Chapter I

SCENE: In an upper chamber of a boarding-house in Melanchthon Place, Boston, a mature, plain young lady, with every appearance of establishing herself in the room for the first time, moves about, bestowing little touches of decoration here and there, and talking with another young lady, whose voice comes through the open doorway of an inner room.

* * * * *

_Miss Ethel Reed_, from within: “What in the world are you doing, Nettie?”

_Miss Henrietta Spaulding_: “Oh, sticking up a household god or two. What are you doing?”

_Miss Reed_: “Despairing.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Still?”

_Miss Reed_, tragically: “Still! How soon did you expect me to stop? I am here on the sofa, where I flung myself two hours ago, and I don’t think I shall ever get up. There is no reason _why_ I ever should.”

_Miss Spaulding_, suggestively: “Dinner.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “I don’t believe your heart is broken.”

_Miss Reed_: “But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart is broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn’t?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, it’s happened so often!”

_Miss Reed_: “But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead. It’s as hot!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You ought to get up and help me put this room to rights, and then you would feel better.”

_Miss Reed_: “No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods makes me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan among the cat-tails and arrow-heads in the ‘ma’sh’ at Ponkwasset; the dryads of the birch woods—there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; the”—

_Miss Spaulding_: “Wha-a-at? I can’t hear a word you say.”

_Miss Reed_: “That’s because you keep fussing about so. Why don’t you be quiet, if you want to hear?” She lifts her voice to its highest pitch, with a pause for distinctness between the words: “I’m heart-broken for—Ponkwasset. The dryads—of the—birch woods. The nymphs—and the great—god—Pan—in the reeds—by the river. And all—that—sort of—thing!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You know very well you’re not.”

_Miss Reed_: “I’m not? What’s the reason I’m not? Then, what am I heart-broken for?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You’re not heart-broken at all. You know very well that he’ll call before we’ve been here twenty-four hours.”

_Miss Reed_: “Who?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “The great god Pan.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me so! Come in here, and sympathize a little! Do, Nettie.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “No; you come out here and utilize a little. I’m acting for your best good, as they say at Ponkwasset.”

_Miss Reed_: “When they want to be disagreeable!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “If this room isn’t in order by the time he calls, you’ll be everlastingly disgraced.”

_Miss Reed_: “I’m that now. I can’t be more so—there’s that comfort. What makes you think he’ll call?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Because he’s a gentleman, and will want to apologize. He behaved very rudely to you.”

_Miss Reed_: “No, Nettie; _I_ behaved rudely to _him_. Yes! Besides, if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It’s a contradiction in terms, don’t you see? But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do if he comes. I’m going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I’m going to refuse to see him. You’ve got to see him.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Nonsense!”

_Miss Reed_: “Why nonsense? Oh, why? Expound!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Because he wasn’t rude to me, and he doesn’t want to see me. Because I’m plain, and you’re pretty.”

_Miss Reed_: “I’m _not_! You know it perfectly well. I’m hideous.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Because I’m poor, and you’re a person of independent property.”

_Miss Reed_: “_Dependent_ property, I should call it: just enough to be useless on! But that’s insulting to _him_. How can you say it’s because I have a little money?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Well, then, I won’t. I take it back. I’ll say it’s because you’re young, and I’m old.”

_Miss Reed_: “You’re _not_ old. You’re as young as anybody, Nettie Spaulding. And you know I’m not young; I’m twenty-seven, if I’m a day. I’m just dropping into the grave. But I can’t argue with you, miles off so, any longer.” _Miss Reed_ appears at the open door, dragging languidly after her the shawl which she had evidently drawn round her on the sofa; her fair hair is a little disordered, and she presses it into shape with one hand as she comes forward; a lovely flush vies with a heavenly pallor in her cheeks; she looks a little pensive in the arching eyebrows, and a little humorous about the dimpled mouth. “Now I can prove that you are entirely wrong. Where—were you?—This room is rather an improvement over the one we had last winter. There is more of a view”—she goes to the window—“of the houses across the Place; and I always think the swell front gives a pretty shape to a room. I’m sorry they’ve stopped building them. Your piano goes very nicely into that little alcove. Yes, we’re quite palatial. And, on the whole, I’m glad there’s no fireplace. It’s a pleasure at times; but for the most part it’s a vanity and a vexation, getting dust and ashes over everything. Yes; after all, give me the good old-fashioned, clean, convenient register! Ugh! My feet are like ice.” She pulls an easy-chair up to the register in the corner of the room, and pushes open its valves with the toe of her slipper. As she settles herself luxuriously in the chair, and poises her feet daintily over the register: “Ah, this is something like! Henrietta Spaulding, ma’am! Did I ever tell you that you were the best friend I have in the world?”

_Miss Spaulding_, who continues her work of arranging the room: “Often.”

_Miss Reed_: “Did you ever believe it?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Never.”

_Miss Reed_: “Why?”

_Miss Spaulding_, thoughtfully regarding a vase which she holds in her hand, after several times shifting it from a bracket to the corner of her piano and back: “I wish I could tell where you do look best!”

_Miss Reed_, leaning forward wistfully, with her hands clasped and resting on her knees: “I wish you would tell me _why_ you don’t believe you’re the best friend I have in the world.”

_Miss Spaulding_, finally placing the vase on the bracket: “Because you’ve said so too often.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, that’s no reason! I can prove to you that you are. Who else but you would have taken in a homeless and friendless creature like me, and let her stay bothering round in demoralizing idleness, while you were seriously teaching the young idea how to drub the piano?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Anybody who wanted a room-mate as much as I did, and could have found one willing to pay more than her share of the lodging.”

_Miss Reed_, thoughtfully: “Do you think so, Henrietta?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “I know so.”

_Miss Reed_: “And you’re not afraid that you wrong yourself?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Not the least.”

_Miss Reed_: “Well, be it so—as they say in novels. I will not contradict you; I will not say you are my _best_ friend; I will merely say that you are my _only_ friend. Come here, Henrietta. Draw up your chair, and put your little hand in mine.”

_Miss Spaulding_, with severe distrust: “What do you want, Ethel Reed?”

_Miss Reed_: “I want—I want—to talk it over with you.”

_Miss Spaulding_, recoiling: “I knew it! Well, now, we’ve talked it over enough; we’ve talked it over till there’s nothing left of it.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, there’s everything left! It remains in all its original enormity. Perhaps we shall get some new light upon it.” She extends a pleading hand towards _Miss Spaulding_. “Come, Henrietta, my only friend, shake!—as the ‘good Indians’ say. Let your Ethel pour her hackneyed sorrows into your bosom. Such an uncomfortable image, it always seems, doesn’t it, pouring sorrows into bosoms! Come!”

_Miss Spaulding_, decidedly: “No, I won’t! And you needn’t try wheedling any longer. I won’t sympathize with you on that basis at all.”

_Miss Reed_: “What shall I try, then, if you won’t let me try wheedling?”

_Miss Spaulding_, going to the piano and opening it: “Try courage; try self-respect.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, dear! when I haven’t a morsel of either. Are you going to practise, you cruel maid?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Of course I am. It’s half-past four, and if I don’t do it now I sha’n’t be prepared to-morrow for Miss Robins: she takes this piece.”

_Miss Reed_: “Well, well, perhaps it’s all for the best. If music be the food of—umph-ump!—you know what!—play on.” They both laugh, and _Miss Spaulding_ pushes back a little from the piano, and wheels toward her friend, letting one hand rest slightly on the keys.

_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel Reed, you’re the most ridiculous girl in the world.”

_Miss Reed_: “Correct!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “And I don’t believe you ever were in love, or ever will be.”

_Miss Reed_: “Ah, there you wrong me, Henrietta! I have been, and I shall be—lots of times.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Well, what do you want to say now? You must hurry, for I can’t lose any more time.”

_Miss Reed_: “I will free my mind with neatness and despatch. I simply wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and you’ve got to let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And then I’ll skip all the details I can. Will you?”

_Miss Spaulding_, with impatient patience: “Oh, I suppose so!”

_Miss Reed_: “That’s very sweet of you, though you don’t look it. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, do you think it was forth-putting at all, to ask him if he would give me the lessons?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “It depends upon why you asked him.”

_Miss Reed_: “I asked him from—from—Let me see; I asked him because—from—Yes, I say it boldly; I asked him from an enthusiasm for art, and a sincere wish to learn the use of oil, as he called it. Yes!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Are you sure?”

_Miss Reed_: “Sure? Well, we will say that I am, for the sake of argument. And, having secured this basis, the question is whether I wasn’t bound to offer him pay at the end, and whether he wasn’t wrong to take my doing so in dudgeon.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Yes, I think he was wrong. And the terms of his refusal were very ungentlemanly. He ought to apologize most amply and humbly.” At a certain expression in _Miss Reed’s_ face, she adds, with severity: “Unless you’re keeping back the main point. You usually do. Are you?”

_Miss Reed_: “No, no. I’ve told you everything—everything!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Then I say, as I said from the beginning, that he behaved very badly. It was very awkward and very painful, but you’ve really nothing to blame yourself for.”

_Miss Reed_, ruefully: “No-o-o!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “What do you mean by that sort of ‘No’?”

_Miss Reed_: “Nothing.”

_Miss Spaulding_, sternly: “Yes, you do, Ethel.”

_Miss Reed_: “I don’t, really. What makes you’ think I do?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “It sounded very dishonest.”

_Miss Reed_: “Did it? I didn’t mean it to.” Her friend breaks down with a laugh, while _Miss Reed_ preserves a demure countenance.

_Miss Spaulding_: “What _are_ you keeping back?”

_Miss Reed_: “Nothing at all—less than nothing! I never thought it was worth mentioning.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Are you telling me the truth?”

_Miss Reed_: “I’m telling you the truth and something more. You can’t ask better than that, can you?”

_Miss Spaulding_, turning to her music again: “Certainly not.”

_Miss Reed_: in a pathetic wail: “O Henrietta! do you abandon me thus? Well, I will tell you, heartless girl! I’ve only kept it back till now because it was so extremely mortifying to my pride as an artist—as a student of oil. Will you hear me?”

_Miss Spaulding_, beginning to play: “No.”

_Miss Reed_, with burlesque wildness: “You shall!” _Miss Spaulding_ involuntarily desists. “There was a moment—a fatal moment—when he said he thought he ought to tell me that if I found oil amusing I could go on; but that he didn’t believe I should ever learn to use it, and he couldn’t let me take lessons from him with the expectation that I should. There!”

_Miss Spaulding_, with awful reproach: “And you call that less than nothing? I’ve almost a mind never to speak to you again, Ethel. How _could_ you deceive me so?”

_Miss Reed_: “Was it really deceiving? _I_ shouldn’t call it so. And I needed your sympathy so much, and I knew I shouldn’t get it unless you thought I was altogether in the right.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You are altogether in the wrong! And it’s _you_ that ought to apologize to _him_—on your bended knees. How _could_ you offer him money after that? I wonder at you, Ethel!”

_Miss Reed_: “Why—don’t you see, Nettie?—I did keep on taking the lessons of him. I did find oil amusing—or the oilist—and I kept on. Of course I had to, off there in a farmhouse full of lady boarders, and he the only gentleman short of Crawford’s. Strike, but hear me, Henrietta Spaulding! What was I to do about the half-dozen lessons I had taken before he told me I should never learn to use oil? Was I to offer to pay him for these, and not for the rest; or was I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? I used to lie awake thinking about it. I’ve got little tact, but I couldn’t find any way out of the trouble. It was a box—yes, a box of the deepest dye! And the whole affair having got to be—something else, don’t you know?—made it all the worse. And if he’d only—only—But he didn’t. Not a syllable, not a breath! And there I was. I _had_ to offer him the money. And it’s almost killed me—the way he took my offering it, and now the way you take it! And it’s all of a piece.” _Miss Reed_ suddenly snatches her handkerchief from her pocket, and buries her face in it.—“Oh, dear—oh, dear! Oh!—hu, hu, hu!”

_Miss Spaulding_, relenting: “It was awkward.”

_Miss Reed_: “Awkward! You seem to think that because I carry things off lightly I have no feeling.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You know I don’t think that, Ethel.”

_Miss Reed_, pursuing her advantage: “I don’t know it from you, Nettie. I’ve tried and _tried_ to pass it off as a joke, and to treat it as something funny; but I can tell you it’s no joke at all.”

_Miss Spaulding_, sympathetically: “I see, dear.”

_Miss Reed_: “It’s not that I care for him”—

_Miss Spaulding_: “Why, of course.”

_Miss Reed_: “For I don’t in the least. He is horrid every way: blunt, and rude, and horrid. I never cared for him. But I care for myself! He has put me in the position of having done an unkind thing—an unladylike thing—when I was only doing what I had to do. Why need he have taken it the way he did? Why couldn’t he have said politely that he couldn’t accept the money because he hadn’t earned it? Even _that_ would have been mortifying enough. But he must go and be so violent, and rush off, and—Oh, I never could have treated anybody so!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Not unless you were very fond of them.”

_Miss Reed_: “What?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Not unless you were very fond of them.”

_Miss Reed_, putting away her handkerchief: “Oh, nonsense, Nettie! He never cared anything for me, or he couldn’t have acted so. But no matter for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got straight—never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous mass of—of—_I_ don’t know what; and I have simply got to on withering with despair at the point where I left off. But I don’t care! That’s one comfort.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “I don’t believe he’ll let you wither long, Ethel.”

_Miss Reed_: “He’s let me wither for twenty-four hours already! But it’s nothing to me, now, how long he lets me wither. I’m perfectly satisfied to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the right, and if he comes I shall refuse to see him.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, no, you won’t, Ethel!”

_Miss Reed_: “Yes, I shall. I shall receive him very coldly. I won’t listen to any excuse from him.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, yes, you will, Ethel!”

_Miss Reed_: “No, I shall not. If he wishes me to listen he must begin by humbling himself in the dust—yes, the dust, Nettie! I won’t take anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that I have suffered.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Perhaps he has suffered too!”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, _he_ suffered!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You know that he was perfectly devoted to you.”

_Miss Reed_: “He never said so.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Perhaps he didn’t dare.”

_Miss Reed_: “He dared to be very insolent to me.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “And you know you liked him very much.”

_Miss Reed_: “I won’t let you say that, Nettie Spaulding. I _didn’t_ like him. I respected and admired him; but I didn’t _like_ him. He will come near me; but if he does he has to begin by—by—Let me see, what shall I make him begin by doing?” She casts up her eyes for inspiration while she leans forward over the register. “Yes, I will! He has got to begin by taking that money!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel, you wouldn’t put that affront upon a sensitive and high-spirited man!”

_Miss Reed_: “Wouldn’t I? You wait and _see_, Miss Spaulding! He shall take the money, and he shall sign a receipt for it. I’ll draw up the receipt now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it the very moment he enters this door—the very instant!” She takes a portfolio from the table near her, without rising, and writes: “‘Received from Miss Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting.’ There—when Mr. Oliver Ransom has signed this little document he may begin to talk; not before!” She leans back in her chair with an air of pitiless determination.

_Miss Spaulding_: “But, Ethel, you don’t mean to make him take money for the lessons he gave you after he told you you couldn’t learn anything?”

_Miss Reed_, after a moment’s pause: “Yes, I do. This is to punish him. I don’t wish for justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I would have compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he had behaved nicely; but after what’s happened I shall insist upon paying him for every lesson, so as to make him feel that the whole thing, from first to last, was a purely business transaction on my part. Yes, a _purely_—BUSINESS—TRANSACTION!”

_Miss Spaulding_, turning to her music: “Then I’ve got nothing more to say to you, Ethel Reed.”

_Miss Reed_: “I don’t say but what, after he’s taken the money and signed the receipt, I’ll listen to anything else he’s got to say, very willingly.” _Miss Spaulding_ makes no answer, but begins to play with a scientific absorption, feeling her way fitfully through the new piece, while _Miss Reed_, seated by the register, trifles with the book she has taken from the table.