Chapter VIII: Part 8

When a new family comes to Oaklands, the natives have three tests by which the strangers are graded and accorded citizenship in one of several degrees, the first being financial, the second, moral, and the third, social. Have they paid for their house in full, or is it held on mortgage? Will they take a church pew, and if so, in which one of the four churches? Does the man of the family wear a collar, tie, and coat when at rest in the bosom of his family?—appearing in shirtsleeves upon the front porch, even of a hot summer evening, no longer being permitted by the rising generation of daughters trained at the Bridgeton High School.

The Scotts had passed the tests in a manner satisfactory to all, immediately taking a pew, neither aggressively toward the front, nor yet economically in the rear, in our equivalent of the Established Church, of which, it seemed, they were all members. Thus the only questioning murmurs that had ever arisen about the head of the family came from a few discontented people who had considered Tom Scott an inexperienced city man of money, and therefore had tried, but tried in vain, to sell him either an unsound horse, badly cured hay, or other farm produce of poor quality, but at a price above the market rates. To these Scott quickly showed so much horse lore, and such a shrewd and experienced side to his character in general, that they voiced the opinion between themselves that he wasn’t, in their judgment, what he seemed to be, and that if it were known _how_ and _where_ he made his money—“well, gambling and horse-racing had made many a fortune, and the ’Piscopals should go slow before they committed themselves to his iniquities and asked him to pass the plate.”

Few guests from outside ever went to the Queen Anne villa, and though Mrs. Scott and her daughters joined in the milder social diversions of the village, it was suddenly announced, the fall after they graduated from the high school and something in the nature of a party was expected of them, that mother and daughters were going to the old country to spend Christmas, but that Tom Scott himself would stay behind and keep bachelor’s hall. Then again the murmurers said: “Why doesn’t he go with them? Has he done anything that prevents his going home?”

It was a little after this time that Scott, an inveterate home lover, and now lonely and hungering for companionship, appeared at the Pharmacy, his mantle of reserve replaced by an almost garrulous familiarity. His first act was to buy a box of really fine cigars, which he passed about freely among his fellows, only frowning at the one outsider, a drummer, who, pushing his way into the group, prepared to take a fistful at once. “Slow, young man, go slow,” Scott said deliberately, measuring the fellow with a single sweep of the eye; “when you ask a gentleman to drink, he doesn’t fill five glasses before he empties the first, does he?”

The drummer slunk back with an exclamation half impertinent, half apologetic, and at that moment the door was flung open, and Martin Cortright entered, agitation written on every feature of his usually calm student face; going directly to the proprietor, who was leaning over the soda-water counter, he called in a voice very unlike his usual quiet tones:—

“Give me some rough-on-rats, and any other poison you have; if they die in the house, and we have to leave, so be it. My patience is exhausted. To-day, while we were out driving, the rats, or a rat, actually got into my little book room, though it has a hardwood floor and high wainscot, and gnawed the corner off the antique leather binding of my ‘Denton’s History of New York’; if this continues, imagine the condition of my library!”

“Why don’t you cover all the food in the house and try traps, Mr. Cortright?” asked Tom Scott, turning abruptly from the group who were discussing the merits of a litter of bull pups that were asleep in a box behind the candy counter.

“Traps!” ejaculated Martin. “We have tried five different kinds, and rats managed to take the bait from four, without snapping the springs, and the fifth, the wire-cage variety, they must have rolled about the kitchen like a toy, for we found it in a corner standing on end. My belief is, Mr. Scott, that intelligence in rats varies, as it does in human beings, and that these particular specimens are what might be called intellectual, and are only to be circumvented and trapped, if at all, by some one who understands their own methods. How do they get into the house? The foundations are solid, the cellar plastered, and with a cement floor that shows no holes, and yet in the space of a month there is hardly a door in the house that does not show the marks of their teeth.”

“You are perfectly right,” said Scott, with the utmost seriousness, interest sparkling in his eyes; “they must be understood and met on their own ground, for they have surely some runway by which they enter and leave, and no two tribes of rats work in exactly the same way, any more than any two gangs of housebreakers handle their tools alike.” Then, as he saw that all eyes were fixed on him inquiringly, he added, in the most casual way possible, “I’ve always been keen on watching animals to learn their ways, and as a young chap I had some queer experiences with rats.”

“Why don’t you take up the reward offered, and clear the town of the rats?” asked the drummer, sneeringly; “a gent who’s so well acquainted with their ways ought to find it a cinch.”

The sneer passed unnoticed. “Have the Selectmen offered a reward in the matter?” Scott asked.

“Yes, posted this afternoon,” said the druggist; “there is one of the bills on the tree opposite. One hundred dollars’ reward for any one who will either do the job or suggest a remedy.”

For a full minute Tom Scott stood with his hands in his pockets looking into the show window and whistling softly to himself as if he were alone; then squaring about he almost called, so loud was his voice, “I’ve time on my hands now, and I’m going to take up that challenge, boys: if I make the rats go in my traps, I’ll give the hundred to the Bridgeton Hospital; if they don’t, I’ll add a hundred to the sum to make it bigger bait for a smarter fellow.”

“I wish you could start to-night and begin at my house, but of course that is asking too much; my wife and the maids are completely upset,” Martin Cortright said beseechingly, as though Scott were some sort of priest whose incantations would bring immediate relief to the nerves of the feminine part of the household, and safety to his own beloved books.

“No, I was going to suggest that myself; I must get the lay of the land a bit before I can plan my game, and night’s the only time for that. I must go to my house first for a few things that may come handy. Has any one a team outside?”

“I have,” said father, who had opened the door as the conversation began, only entering far enough to hand some prescriptions to the druggist, with a few words of directions concerning their filling. “I must wait about for an hour at least, so that I can drive you up and back again as well as not. What, you are going to try and rid us of this plague? Surely, then, as health officer, it is my duty to give you a lift.”

“Thank you, Dr. Russell,” said Scott, still in a sort of dream, as the two went out together.

“I wonder where Tom Scott got acquainted with rats,” said the first Selectman, who had all this time been playing chess imperturbably with the Town Clerk upon the top of a barrel of pop-corn balls.

“In jail, most likely; that’s a thriving place for ’em, and there’s plenty of time to watch ’em,” sneered the drummer, who had just reached into the cigar box that Scott had left upon the counter, only to find that its owner had pocketed the remaining contents.

“You speak as if you’d had personal experience. I see you list rat-traps in your hardware side line,” said the Town Clerk, tartly. He liked Scott, and also as a native he resented such remarks from a stranger.

“Mated!” cried the first Selectman, and the coterie began to break up.

Tom Scott and father drove along for a few moments in silence, and then father asked him some questions about Mrs. Hobbs, the friend of Martha Saunders, who was Scott’s housekeeper during the absence of his wife.

“She’s a good woman and a fine cook, but, Dr. Russell, she’s too stiff for comfort; she serves my meals as if I was a gentleman, which I’m not, and never pretended, and won’t sit down at table with me.”

Father was somewhat surprised at this remark, for he only realized Scott as intelligent and a straightforward man of his word, and, further than this, social classification never entered his head.

The house reached, Scott deftly fastened and blanketed the horses, opened the door with a latch-key, and, leading the way through several dimly lit rooms, said, “Perhaps you’ll kindly wait in here in my sitting-room while I hunt about for what I need; there’s always a bit of fire in here, sir, and it’s less lonely than the empty big rooms.”

As soon as father accustomed himself to the light, he saw he was in what is commonly known as a den. A low book-case filled one side, above which hung some good sporting prints in colour, pictures of famous horses, all winners of the Derby, mingled with a few really fine engravings of English rural scenes by Birket Foster, and others of his school. In the bay window was a combination table and writing-desk, upon which papers were littered, a tray of pipes acting as a paper-weight, while three framed photographs and a work-basket of ample proportions spoke of the absent wife and daughters. Comfortable easy-chairs filled the other window recesses; one showing more signs of wear than the rest was drawn up before the hearth, within the arms of which dozed a large, but exceedingly amiable, bulldog, an old friend of father’s, that doubtless would have wagged a welcome had he the wherewithal; this lacking, he grinned broadly, and reading in father’s face that he wished to sit in the chair, rolled sleepily to the rug, where, resting against father’s knees, he threw back his head, extending his chin and throat to be scratched.

As the dog finally dropped his head to the rug in absolute content, father stretched his feet toward the fire, noticing for the first time that it was not of logs but a glowing mass of Liverpool coal, a rarity in a New England village. Then, as idleness bred of a capacity for dwelling upon the details of what surrounds one, seized him, his eyes travelled upward to the mantel-shelf, which had odd, narrow cupboards on either side that reached quite to the ceiling; between these, set panel-wise in a heavy frame of black oak, was an oil painting. This was of such an unusual quality and subject for the surroundings, that father first rubbed his eyes and then pushed the chair back to see the better. The background was painted broadly, or, rather, merely suggested a dark-walled room with the corner of a table littered with the remains of a recent feast; upon a crimson leather chair close by the table was perched a young woman, a-tiptoe, in her stocking feet; her copper-brown hair and some white, loose-flowing wrap drooped from her shoulders, while with both hands she held her skirts about her knees and stared in wide-eyed terror at a couple of rats that scurried across the floor toward her. The abrupt lighting of the figure came entirely from a bull’s-eye lantern that was held in front of the man who crouched in the shadow directly opposite the woman.

So striking and realistic was the canvas that after an examination at close range, which revealed the name of the painter, an artist of repute who had made a name some twenty years before for his daring and original portraits and figure compositions, father placed the easy-chair in the best possible position, reseated himself, and for the moment forgot his errand and surroundings in his blended admiration and curiosity concerning the painting.

* * * * *

“I suppose you are wondering how a five-hundred-guinea picture like that came here, sir,” said Tom Scott’s voice, so close behind the chair that father started, only to give a second and more emphatic jump and ejaculate, “Bless me! for a moment I took you for a burglar,” as the man came forward and stood leaning against the mantel, upon which he set a small bull’s-eye lantern. Usually so carefully dressed and precise, even when working as he often did about his stable and garden, Scott had undergone a complete transformation. A close-fitting cap pulled down about his ears touched the collar of a dull gray sweater, below which were tightly fitting knee breeches, long stockings, and flexible, heelless shoes; a stout bag that he brought in he dropped on the floor, and it gave out a clank, suggestive of handcuffs and chains.

For a moment after father spoke, Scott coloured deeply, even allowing for the firelight, and then he repeated the question concerning the picture.

“Yes, I must confess that I am curious to know something of the history of that painting,” replied father, speaking slowly and peering from half-closed lids, “for though it is evidently what is called a fancy piece, there is something about it that makes me feel that it was a real happening and the woman real flesh and blood.”

It was Tom Scott’s turn to start and scan father’s face narrowly. Whatever he read there evidently satisfied him, for he said quickly, as if determined to speak before he changed his mind, “She was real flesh and blood, and she is still, please God. The woman in the picture is my wife!”

“Your wife? Not the Mrs. Scott that I know and have tended?”

“Yes, there’s never been but one for me. Of course I’ll not say that she’s as slim and girlish as she was twenty-five years ago, but she’s just as game and true as she was that night. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you the story of it all, and not make it long. Moreover, it will be a kindness to me. For some time back I’ve felt that I must share those days with some man that I could trust, and now, to-night, with all this rat talk, and the missus who knows being gone, I must speak it out to some one or lose my grip. No, don’t look troubled, sir, it’s no crime, only something I’ve held back for the good of my girls, as I thought, and if I do right or wrong, it’s for you to help me judge, Dr. Russell.

“Some people hereabout, as well as in other places, have wondered where and how I got my start, and if the money I have was rightly come by. Yes, sir, I see by your face that you’ve heard this, and I’ll not attempt to deny that, since leaving my trade, I’ve taken enough trouble to hide it to make people suspect more than there is to tell.”

Opening one of the cupboards with a key fastened to his pocket by a chain, he took out a small double leather case; one side contained a photograph of an old lady in a black gown and a white puffed widow’s cap; from the opposite opening, he drew a thick card, yellow from its rest in the dark, and handed it to father. Printed on it in heavy letters were these words: “Successor to the original Harry Leverings—Rat-catcher. At the old stand—2100 West 42d St.—Contracts made for clearing hotels and public buildings.—No poisons used, traps and strictly reliable men only employed.” Across the bottom in silhouette were a string of steel traps and a bevy of scurrying rats.

Taking the card from father, whose face certainly expressed all the interest necessary to encourage the narrator, Scott placed it on the mantel-shelf as a sort of prompter, and straightway plunged into the story:—

“There were only two boys of us who lived to grow up at home, John and me. Of course, when my father died, John, being the elder, had the land holdings, a goodish bit of a farm that had given a fair living when well managed, while I had very little, but leave to get out. My mother loved me best, I knew, but John was the heir, and that was the beginning and the end of it. To keep me by her, she would have been willing to see me knuckle down to be little more than a field hand to my brother, but I would not. I had no trade except if knowing a good horse and how to ride him could be called one, but I could shoot straight, and through friendship with a game-keeper, I knew the ways of every beastie of the woods and fallows of a great estate on the edge of which our land lay. Many a night I’ve lain out in the fern with him, and miles did I tramp after him when he went about setting and tending his traps for things that killed the game. Poor McTaggert, I remember him well; he only died last year.

“What I meant to do more than get away, I never knew when I took my fortune, less than a hundred pounds, and left for America, for John was hard and had an underhand way of working between me and my mother that made every day I stayed a battle. Then, too, he made trouble with my boyish sweetheart, Annie Fenton, a neighbour’s daughter, that in my eyes always acted as if she feared and disliked him, yet dared not tell him so. For a couple of months I drifted about here and there, but never locating. One night when I had been thinking that my money would likely run low before I had made my start, I was stopping at a cheap commercial hotel in New York, when I heard them talking of the rats that overran the kitchen, and about one Harry Leverings, who, with a gang of men under him, made a handsome living at rat-catching. This man, moreover, was coming there that night.

“Then my old days with McTaggert and my work of trap-setting came to me, and getting leave to go below stairs, I chanced to fall in with Leverings himself, who proved to be a fellow-countryman. One thing led to another; I told him of a kind of trap McTaggert made, and sent for one; soon I was working for him, improved the trap, took out a patent on it, and five years later, when he was ready to drop out and go home, I succeeded to his business, as the card says, and sometimes employed upwards of twenty men who travelled all about the country, though for some reason I can’t explain, my own name never appeared as head of the business.

“Meanwhile, things had gone badly at home; soon after I left, Annie Fenton’s father, thinking a bird in the hand the best bargain, tried to force her to marry my brother, but she slipped away to an aunt somewhere in America, leaving no trace of herself.

“John mismanaged the land, and, being caught in sharp practice, fell into debt, leased out what he could of the place without thought of mother, and went, some said, to Australia, though others said he had followed Annie. Next, my mother fell into straits, and as I knew she couldn’t be happy here, at least until I had a settled home, I sent her money every month, through old McTaggert, lest it should be caught in any way to pay my brother’s debts.

“It was close upon Christmas of the sixth year after I left home when I had about made up my mind to go back for the holidays, that one of my best customers, the owner of several large buildings for which I cared, asked me if I would go out to his country house for a week or so and see if I could do something about the rats, that, since cold weather, had come into the cellar in a drove and were working up through the house, destroying the woodwork and furnishings. He was to have house parties there all through the holidays, and he wished, if possible, to have the rats kept down, if nothing more, lest they annoy his guests.

“By this time I had given up personal jobs, preferring to look over the ground and arrange the plans for my men, but Mr. —— rather insisted that I should go to his place alone, promising to put me up at the lodge, and so I went. Talk about seeing life, Dr. Russell, no one sees more of it behind the scenes, as it were, than a rat-catcher. To do his work properly on a large scale, he must be trusted to go everywhere, at all hours. Those years had educated me, and at the same time made me old at thirty. I saw into all their ways, how houses were furnished, the pictures and books people bought, what food they ate, and what wine they drank, and—beg pardon, sir, I’m getting off my story.

“This country house had sliding doors, draped by curtains all through, and I saw at once that it was through these doors the rat runways lay. Not wishing to make talk of the matter, Mr. —— explained my errand only to the butler and told him to give me freedom of all below the bedroom floors at night, so that I could remove both traps and rats, if any were caught before daylight. The second night of my stay there was a long dinner that lasted well into the night, with music and a play, for among the guests that had come were some singers and a famous artist, who rigged up a stage in the drawing-room and trimmed it up with draperies and the like.

“I saw a good deal of the doings from behind a curtain where the first of my trap line was set, and after everybody had gone to bed, and the extra waiters had left for their quarters outside, I took my dark lantern that I always kept lighted and went about the dining-room to see if any fruit or sweets that would distract the rats had been left upon the sideboard. At that moment I heard a rustling in a cage-trap, a kind I seldom use, on the opposite side of the room; going to it I found that three young rats had crowded into it together. Not wishing to go out, I dropped trap and all into the bag that a rat-catcher always carries. Then I continued across the room carefully, for the chairs were all in confusion, the men having been tired and left in a hurry. I was about to open the slide in the lantern front, when I saw, reflected in one of the long mirrors, a woman’s figure coming down the stairs, shading the candle that she carried in one hand.

“The figure came on through the open door straight into the dining room, where I stood half in the corner with the curtain held before me. The woman was slender and rather tall; her hair was hanging loosely and looked black in the dim light. She wore a white wrapper of some sort, and by the muffled sound of her steps, I knew that she was in stocking feet.

“What did she want—a glass of water, to meet a sweetheart, or was she looking for some lost article? For all of these things had I seen happen. It was the last, for, setting the candle upon the table, she began to grope underneath it, and, giving a soft exclamation of pleasure, held to the light a glittering diamond collar with a wide clasp of coloured gems. But it was not the sight of these that made me turn so cold that the lantern nearly fell from my stiff fingers; it was when the light of the candle flashed full on the girl’s face and reddish hair, and showed me Annie Fenton!

“Before I could pull myself together, I heard steps coming from the butler’s pantry just behind me, and a man’s figure, with a clean-shaven face and wearing the dress suit of a waiter, stepped into the light. Facing Annie, he laid his hand on her shoulder. She started and cringed, but not a sound left her lips.

“‘Why didn’t you come to meet me as I bade you?’ his voice whispered harshly. ‘Did you think now that I’ve found you, I would let you slip through my fingers again?’ Then, as his eyes fell on the collar, he closed his hand on it, saying, ‘That will be very useful to me just now; my plans aren’t working well. Forget that you found this, my girl, and if you are wise, don’t scream.’ Then ten words oozed from Annie’s lips, ‘John Scott, let go! I said I’d never meet you.’

“It was my brother,—at best, a would-be thief,—dogging my sweetheart. He was bearded when I left home, and so I did not know him. For a second my right hand was on the pistol that I always carry when at work; then I suddenly realized what it would mean to the two women I best loved if I shot my brother. If Annie would only scream, some of the gentlemen who slept in a chamber beyond the billiard room could hardly be asleep, and they would come. But how to make her?

“Dr. Russell, there’s something works in us besides ourselves at times. Yes, I see you know it, too. Scarce knowing what I did, I turned my bull’s-eye straight and full on Annie; with one hand reaching for the trap, I shook those fool rats loose, and they, half blinded, ran down the light streak toward her. Next thing I knew, she was up on a chair, and shriek upon shriek rang through the house. Before I could scarce move, the room was full of the gentlemen, Mr. —— and the artist being in the lead. The man, bewildered by the suddenness of it all, loosed his hold on the jewels, and vanished through the pantry, as if he dived into water, but quick as he went, they both knew that I had seen.

“Before either of us could offer a word of explanation, my employer took in the whole matter at a glance, as he thought, recognized Annie as the maid of one of his guests, and, laying the uproar only to the rats and me, laughed at it as a great joke, while the artist fellow, seeing Annie, who kept on screaming and was too frightened to get down from the chair, called,—‘By Jove! What a picture! Stay there just for a minute while I make a memory sketch,’—at least, I think that’s what he called it.

* * * * *

“Well, sir, we were married New Year’s Eve, and neither of us have since ever put in _words_ what we saw and heard that night, just before I loosed the rats.

“A year after, I was overlooking some work in a picture gallery, when I came face to face with the picture as it’s there now, and I knew I’d have to buy it first or last, sir, even if it bit a hole in my savings, for even a rat-catcher, as I was then, if he had a good mother of his own, doesn’t want his wife, with no shoes and her petticoats up to her knees, to be seen outside his own home.

“Oh, yes, of course, that was twenty-five years ago. The rat money went into well-advised real estate; we are settled here, and the missus and the girls have gone to bring my mother, past seventy, to live with us. No, I didn’t go; I couldn’t. My brother is back on the place, and married to a girl with some property. Made money himself in Australia, they say,—God knows how.

“When you know that the things you remember aren’t there, and other things _are_, it’s best not to go back. Now, Dr. Russell, tell me, should I tell my girls, and the men that will want to marry them some day, the story that I’ve told you? What do you think?”

“I think,” said father, standing up so that they stood face to face, “that you are a gentleman; that being said is all, and there is my hand upon it. Nine o’clock already; we must be going.”

Tom Scott picked up his ratting bag that held some of his famous traps, and, taking the old card from the shelf, was about to throw it into the fire, then hesitated, and put it back in the case facing his mother’s picture, saying with a smile, half sad, half humorous, “I’m afraid, sir, there’s that about the old business that would make me lonely if I forgot.”

* * * * *

A month later a paragraph appeared in the local papers that read as follows: “Mr. Thomas Scott of our town has made good his promise of ending the scourge of rats, and has turned over the sum of two hundred dollars, he having doubled the amount of the reward offered, to the Bridgeton Hospital.

“There is a pretty little incident connected with this work. Mr. Scott, who has made a fortune in real estate, got his first start by inventing and patenting a particularly clever rat-trap, and it was with some of these traps, put by and almost forgotten, that he has been of so much use to his fellow-townsmen, for which they now take this way of expressing their thanks.”

XII
TRANSITION

=DECEMBER=—THE MOON OF SNOWSHOES

I

“Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even!”

sang the violin with pathetic accent, and then stopped abruptly, as the player dropped the bow and pressed his face against the window. The stars shone from the cold blue of a cloudless sky; below lay the city ablaze with light. It was a Danish city, and the player was a Dane, but when a violin sings, it speaks to each one in his own language. Bells pealing from a neighbouring church took up the same carol of Christmastide, and young voices echoed it faintly from within the doors of many homes.

On that Christmas night, two young women were drilling childish voices in the singing of the same tune. These women had never met, or either even dreamed of the other’s existence, yet a current, as actual as the sound-waves of the music, at that moment began to draw them together, the player of the violin, Gurth Waldsen, being the unconscious medium.

Waldsen looked from the window at the outlines of the palace across the water, its ramparts twinkling with lights that looked like reflections of the brilliant winter stars, but his thoughts did not follow his sight. In a few days he would be an exile from both home and country, and though the leaving was wholly voluntary, yet the past and present struggled together. A visionary in many respects, refusing to understand social classification as read by his family, he had, in his mother’s eyes, capped the climax of his folly on his graduation from the University by refusing a diplomatic career, insisting upon earning his bread literally by the sweat of his brow, and betrothing himself to a pretty, modest, blue-eyed girl of a near-by village,—“A girl of the people,” his mother called her, for though she had been carefully reared, her father, a poor pastor, had been taken from his peasant brothers and educated for the ministry because he was both docile and fragile.

Waldsen’s mother was the controlling power of the family. His father, long since dead, had been a dreamer, a musician, and something of a poet, whose wife had married him in a fit of girlish romance, and then lived to scorn him for his lack of ambition and reproach herself for marrying beneath her. Her only son should make no such mistake; she would oversee at least his social education, but she completely overlooked the matter of heredity.

So little Gurth grew up with only one parent. At ten the boy was tall and undeveloped, with a shock of strange golden-brown hair that he shook back as he played the violin, his greatest pleasure; but at twenty-two he was a slender man with a gold-tipped beard, straight nose, and blue-gray eyes, that looked at and through what he saw, all his features being softened by his father’s dreamy temperament.

Mrs. Waldsen, therefore, set her face against the marriage with the bitterness of her disappointment stung to fury by the memory of her own past. If she loved her son, it was for her own gratification, not for his, and now, as her world was beginning to talk of him, his bearing and gentle accomplishments, should she allow him to be taken from her?

Gurth had waited several months after the first rebuff, hoping that time would mend matters. Andrea could not marry yet; she was the foster-mother to four small brothers, and managed the little household for her overworked and underpaid father, but in another year Theresa, the younger sister, would be able to take her place. Time, however, did nothing but rivet Mrs. Waldsen’s decision, and in the interval the knowledge of her treatment of his father came to Gurth, and he knew then that argument was hopeless. He had some money of his own, though merely a trifling legacy from an uncle, and his last interview with his mother brought to an end all idea of remaining in Denmark. This was what he was fighting alone in his study that Christmas night, when, turning to his violin for sympathy, it sang the half-sad carol that Andrea had been teaching her little brothers the last time that he supped with her.

Gurth now regretted the time that had passed in temporizing, in drifting. To-night would end it all, and freed, as far as possible for a man to free himself, he would carry out in detail a plan of life that had often before vaguely offered him escape—not merely liberty to marry as he pleased, but also release from the particular social conditions into which he was born, that had at all times cramped him. He loved Nature and his fellow-men, in a genuine and wholesome fashion, but with the institution called Society, as it existed about him, he seemed pre-natally at war.

Putting aside what he had been, he chose to go as an emigrant, elbow to elbow with labourers; going to gain a living from the soil by his own toil, to try if the strength of body in him matched the strength of intention. He meant to follow an outdoor life, and thus make a home for Andrea, wearing the path a little before he let her willing feet tread it with him.

As he looked about his rooms he almost smiled at his few possessions. Some long shelves of books, a rack of music, a few pelt rugs, a high-post bed behind an alcove curtain, chairs, a long oak table upon the end of which stood a great bird-cage, while half a dozen smaller ones hung by the window. A porcelain stove stood under the mantel-shelf, and above it was a litter of pipes and broken foils, while on one corner, in a little place apart, shrine-like and surrounded by growing ivy, the portrait of a young girl looked at him. It was merely a photograph taken with the crude art of a provincial town, but the stiff posing could not mar the charm of the face, and Gurth looked longingly. Leaving the window he moved slowly toward it until, resting his elbows on the shelf, he touched her lips with his, and then started at the unconscious act. To see her once more, to-morrow, Stephen’s Day, and then go away! His heart and its primitive instinct whispered, “Marry her—take her with you!” What he considered his reason said,—“Where to? It is winter; the sea is deep and wide, the journey long. Make the home; wait for spring!” Ah, this was one of the many matters in which what is called impulse would have been wiser because the more direct of the two. It was morning before Gurth had thought the matter to a conclusion, and the streets had slept and were waking again before he threw himself upon the bed, still dressed.

He spent the following day in destroying papers and in writing letters to a friend or two. He had the equivalent of about five thousand dollars, to begin life with, and he resolved to hoard the money as carefully as if he were indeed a peasant starting for the New World. This money represented the land, the home; his own brain and hands must do the rest. A trunk of books, his violin, some of his plainest clothes, were all that he would take; a rough coat and a fur cap must be bought to supplement his wardrobe.

The bullfinch by the window piped gaily, and the chaffinches in the cages with fantastic dormers chirped in reply, reminding him of their necessities, and, after feeding them, he unhooked their cages and, fastening them, covered them and prepared to go out. He had promised Andrea that he would be with her for supper. It was already five o’clock, and the Clausens lived far outside the city, an hour’s sharp driving on the Klampenborg road, and the sleigh that he had ordered was waiting. Packing the cages under the fur robes, he started the horse at a brisk pace. It seemed already, so powerful is imagination, as if this decision had given him a greater sense of liberty.

In a long, low-studded room, whose polished board floor was relieved by a few squares of bright carpet, two young girls were preparing the supper table. The youngest was at an age when her closely braided hair lacked the dignity of being put up, and her skirts were still a few inches from the ground. She was squarely built, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and rosy with good nature. She held a large loaf, beautifully light and baked evenly brown, which she was regarding with great glee. “Lift it, Andrea!” she cried. “See how light it is, and how sweet it smells! Now that my baking is as good as yours, you can be married, for you know that father said a year ago you could not marry until I baked good bread!” and Theresa laughed teasingly. Andrea, so addressed, looked at the loaf carefully, then silently kissed the face that was smiling above it. She was half a head taller than her sister, with an oval face surrounded by thick, smooth, bright golden hair that was parted and braided in two wide bands and coiled around her head. Her cheek-bones, a trifle high for good proportion, were relieved by great, dark-blue eyes, with jet-black lashes; the chin was firm, the mouth not small but opening over long white teeth. The indescribable charm of the face came from the eyes. The kiss was the only answer that she gave her sister, who rattled on from one theme to another as she brought in the different dishes, occasionally joining in with the four little boys who were singing carols in a group around a battered piano at the other end of the room, mingling their shrill voices with the pastor’s tenor.

“Mark my footsteps, good my page,
Tread thou in them boldly:
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly!”

Gurth paused on the threshold an instant listening to the singing, then entered without knocking. The little boys rushed to hang about him and explore his pockets, and the pastor and Theresa welcomed him warmly. It was Andrea alone who saw a change in his whole demeanour, and wondered at the bird-cages. The evening meal was soon eaten, and the boys went to the kitchen with the toys that Gurth had brought them; the pastor, scenting something, sat erect in his arm-chair, all forgetful of his pipe and expectant of some news, while Theresa hung over him. Gurth stood by the stove, nervous and uncertain how to begin.

Andrea went to him, and, putting her hand through his arm, said quietly, but with an infinite tenderness in her voice, “You are going away, dearest, and you have brought your birds for me to keep for you.”

It was as if her voice smoothed away his fears and perplexities, so all four together they discussed the situation without reserve.

Gurth, forgetting his prudent plans, begged the pastor to marry them then, or at the latest in a few days, when the necessary legalities could be complied with, so that he might leave Andrea as his wife. Upon this point the pastor was obdurate. His practical instinct, born partly of the peasant suspicion of another class, and partly of hard experience, forbade this. Among his parishioners many a wedding had taken place on the eve of parting, and the husband had been swallowed up in that vast new world, while the poor girl at home waited in vain, not knowing whether she was wife or widow.

He liked Gurth in a way, but he was sadly disappointed in his failure to reconcile his mother to the marriage, and, while he believed him sincere at present, he did not know how the separation might affect either of the young people; so he insisted upon delay. If Gurth had established himself by the next Christmas, he might return and marry. If not—well, there were other men who, under the circumstances, would be more suitable for Andrea, though he did not voice his opinion. In reality he had no romance in his nature, and he disbelieved in unequal marriages, especially if money was not coupled with the rank.

If, after a year’s trial, Gurth was in a position to come for Andrea,—well and good,—but further than that the pastor could be neither coaxed nor driven.

Moreover, he allowed them little privacy for saying good-by.

“I know how to work, and I like it, but you must learn how,” Andrea whispered, as she clung to him. “But I will be ready, Gurth, and, more, if you can’t return, I will go to you!” This understanding was their farewell.

His mother, when she found that he had gone, laughingly told her friends that Gurth had a foolish love affair, and, taking her advice, he had gone away to travel it off.

II

There is nothing that tends so to destroy the conceit of a man little used to the sea, as an ocean voyage in midwinter, especially if it is made on board an emigrant ship. On a good liner he may prop up his flimsy importance in a dozen ways, from feeing stewards to bring him six meals a day while he lies in his berth, to pulling himself together and wearing the distinction of being the only cabin passenger at table during a furious squall. But on an emigrant ship it is impossible to veil or soften stern reality.

Gurth had chosen this way of travel that he might more quickly realize his changed circumstances. For two weeks or perhaps three he must live in this community. Previously he had a theoretical knowledge of the conditions that surround and make poverty. Now for the first time he saw the reality. His first thought was of the wonderful patience of these people; the next conviction was of their unconquered hope.

A dozen perhaps had settled homes in America and had returned to their native land merely to visit, but the multitude were going, they were not quite sure where, to earn their bread, they did not know how. Doubts did not trouble them, their pink pasteboard tickets seemed the pledge of landing somewhere, and as for the rest, they were used to uncertainty.

The fourth day out, a day when a mild streak and a few hours’ sunshine brought all the grotesque animated bundles of clothes from their berths, Gurth took his violin and, without ado, began to play a native ballad, and then another. Silently the people grouped about him, some stealing below to coax up a comrade who was ill.

The intensely earnest look on their faces stimulated him, and he played on and on, grading his music from grave to gay, to suit each in turn, until at last, feeling his wrist failing, he made the national hymn a final effort. Scarcely had the tune taken form than a chorus rose, at first swaying and uncertain, and then gaining power and steadiness, until the last word was reached. The men rubbed their eyes with the backs of horny hands, and women hugged him, and before he realized the situation, one stolid, square-faced man, who had virtually declined to talk to him the day before, was passing around his peaked fur cap to receive a ready shower of small coin, which Gurth could not refuse. So thus he earned his first money. By his violin and its speech, which, however exquisite, no man feels above him, he was admitted to the freemasonry of his companions.

A carpenter who had been home to see his old parents asked Gurth where he was going to settle, and then he realized that he did not know, save what his port was, and that he did not wish to locate far from the sea, nor in a sultry climate. The carpenter drew from him such scant outline of his schemes as he wished to tell—his plan of buying a farm, after he had learned the country’s ways. This man told him about the village where he lived, which was near a New England town whose railways offered a market for small fruits, and he advised Gurth to work for his board and lodging with one of the numerous fruit-growers until he learned the craft, saying that as he spoke English well, Waldsen might earn a trifle above his board, but that a man who had never done hard work was not worth much.

III

It was a bitterly cold winter; the wind swept fiercely through the cut between Sunset and Rocky hills, rushing down the main street at Glen Village, separating the neighbours on either side more effectively than drifts of snow could have done. However deep, there is something cheerful and exhilarating about snow. Children think that it is sent for their special amusement; the shy young man, who drives his sweetheart over to the “Social” in the next village, needs no excuse for putting his arm around her, for light sleighs have been known to upset suddenly without the slightest warning. The old folks are cheerful in their reminiscences of just such episodes, and compare each storm with some long-remembered one in the thirties, noting always the frail and inferior wearing quality of modern snow.

But Wintry Wind is the most exasperating and prying of nature’s messengers, whose mission is the uncovering of weaknesses in all things animate and inanimate. It soon discovers if your eyes are sensitive, your hat a size too small, that you are subject to rheumatism, that your breath is short when you walk uphill, and that your knees bend as you go down, and so turns your cloak over your head like an extinguisher. It knows precisely which shingle lacks a nail, and will lay bare spots calculated to make obstinate leaks. It also spies out the blind whose catch is loose, the gate with one hinge, the elm that is split in the crotch, and the particular chimney flue that leads to the room where your most important relation (who suffers from bronchitis) is being entertained at tea, and it gauges accurately which article on the clothes-line you value the most.

It was this sort of weather, combined with his daughter Margaret’s delicate health, that made Ezra Tolford, living at the Glen Mill, for which the village was named, resolve to have a hired man.

Now Ezra Tolford had many titles to local distinction. He was Deacon of the First Church, and his parents had been zealous before him, his grandfather having had the hardihood to fly to the woods with the church plate on the approach of the British in 1779, thereby risking his life _via_ wild beasts, Hessians, and exposure,—a fact that is brought up in every local historical discourse to this day. Incidentally it might be mentioned that the plucky ancestor (owing to fright and darkness) was never able afterwards to locate the marshy spot where the precious metal was buried; this fact, however, is usually omitted.

Ezra was also Judge of Probate, thanks to a fragmentary law course taken in days when a fond mother had pinched and saved that her only boy might “make his mark.” Thirdly, he was the owner of the best mill on the Pequotuck. A mill that, in spite of the sale of flour and meal at the village store, kept its wheel going five days out of seven during nine months of the year, sawing wood when no one wished flour, and turning out middlings for the cattle when the stacks grew low. So swift was the river that ice very seldom silenced the song the old wheel hummed as it worked.

Lastly, by wise drainage the deacon had turned a dozen acres of protected meadow-land, heretofore regarded as next to useless, into one of the thriftiest fruit farms in southern New England.

All these things made Ezra’s daughter Margaret of special importance in many eyes besides his own, and it was for her sake that he resolved to have a man to hook up the team for her, when he was busy in the mill or away in the village, and do a thousand and one little errands that the sturdier daughters of his neighbours accomplished for themselves.

The Mill House, as it was called, stood on a hill between the Pequotuck and a little brook that, curving, joined the river below the dam. It was a placid-looking white house of a style of architecture that might be called New England Restored. It had been Colonial, but a modern bay-window, a piazza, and a lean-to in the rear had hybridized it; yet it still possessed a dignity never seen in the rural interpretations of the Queen Anne villa.

This particular house had a very attractive outlook. Raised well above them, it was bounded on the western side by the river and the mill-pond that always held the sunset reflections until the twilight absorbed them, while the old red mill with its moss-mottled roof focussed the view. Toward the north and east the meadows ran slantwise up a hillside, where, dotted here and there like grazing sheep, you could see the stones of the burying-ground, where the inhabitants of the glen took their final rest, as if their friends had left them as near heaven as possible, and safe from the floods that used once to sweep the valley. To the south the road ran tolerably straight for three miles down to Glen Village itself.

The interior of the house differed but slightly from others of its class, and that difference consisted in the greater genuineness of its fittings. Evidently the woman who presided over it appreciated relative values, for the sitting-room had glowing crimson curtains and a fire of logs in place of the usual “air-tight,” while in one corner, in the location usually chosen for the inevitable asthmatic parlour organ, stood an upright piano. On the table was a comfortable litter of books and papers.

By the window, looking down the road, stood Margaret Tolford. At the first glance there was nothing striking about her personality. Medium in height and colouring, her slight frame was wrapped in a soft white shawl that gave her a fragile air. At a second glance the deep gray eyes, that looked from under a brow narrowed by a quantity of smooth, coal-black hair, were magnetic in their intelligent wonder. Her eyes said, “There is much that I would understand, but I cannot;” whereas a shallower nature would have thought, “I am misunderstood!”