to her the murmur of their lowered voices, coming from the room that had conferred upon it the name of library in recognition of the fact that its furniture consisted in the main of a desk, some leather-covered chairs given over to decay, and a bookcase, containing an encyclopedia, a dictionary, and by actual count ninety-six novels. The room was also adorned—as the complete triumph of intellectuality—by a bust of Shakespeare.

Here Mr. Gerard was supposed to do his thinking.

Barbara's mother was an invalid and seldom left her room. This was another tangle in the snarled arrangement of Philip's hopes, for Barbara's father had severe Spartan ideas on the duties of children to their parents. And Mrs. Gerard was so busy with her symptoms, real or imaginary, that she never concerned herself in domestic matters. She left all that to her husband, who ran things with a high and often heavy hand.

Barbara controlled her curiosity as best she could. Finally the conference was at an end. She heard her father remark in his ordinary strident tones:

“You appreciate the justice of my course, Philip.”

A few minutes later, Philip reentered the parlor.

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

He crossed the room and stood leaning against the mantel, looking down at her in silence.

“What is it, Philip?” she repeated.

“Your father says that I must be ready to marry you within a year or else——” he paused.

“Or else what?” she asked anxiously.

“The worst. I shall have to give you up.”

Philip saw her face pale. She arose and stood at his side, her hand upon his shoulder, her head tilted so that she could look into his face.

“It shall be only you, Philip. If it is not you it shall be no other.”

He gazed at her in silence, trying to read the depth of her faith in her eyes. The thought that she was beautiful and that he loved her came strongly to him.

“You believe in me, Philip; you trust me?”

“As I do no one else—as I never shall another. It is you and only you. Everything is centered or ends forever in you.” And then he laughed lightly. “After all, it is not so bad. Perhaps this will force our happiness upon us sooner than we have dared anticipate.”

“How long did he say?”

“Within a year, and it is so short a time,” he said, with a deep breath.

“Within a year,” she repeated slowly. “But I can't be forced away from you. He can't make me give you up.” And she shook her head in defiance.

“Can't he, Barbara? Can't he, dear?” And Philip bent toward her, speaking softly.

“I belong to you.”

Philip straightened up, saying somewhat grimly: “I must work. I shall be forced to see you less often.”

“Must you?”

“Yes. This admits of no delay. And no matter how hard I work... even then it's all doubt and uncertainty.”

“Why do we have to wait?”—with a sigh. “I could help you so much if I were with you. I know I could.”

Philip ground out between his set teeth the one word, “Money,” and Barbara was silent.

“We are most unfortunate,” he continued. “We both belong to what are called prosperous and well-to-do families and yet beyond a well defined point there is not an extra penny, every cent being swallowed up in the wretched sham of appearances. I own frankly I am poor, and as if this were not misfortune enough in itself, my poverty is allied to a worthless sneaking respectability that is maintained at the cost of constant sacrifice. I have the added ignominy of knowing that the very appearances on which is squandered everything, deceive no one. How destructive to self-respect to live a lie unbelieved even by the most credulous! If it accomplished its beneficent mission, there would be a worthy excuse for it, but to run the risk of damnation for the sake of a lot of unsuccessful deceits makes my soul sick.”

“What do we care for people? If we are happy what does it matter?” She pressed close to his side. “What do we care?”

“Do you mean you would marry me now, if you could, and disregard the doubtfulness of the future?”

“But you haven't asked me yet... how can I tell?”

“Would you, dear?”... tenderly.

“Try me. It would be such fun to live just as we could, and not have to make believe. I imagine the worst of poverty is in the thought that some one else knows. Tell me what father said.”

“I have already told you, Barbara.”

“But tell me how it came about. How he led up to it and what you said.”

Philip thought for a moment. When he spoke his manner suggested weariness, as if the recent ordeal had been too much for him.

“Really I am quite collapsed, quite annihilated. What a stunning advantage a young woman's father has over his daughter's 'young man.'.rdquo;

“Won't you answer me?—what was it papa said?”

“Well, we kept clear of sentiment from the start—we canvassed the situation from a purely business basis.”

“But you know nothing about business.”

“I talk intelligently enough on a good many subjects of which I know nothing.”

“What else did he say?”

“Oh, that I was a very proper young man, and all that sort of thing.”

“And then what?”

“After an exchange of compliments he gave me to understand that business was business. Then, Barbara, with startling brevity and great solemnity, tempered with severity, he informed me that this waiting was unjust to you, that it unduly compromised you, to all of which I agreed. He again alluded to my virtues; during their enumeration, my feelings were of the ghastly jolly order, for I thought that this formed the prelude to a blessing and dismissal—but it didn't. He wound up by asking me what my resources were. Of course I shuffled about and tried to daze him by a complicated explanation, filled with glittering generalities, though I own they did not glitter, for he held me to the subject in hand and I marshaled up my prospects for his inspection. I confess I was governed by no intention to be honest. I lied outright wherever I could and where I couldn't I maimed or strangled the facts. If I had only had warning—a little time for preparation, and the memorizing of imaginary statistics—I should have made a better showing. I simply could not stick to the truth; but it stuck to me in fragments. I felt as though I were pasted all over with it.”

“But what did you say to papa?”

“I told him what my income was—I had to name a sum so small I am sure he believed me at once. Lastly I told him of my expectations,—and there was where I lied. With the result that, providing I shall increase my earnings sufficiently to warrant such a course, I am to marry you within a year,—otherwise I don't.”

And Philip dropped into a chair dejected in body and mind.

“Now, what the dickens does he expect? I can't become famous on twelve months' notice. However, I must work morning, noon and night with no let-up whatever.”

“And what's going to become of me then?” asked Barbara.

“You know, dear, we can't sacrifice the future for the present. It's a beastly short time in which I am to make a substantial addition to my earn ings, and your father most expressly stipulates that I bring them up to some appropriate figure. In the event of my being able to do this he will entrust your happiness to my care, feeling assured I am and will continue to be worthy of the trust he reposes in me—and so on and so forth through the easy let-down that he gave me. On the whole he was fair... most fair.”

Philip was silent for a moment, then he said:

“That I have a thousand dollars and better in the bank was a point in my favor—if it had not been for that the chances for a respectful hearing would have been slim.”

“It is quite a sum,” Barbara said. “Lots of people here, nice people, too, live on small salaries and never get anything ahead. Of course there are others, like the Perkinses, who are rich.”

“It's pitifully small!” said Philip, and looked his disgust.

“I don't know—one can do lots with a thousand dollars. You can buy a very pretty little home here for that,” said Barbara practically.

“Of course your father knows the money was left me and that I didn't make it. He hinted that it was about time that I got into something certain. He even said that as soon as I did we might marry. It's awfully lucky about that money. I hope to goodness nothing will happen to the bank, for if there should, I might just as well quit.”

Both laughed at the idea.

“Isn't it absurd!” said Barbara dolefully.

“No, it's very serious, dear. Let's think what I can do to get a salary out of the town. I wish I could go away, but I simply can't do that. I must stay and help out at home. I suppose I'd better try and bone the papers for more work. That's the only sure thing in sight. I can always get that in small doses, because it helps the sale. My friends are willing to pay something for the opportunity to criticize the drivel—it's about the only opportunity they have had yet. It's a great thing to be a literary man in a small town, Barbara!”

“I hate to think I am to be bought,” Barbara said angrily. “That it all rests on money, as though love were valueless.”

“It's a commercial age.”

“You seem to believe in nothing.” There was marked disfavor in her glance.

Philip raised his eyes to hers. “I believe in your happiness and mine if I succeed. I have every confidence in myself.”

“But not in me—you never speak of that!”

“Yes, dear, in you, too!”

“You don't say it as if you meant it!”

“I am not accustomed to saying things I mean seriously.”

“I wish you would pay me the compliment of being serious.”

“I do.”

And truly beneath all the flippancy his heart-was heavy—and as lead. III

It was Sunday morning. Philip pushed into the church as the congregation streamed out through the wide doors. He made his way up to the choir loft where a man had just risen from his seat before the organ. This was Franz Becker.

“You are late, Franz,” he observed.

“It is Communion Sunday,” Becker said in a deep beautiful voice. “That makes it late.”

“See here,” said Philip, “I wish you would ask me to dinner with you. Anson's home and I want to avoid him if possible.”

“Certainly,” answered Becker,—“by all means come with me.”

They went down and out of the church: Philip, light and active in all his movements; Becker, ponderous and slow—but masterful always, a man for the big things of his art. A warm friendship existed between the two. Philip had an intense admiration for the musician, who seemed to dwell in a state pretty evenly divided between abject despondency and settled rage. He respected this temperamental constancy. They were both friendless in a marked degree, neither of them being calculated to invite an extensive or varied acquaintance. Few people enjoyed Philip's conversation. Indeed, it was a special point with him that they should not. Nor did Becker rejoice in any great popularity. He was wholly repellent in his attitude toward the small world in which he moved—with a savage pride that was ever on the alert. He might have been in a primitive sort of way something of a social lion, but his taming was too imperfect to admit of it. His rudeness and barbarities comprised the most interesting anecdotes the town could furnish. Becker came of a class where poverty was the unvarying rule—meanness and commonness had been his earliest companions and in a moderated form these two kept their place at his side, chaining and crippling him, running him to the earth where he would have soared—a clog upon his steps forever.

Just how he had acquired his mastery of music none could tell. It was part instinct—part study—that in its feverish intensity was all but incomprehensible. His father had been a musician of more than passing note in the little German capital where he had lived, hoped and died, leaving the promise of his genius unfulfilled. There, his mother, after a brief widowhood, had married again, a man much beneath her in every respect. The marriage was followed by a speedy emigration to America, where a brother of her second husband had settled. Franz's stepfather was a shoemaker and had wished Franz to follow his trade; but as the boy grew and as inclination became purpose, and purpose in turn work, that which was locked up within him found expression. He could think and feel and dream. Best of all, perhaps, he discovered that his rare talent had a moneyed value that he was quick to profit by—then came the rush of ambition that was to carry him on and place him with the masters. It spent itself and he was left where it had found him—exhausted and wearied by the fruitless effort he had made. He could only go so far and no farther—circumstances drew in like a narrow circle about him. He was a giant set to do a dwarf's labor. From the start his mother and stepfather had strenuously opposed him on every hand.

However, when he had proved that music possessed a money value that he turned readily to account, they ceased to object—for money, like religion, is sacred, and not to be made light of.

But his determination to rise above the dependent and precarious position of an instructor they persistently combated. Enough to live on comfortably to them represented enough for soul and body alike. That his art meant to him expression and development, they never guessed and he never sought to explain. He was very patient with them and forgiving.

So, silently and without complaint, he drudged away as teacher and organist, his burden made heavy by innumerable younger brothers and sisters whom he was pushing with him into humble respectability.

Going back into the past he could recall the hard bitter season that came in his childhood and youth: there were things done then, want endured and privation, that even in the comparative luxury of his success made his heart sick with a deadly sense of shame and humiliation.

He could remember the death of a little baby sister that happened shortly after the family's arrival in the town. The memory of that event stood forth distinct and minute down to the least particular. It was one of those hopelessly miserable experiences he would have liked to forget, but could not.

There were many little ones then and they were very poor, indeed. His stepfather had not been able to pay for the assistance which is customary at such times, but had shaped a coffin with his own hands for the little body, and when all was ready, borrowing a horse and wagon from a neighbor, had driven to the graveyard, holding the pine box across his knees. As his mother was ill, and could not go, Franz had ridden alone with the shoemaker, who, even then, to all appearances was an old man bent and gray from much confinement to his bench. The small boy rode crouching in the bottom of the wagon, for there was not room for him upon the seat. He was long haunted by the vision, ineffaceable and clear, of his father, as he drove along, bending sadly over the burden in his lap, gray and somber, with the poor dignity of grief.

Their way took them past his uncle's store, for in a squalid fashion the brother was well-to-do. As they passed his place the child who huddled drearily in the bed of the cart, oppressed by an indefinite sense of sorrow, saw his uncle standing beside his open door in his shirt-sleeves—the center of a lounging group of idlers—and when the man became conscious of the nearness of the two, the wide-eyed child and the father, driving the horse, the coffin in his lap, he laughed aloud.

It was years afterward, when his uncle had quitted the town for a larger field somewhere in the West that the brooding solitary boy comprehended the full meaning of that day's ride, and it gave him an insight into the quality of human sympathy that one can safely rely upon receiving in the hour of need, far beyond his age. It served to augment a peculiar harshness of belief—a wish to keep to himself and from contact with others.

The family's poverty, which was beyond denial or subterfuge, only intensified this characteristic. His pride was like a raw sore;—the kindest touch was positive pain for him. Anything that savored of patronage or of condescension met with an instant and rude rebuff.

The Beckers—for the family was known by this name—a tacit recognition of Franz's importance and the family's unimportance that offended no one more than it did Franz—were extremely imposing as to numbers, with a majority in favor of the sterner sex, and the old shoemaker's patriotism had been evinced in the naming of his numerous offspring.

On the particular Sunday in question the midday meal was rendered more cheerful than otherwise by Bismarck and Von Molke, the two most youthful of Franz's half-brothers, who upset divers mugs of milk as well as pretty thoroughly smearing their small features with chicken gravy. Bismarck was finally ordered from the table by his father in very broken English because of some flagrant breach of good manners.

His exodus was shortly followed by that of his brothers and sisters who were in transit through that state of physical incompleteness, the sign of which is seen in the combining of long legs with diffidence.

These had eaten as though on a wager and one by one as they finished their meal slipped from their seats and took themselves off, the last mouthful in process of mastication.

Soon there remained only the old shoemaker, his wife, Franz, Philip and Von Molke—who still toiled manfully, albeit wearily, with a spoon tight-clutched in his chubby fist at whatever came within reach.

Bismarck had reappeared upon the scene. Into his small soul neither modesty nor diffidence had ever seeped even in microscopic quantities and he skirmished noiselessly about the room, always heedful of his father's guttural command to “go away”—promptly exiting at one door to appear as promptly at another with recriminations hoarse upon his lips against Von Molke, whose appetite, generaled with a nice knowledge of its capacity, bade fair to outlast the pudding.

With cold malignancy the latter's periodic cry of, “More, please,” would sound, and up would go his plate in spite of his brother's muffled entreaties that he should desist. In this manner Bismarck saw the last fragment of the pudding disposed of, which sight so maddened him that he forgot all caution and darted at Von Molke intent upon wresting the coveted prize from his possession.

In the moment of victory the strong arm of paternal law was interposed between the combatants and the assailant, hotly pursued by the assailed, was borne from the room in his father's arms to meet his punishment in the back yard.

“Come,” Franz said, rising. “Come, let us go to my room.”

And Philip followed him, hearing him mutter as he went: “Can he not wait when my friend is here?”

It was a large bare apartment they entered, carpetless and curtainless, with an iron bedstead at one side and a hideously ornate stove at the other.

Philip lounged down into a chair, searching in his pocket for pipe and tobacco.

Without—for the room overlooked the back yard—they could hear Bismarck and his father. The former was crying, while his parent was expostulating with him in mixed German and English, but the sounds of grief continued with no show of abatement.

“He has a vile temper,” Franz said, “when he is angry. The little boys are not bad as such little beasts go.”

“I think them amusing,” Philip responded. “The way in which a child profits by the presence of guests to gorge himself on dainties is a fair example of uncontrolled human nature.”

Just then they heard the patter of small feet beyond the door and a faint voice saying: “I want in!”

It was Bismarck, and he waited for no answer, but inserted himself ingratiatingly into the room, presenting a countenance whereon grief and gravy had combined with disastrous results.

He was still sobbing but managed to gasp:

“I ain't hurt. It ain't that—but I do hate to have a darned old foreigner bang me about—it hurts my feelings!”

And he made a dive into Franz's lap, burying his head against his breast where for exactly three minutes he remained with wriggling legs a victim of keen despair.

“There is Americanism for you with a vengeance, Franz,” said Philip.

The three minutes having expired and native depravity having usurped the place of anguish, Bismarck was forcibly expelled from the room and withdrew to more congenial fellowship with his brothers.

Philip broke the silence that succeeded Bismarck's expulsion in which they had both been actively engaged.

“Well,” he said, “I haven't seen you for a whole week, Franz. However, I don't suppose you have anything good to tell me.” Franz made a savage gesture that fully expressed a large disgust.

“Do you know, Franz,” Philip continued, “we haven't originated much over here except the Declaration of Independence and a beastly bargain-counter spirit in relation to the arts.” He paused a moment, then added laughingly: “One knows so much at twenty-four. I am frequently astonished at the scope of my critical capacity. It must be hereditary with me,—you know my father was a minister. They are the only class of men who enjoy the delightful privilege of unrestricted judgment. In that profession simple ignorance is not a hindrance, but rather a help.”

Franz was in no mood for frivolity. “You are more than apt to offend people by what you say. Of course with me it makes no difference. You should be more thoughtful.”

“I offend people, my dear fellow; that's what I am living for.”