Chapter XI: Book IV: The Man and the Times (3)

When he returned to the fire he was shivering from the draught let in by the opening doors, and, lifting the fallen poker, he attacked almost fiercely the slumbering coals. The physical shock had not tempered the rage within; he felt it gnawing upon his entrails like a beast of prey. Once only in his life had he found himself so powerless before a devouring passion, and then, as now, he had glutted it with wounded love. Then, as now, he had hated with a terrible desire.

The application lay upon his desk, and he pushed it out of sight. He could not read it now--he wondered if the time would ever come when he could read it. The thought smote him with the lash of fear--the fear of himself. He who an hour ago had held his assurance to be beyond assault was now watching for the death of his hate as he might have watched for the death of a wolf whose fangs he had felt.

Lifting his head, he could see through the curtained window the chill slopes of the square and the circular drive beneath the great bronze Washington. Beyond the distant gates rose the church spires of the city, suffused with the pink flush of sunset. The atmosphere glowed like a blush upon the perspective, which was shading through variations of violet remoteness. All was frozen save the winter sunset and the advancing twilight.

He turned from the window and faced the painting of the Confederate soldier. For a moment he regarded it blankly, then, pushing aside Eugenia's chair he threw himself into one across from it. He was thinking of Bernard Battle, and he remembered suddenly that he must have hated him always--that he had hated him long ago in his childhood when the weak-faced boy had headed a school faction against him. True, Dudley Webb had incited the attempt at social ostracism, but he bore no resentment against Dudley--on the contrary, he was convinced that he liked him in spite of all--in spite, even, of Eugenia. With the inflexible fairness that he never lost, he knew that, with Eugenia, Dudley had not wronged him. It had been a fight in open field, and Dudley had won. He had even liked the vigour of his wooing, and some years later, when they had met, he had given the victor a hearty handshake. He distrusted him as a politician, but he liked him as a man.

And Bernard Battle. That was an honest hate, and he hugged it to him. Before him still, so vivid that it seemed but yesterday, hovered the memory of that wild evening in the road, and the unforgotten sunset faced him as he hurried through the wood. In the acuteness of his remembered senses he could hear the dead leaves rustle in his pathway and could smell the vague scents of autumn drifting on the wind. Through all the years of public life and passionate endeavour he had not lost one colour of the painted clouds or missed one note from the sharp tangle of autumn odours. To this day the going down of the sun in red and gold awoke within him the impulse of revenge, and the effluvium of rotting flowers or the tang of pines revived the duller ache of his senseless rage.

On that evening he had buried his youth with his youthful passion. The hours between the twilight and the dawn had seen his emotions consumed and his softer side laid waste. Since then he had not played saint or martyr; he had gone his way among women, and he had liked some good ones and some bad ones--but the turn of Eugenia's head or the trick of her voice had haunted him in one and all. He had followed the resemblance and had found the vacancy; he had been from first to last a man of one ideal. His nature had broadened, hardened, rung metallic to the senses; but it had not yielded to the shock of fresh emotions. He had loved one woman from her childhood up.

And again she rose before him as in that Indian summer when he knew her best--her beauty flaming against the autumn landscape, "clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." He saw her red or pale, quivering or cold, always passing from him in a splendour of colours that was like the clash of music.

That was sixteen years ago and it seemed but yesterday. He had lost her, and yet he had not been unhappy, for he had learned that it is not gain that makes happiness nor loss that kills it. Life had long since taught him the lesson all great men learn--that happiness is but one result of the adjustment of the individual needs to the Eternal Laws. A man had once said of him, "Burr must think a lot of life; he bears it so blamed well. He's the happiest man I know," and Burr, overhearing him, had laughed aloud:

"Am I? I have never thought about it."

He did not think about life, he lived it; this was the beginning and the end of his success.

The face of Eugenia faded slowly into the firelight, and he rose and shook himself like a man who awakes from a nightmare. There was work for him at his desk, and he settled to it with sudden determination.

A week later the papers were still in his desk. He told himself at first that he would send them to Kingsborough to Judge Bassett and abide by his decision; but the course struck him as cowardly and he put it from him. The work was his and he would do it. Then for a week longer he went on his way and did not think of them. His days were filled with work and it was easy to leave disturbing thoughts alone; what was not easy was to consider them judicially.

At last Galt spoke of the matter, and he could not refuse to listen.

"By the way, I am hearing a good deal about that Battle pardon," Galt said. "You are looking into the matter, I suppose?"

The other shook his head.

"I have not done so as yet," he answered. "I am waiting."

"Don't wait too long or the poor devil may apply higher. He's ill, I believe, and if he insists on returning to the State, as they say he will, the law can't help but arrest him. It's a sad case. So far as I can see he was a catspaw for the real criminal and didn't have sense enough to hold on to a share of the money after he sold himself. His sister has been to see you, hasn't she? She's a superb woman, and it was a good day for Dudley Webb when he married her."

He looked up inquiringly.

"Ah, what were you saying?" asked the governor.

That night he locked himself in with the papers and plunged into the case. He read and reread each written word until he was in possession of the minutest detail. In another instance he knew that the reasons for granting the pardon would have seemed sufficient, and he would probably have had it made out at once. As it was, he admitted the force of the appeal, but something stronger than himself held him back. Above the name before him he saw the girlish face of the man he hated--saw it accusing, defying, beseeching--and beyond it he saw the gray road and the solitary star above the sunset. In the silence his own voice echoed, "As for him--may God, in His mercy, damn him."

He locked the papers away again. "I cannot do it," he said.

Several days later he sent for a member of the legislature from the town where the crime was committed. He questioned him closely, but without result--the people up there were tired of it, the man said--at first they had been wrought up, but six years is a long time, and they didn't care much about it now. As the governor closed the interview he realised that he had hoped a bitter hope that his revenge might be justified. When the door had shut, he went back to the case again, and again he left it. "It ought to be done, but, God help me, I cannot do it," he said.

The next morning, while he was at work in his office in the Capitol, his secretary came in to tell him that Miss Christina Battle was in the anteroom. He rose hurriedly. "I will see her at once," he said, and he opened the door as Miss Chris came in, panting softly from her ascent in the elevator.

She had changed so little that he took her hand in sudden timidity, recalling the days when he had sold her chickens before her hen-house door. But when he had settled her in one of the cane rocking-chairs beside the stove, his confidence returned and he responded heartily to her beneficent beam. Her florid face, shining large and luminous above the stiff black strings of her bonnet, reminded him of illustrations he had seen in which the sun is endowed with human features and an enveloping smile.

"This is the greatest honour my office has brought me," he said with sincerity.

She laughed softly, smoothing her black kid glove above her plump wrist.

"I don't know what they mean by saying you aren't a lady's man, Governor Burr," she returned. "I am sure old Judge Blitherstone himself never turned a prettier compliment, and he lived to be upwards of ninety and did them better every day of his life. They used to say that when Mrs. Peachy Tucker dropped in to see him as he was breathing his last, and told him to look forward to the joys of heaven and the communion of saints, he replied, 'Madam, if you remain with me I shall merely pass from one heaven to another,' and they were his last words."

The governor smiled into her beautiful, girlish eyes. "Men have spoken worse ones," he said, her kindliness warming him like a cordial.

"It was good of you to come," he added.

"Not a bit of it," protested Miss Chris with emphasis. "It's all about that poor, foolish boy--he's still a boy to me, and so are you for that matter. You know how wicked he has been and how miserable he has made us all, for you can't stop loving people just because they are bad. Now you are a good man, Governor Burr, and that's why I came to you. You'll do right if it kills you, and whatever you do in this matter is going to be the right thing. You can't help being good any more than he can help being bad, and I hope the Lord understands this as well as I do--I don't know, I'm sure--sometimes it looks as if He didn't; but we'd just as well trust Him, because there's nothing else for us to do.

"Now the foolish boy wronged you more than he wronged us; but you'll forgive him as we forgave him, when you know what he's suffered. It's better to be sinned against than to sin, God knows."

Her eyes were moist and her lips trembled. The governor crossed to where she sat and took her hand.

"Dear Miss Chris," he said, "women like you make men heroes." And he added quickly, "The pardon is being made out. When it is ready I will sign it."

She looked at him an instant in silence; then she rose heavily to her feet, leaning upon his arm. "You're a great man, Nick Burr," she said softly.

An hour later Nicholas Burr looked calmly down upon his signature that meant freedom for Bernard Battle. He had won the victory of his life, and he was feeling with a glow of self-appreciation that he had done a generous thing.

VIII

Miss Chris, in her hired carriage, rolled leisurely into Franklin Street, where pretty women in visiting gowns were going in and out of doorways. She leaned out and bowed smilingly several times, but she was not thinking of the gracefully dressed callers or of the houses into which they went. When Emma Carr threw her a kiss from Galt's porch, she responded amiably; but she was as blind to the affectionate gesture as to the striking beauty of the girl in her winter furs.

Up the quiet street the leafless trees made a gray vista that melted into transparent mist. The sunshine stretched in pale gold bars from sidewalk to sidewalk, and overhead the sky was of a rare Italian blue. But for the frost in the air and the naked boughs, it might have been a day in April.

Presently the carriage turned into Main Street, halting abruptly while a trolley car shot past. "Please be very careful," called Miss Chris nervously, gathering herself together as they stopped before a big gray house that faced a gray church on the opposite corner. A flight of stone steps ran from the doorway to a short tesselated entrance leading to the street, where two scraggy poplars still held aloft the withered skeletons of last year's tulips. The Webbs had taken the house because the box bushes in the yard reminded Eugenia of Battle Hall, while Dudley declared it to be the best breathing space he could get for the money.

"We done git back, Mistis," announced the negro driver, descending from his perch, and at the same instant the door of the house flew open and Eugenia ran out, bareheaded, followed by Dudley.

"I saw you from the window, Aunt Chris," she cried, "and now I want to know the meaning of this mystery. Dudley suspects you of having a lover, but I am positive that you've stolen a march on me and have been to market. What a pity I confessed to you that I couldn't tell brains from sweetbreads."

"Let me get there, Eugie," said Dudley, as Miss Chris emerged with the assistance of the driver. "Take my arm, Aunt Chris, and I'll hoist you into the house before you know it."

"Well, I declare," remarked Miss Chris, carefully stepping forth. "I don't know when I've had such a turn. These street car drivers have lost all their manners. If we hadn't pulled up in time, I believe he would have gone right into us. And to think that a few years ago we never got ready to go to market until the car was at the door. Betty Taylor used to call to the driver every morning to wait till she put on her bonnet--and time and again I've seen him stop because she had forgotten her list of groceries. Now, if you weren't standing right on the corner, I actually believe they'd go by without you."

"That's progress, Aunt Chris," responded Dudley cheerfully.

Here the driver insisted upon lending a hand, and between them they established Miss Chris before the fire in the sitting-room. "I wish you'd make Giles go out and pick up that loose paper that's scattered on the pavement," she said to Eugenia. "It looks so untidy. If I wasn't rheumatic I'd do it myself."

Dudley and Eugenia seated themselves across from her. "Now where have you been, Aunt Chris?" they demanded.

Miss Chris laughed softly as she took off her bonnet and gloves and gave them to Eugenia; then she unfastened her cape and passed it over.

"You'll never find out that, my dears," she returned. "I'm not too old to keep a secret. Why, I've gone and lost my bag. Didn't I carry that bag with me, Eugenia?"

"Of course you did," said Eugenia. "Never mind, I'll make you another." She went out to put away Miss Chris's wraps, and came back presently, laughing.

"Have you found out her secret, Dudley?" she asked. "If she doesn't tell you, it will die with her."

"I know better than to ask," returned Dudley good-humouredly. "That's the reason I'm her favourite. I don't ask impertinent questions, do I, Aunt Chris?"

"Bless you, no," responded Miss Chris serenely, as she stretched out her feet in their cloth shoes.

"You're her favourite because you happen to be a man," protested Eugenia. "She comes of a generation of man spoilers. I believe she thinks I ought to bring you your slippers in the evening--now don't you, Aunt Chris?"

"My dear mother always brought them to my father," replied Miss Chris placidly. "It was her pleasure to wait on him."

"And it is mine to have Dudley wait on me. But you do make an unfair difference between us, Aunt Chris. Why did you call me 'uncharitable' when I said Mrs. Gordon painted immodestly! Dudley said the same thing this morning, and you only smiled."

"It was uncharitable, my dear, and besides it is too palpable to need mention--but men will be men."

Eugenia frowned. "I wish you would occasionally remember that women will be women," she suggested. She wore a scarlet shirtwaist, and the glow from the fire seemed to follow her about.

"I won't have Aunt Chris bullied, Eugie," declared Dudley as he rose. "Well, I'm off again. I may bring a legislator or two back to dinner. What have we got?"

"The Lord knows," replied Eugenia desperately. "Our third cook this month for one thing, and Congo refuses to serve dinner in courses. He says 'dar's too much shufflin' er de dishes for too little victuals.'"

Dudley laughed at her mimicry.

"Oh, I suppose we'll do," he said. "By the way, don't forget to call on Mrs. Rann to-day."

Miss Chris was gazing placidly into the fire. As Dudley turned with his hand on the door knob, she looked up.

"I was surprised to find the Capitol so dirty," she observed regretfully.

Dudley swung round breathlessly.

"Well, I am--blessed!" he gasped.

"So that's where you've been!" cried Eugenia. She threw herself beside Miss Chris's chair. "What did he say, Aunt Chris?" she implored.

Miss Chris blushed with confusion.

"Well, if I haven't let it out!" she exclaimed. "Who'd have thought I couldn't keep a secret at my age." Then she patted Eugenia's hand. "He's a good man," she said softly, "and it's all right about Bernard."

"I knew it would be," said Dudley quickly. "You know, Eugie, I always told you he'd do it."

But Eugenia had turned away with swimming eyes. "I must tell Lottie," she said hurriedly. "Oh, Aunt Chris, how could you keep it? To think the children are at school!"

Dudley, with an afterthought, turned from the door and gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder. "It's fine news, old girl," he said cheerfully, and Eugenia smiled at him through her tears.

As he went out she followed him into the hall and slowly ascended the stairs. On the landing above she entered a room where Bernard's wife was lying on a wicker couch, cutting the pages of a magazine.

"Lottie, I've good news for you," she exclaimed, "the best of news."

Lottie tossed aside the magazine and raised herself on her elbow. She had a pretty, ineffectual face and a girlish figure, and, despite her faded colouring, looked almost helplessly young. Her round white hands were as weak as a child's.

"I'm sure I don't know what it can be," she returned. "You look awfully well in that red waist, Eugie. I think I'll get one like it."

Eugenia picked up a child's story book from the rug and laid it on the table; then she stood looking gravely down on the younger woman.

"Can't you guess what it is?" she asked.

Lottie looked up with a nervous blinking of her eyes. She had paled slightly and she leaned over and drew an eiderdown quilt across her knees.

"It--it's not about Bernard?" she asked in a whisper.

"Yes, it is about Bernard. You may go to him and bring him home. You may go to-morrow. Oh, Lottie, doesn't it make you happy?"

Lottie drew the eiderdown quilt still higher. She was not looking at Eugenia, and her mouth had grown sullen. "I don't see why you send me," she said. "Why can't Jack Tucker bring him home? He's with him."

"But I thought you wanted to go," returned Eugenia blankly.

"I haven't seen him for six years," said Lottie, her face still turned away. "He is almost a stranger--and I am afraid of him."

"Oh, Lottie, he loves you so!"

"I don't know," protested Lottie. "He has been so wicked."

Eugenia was looking down upon her with dismayed eyes.

"Don't you love him, Lottie?" she asked.

For a moment the other did not reply. Her lips trembled and her knees were shaking beneath the eiderdown quilt. Then with a slow turn of the head she looked up doggedly. "I believe I hate him," she answered.

A swift flush rose to Eugenia's face, her eyes flashed angrily, she took a step forward. "And you are his wife!" she cried.

But Lottie had turned at last. She flung the quilt aside and rose to her feet, her girlish figure quivering in its beribboned wrapper. There were bright pink spots in her cheeks.

"Yes, I am his wife, God help me," she said.

Eugenia had drawn back before the childish desperation. Lottie had never revolted before--she had thought Eugenia's thoughts and weakly lived up to Eugenia's conception of her duty. She had been meek and amiable and ineffectual; but it came to Eugenia with a shock that she had never admired her until to-day--until the hour of her rebellion.

She spoke sternly--as she might have spoken to herself in a moment of dear, but dismal failure.

"Hush," she commanded. "You are one of us, and you have no right to desert us. It is because you are his wife that my home is yours and your children's. I am only his sister, and I have stood by him through it all. Do you think, if his sins were twenty times as great, that I should fall away from him now?"

Lottie looked at her and laughed--a little heartless laugh.

"Oh, but I am not a Battle," she replied bitterly. "Battle sins are just like other people's sins to me."

Then she raised her pretty, nerveless hands to her throat.

"I have wanted to be free all these years," she said. "All these years when you would not let me forget Bernard Battle--when you shut me up and hid me away, and made me old when I was young. And now--just as I am beginning to be happy with my children--you tell me that I must go back to him and start afresh."

Her voice grated upon Eugenia's ears, and she realised more acutely than her pity the fact that Lottie was common--hopelessly common. For an instant she forgot Bernard's greater transgressions in the wonder that a Battle should have married a woman who did not know how to behave in a crisis--who could even chant her wrongs from the housetop. At the moment this seemed to her the weightier share of the family remissness. The loyalty of the Battle wives had been as a lasting memorial to the Battle breeding--which, after all, was more invincible than the Battle virtue.

She crossed to the window and stood looking out upon the winter sunshine falling on the gray church across the way. On the stone steps a negro nurse was sitting, drowsily trundling back and forth before her a beruffled baby carriage. Nearer at hand, in the yard on the left of the tesselated entrance below, a pointed magnolia tree shone evergreen beside the naked poplars, and a bevy of sparrows fluttered in and out amid the sheltering leaves.

"Oh, you will never understand," wailed Lottie. She had flung herself upon the couch and was sobbing weakly. "It is so different with you and Dudley."

Eugenia turned and came back. "I do understand," she returned gently, and before Lottie could raise her lowered head she left the room.

She had promised Dudley that the calls should be made, and she put on her visiting gown without a thought of shirking the fulfilment of her pledge. From the day of her marriage she had zealously accepted the obligations forced upon her by Dudley's political aspirations, and Mrs. Rann became to-day simply a heavier responsibility than usual. Her world was full of Mrs. Ranns, and she braved them with dauntless spirits and triumphant humour. As she buttoned her gloves on the way downstairs she was conscious of a singularly mild recognition of the fact that the world might have been the gainer had Mrs. Rann abided unborn.

But the fresh air restored her courage, and by the time she sat in Mrs. Rann's drawing-room, face to face with her hostess, she was at ease with herself and her surroundings. She gave out at once the peculiar social atmosphere of her race; she uttered her gay little nothings with an intimate air; she laughed good-humouredly at Mrs. Rann's gossip, and she begged to see photographs of Mrs. Rann's babies. It was as if she had immediately become the confidential adviser of Mrs. Rann's domestic difficulties.

Mrs. Rann, herself, was little and plain and obsolete. She appeared to have been left behind in the sixties, like words that have become vulgar from disuse. She wore bracelets on her wrists, and her accent was as flat as her ideas. Before the war--and even long after--nobody had heard of the Ranns; they had arrived as suddenly as the electric lights or the trolley cars. When Miss Chris had alluded to them as "new people," and Juliet Galt had declared that she "did not call there," Dudley had thrown out an uncertain line to Eugenia. "Rann is a useful man, my dear," he had said. "He may be of great help to me," and the next day Eugenia had left her card. Where Dudley's ambitions led she cheerfully followed.

"We are politicians," was her excuse to Juliet, "and we can't afford to be exclusive. Of course, with Emma Carr and yourself it is different. You may exclude half society if you please, and, in fact, you do; but Dudley and I really don't mind. He wants something, and I, you know, was born without the instinct of class."

So she sat in Mrs. Rann's drawing-room and received her confidences, while Juliet and Emma Carr were gossiping across the street.

"The greatest trouble I have with Mr. Rann when he comes to town," said Mrs. Rann, "is that he refuses to wear woollen socks. I don't know whether Mr. Webb wears woollen socks or not."

Eugenia shook her head.

"I've no doubt he would be a better and a wiser man if he did," she responded.

"Then he doesn't catch cold when he puts on thin ones with his dress suit. Now Mr. Rann says woollen socks don't look well in the evening--and he takes cold every time he goes out at night. He won't even let me put red flannel in the soles of his shoes."

"Then he's not the man I thought him," said Eugenia as she rose. "Do you know, the baby is so pretty I stopped her carriage. If she were mine I shouldn't let her grow up."

Mrs. Rann glowed with pride, and in the depths of her shallow eyes Eugenia read a triumphant compassion. This little vulgar countrywoman, upon whom she looked so grandly down, was pitying her in her narrow heart.

She flushed and turned away.

"You have never had a child?" asked the little common voice.

Eugenia faced her coldly. "I lost one--a week old," she replied, and she hated herself that she was proud of her seven days' motherhood. She had mourned the loss, but she had never vaunted the possession until now.

As she left the house her name was called by Juliet Galt from her window across the way. "Come over, Eugie," she cried. "We've been watching you," and as Eugenia ascended the steps the door was opened and she was clasped in Emma Carr's arms. "We've shut our eyes and ground our teeth and put ourselves in your place," she said. "Oh, Eugie, she's worse than the dentist!"

"I went to the dentist's first," was Eugenia's reply.

She followed Miss Carr into the drawing-room and sank into the window-seat beside Juliet, who was bending over her embroidery frame. Then she laughed--a full, frank laugh.

"You dear women," she said, "if you knew the lot of a politician's wife, you'd--marry a footman."

"Provided he were Dudley Webb," returned Emma Carr. She seized Eugenia's hand and they smiled at each other in demonstrative intimacy. "You know, of course, that we are all in love with your husband--desperately, darkly in love--and you ought to be gray with jealousy. If I were married to the handsomest man in Virginia I'd get me to a nunnery."

"That's not Eugie's way," said Juliet, snapping off her silk. "If she went, she'd drag him after."

"Oh, he's just Dudley," protested Eugenia. "I'd as soon be jealous of Aunt Chris--and he's waiting at home this instant with his senators come to judgment on my dinner. If I were free, I'd spend the day with you. Juliet, but I've married into servitude."

IX

When Eugenia went upstairs that night she softly opened Lottie's door and glanced into the room. By the sinking firelight she saw Lottie lying asleep, her hand upon the pillow of her younger child, who slept beside her. The pretty, nerveless hand, even in sleep, tremored like a caress, for whatever Lottie's wifely failings, as a mother she was without reproach. Lottie--vain, hysterical, bewailing her wrongs--was the same Lottie now resting with a protecting arm thrown out--this Eugenia admitted thoughtfully as she looked into the darkened room where the thin blue flame cast a spectral light upon the sleepers. From this shallow rooted nature had bloomed the maternal ardour of the Southern woman, in whom motherhood is the abiding grace.

Eugenia closed the door and crossed the hall to Miss Chris, who was reading her Bible as she seeded raisins into a small yellow bowl. The leaves of the Bible were held open by her spectacle case which she had placed between them; for while her hands were busy with material matters her placid eyes followed the text.

"I thought I'd get these done to-night," she remarked as Eugenia entered. "I'm going to make a plum pudding for Dudley to-morrow. Where is he now?"

"A political barbecue, I believe," responded Eugenia indifferently as she knotted the cord of her flannel dressing-gown. She yawned and threw herself into a chair. "I wonder why everybody spoils Dudley so," she added. "Even I do it. I am sitting up for him to-night simply because I know he'll want to tell me about it all when he comes in."

"It's a good habit for a wife to cultivate," returned Miss Chris, shaking the raisins together. "If my poor father stayed out until four o'clock in the morning he found my mother up and dressed when he came in."

"I should say it was 'poor' grandmamma," commented Eugenia drily. "But Dudley won't find me after midnight." Then she regarded Miss Chris affectionately. "What a blessing that you didn't marry, Aunt Chris," she said. "You'd have prepared some man to merit damnation."

"My dear Eugie," protested Miss Chris, half shocked, half flattered at the picture. "But you're a good wife, all the same, like your mother before you. The only fault I ever saw in poor Meely was that she wouldn't put currants in her fruit cake. Tom was always fond of currants--" in a moment she abruptly recalled herself. "My dear, I don't say you haven't had your trials," she went on. "Dudley isn't a saint, but I don't believe even the Lord expects a man to be that. It doesn't seem to set well on them."

"Oh, I am not blaming Dudley," returned Eugenia as leniently as Miss Chris. "We live and let live--only our tastes are different. Why, the chief proof of his affection for me is that he always describes to me the object of his admiration--which means that his eyes stray, but his heart does not, and the heart's the chief thing, after all."

"I'm glad you aren't jealous," said Miss Chris. "I used to think you were--as a child."

"Oh, I was--as a child," replied Eugenia. Her kindly face clouded. It was borne in upon her with a twinge of conscience that the absence of jealousy which had become the safeguard of Dudley's peace proved her own lack of passion. What a hell some women--good women--might have made of Dudley's life--that genial life that flowed as smoothly as a song. In the flights and pauses of his temperament what discord might have shocked the decent measure of their marriage? Persistent passion would have bored him; exacting love would have soured the charm of his radiant egotism. It was because she was not in love with him, that her love had wisely meted out to him only so much or so little of herself as he desired--and with a sudden arraignment of Fate she admitted that because she had failed in the first requirement of the marriage sacrament, she had made that sacrament other than a mockery. Out of her own unfulfilment Dudley's happiness was fulfilled.

"Yes, Dudley suits me," she said absently, "and, what's the main thing, I suit Dudley."

"Well, well, I'm glad of it," returned Miss Chris, but in a moment Eugenia was kneeling beside her, her hand upon the open Bible.

"Dear Aunt Chris, you haven't told me all," she said.

"All?" Miss Chris wavered. "You mean about Bernard?"

"I mean about the governor." She closed the. Bible and pushed it from her. "Do you think he is quite, quite happy?"

Miss Chris laughed in protest.

"Do I believe him to be pining of hopeless love? No, I don't," she retorted.

"Oh, not that!" exclaimed Eugenia impatiently. She appeared vaguely to resent Miss Chris's assurance. She was feminine enough to experience an irrational jealousy at the idea of a vacancy which she had done her best to create. It destroyed an example of the permanence of love.

"I don't suppose anybody could be happy on politics," observed Miss Chris. "It doesn't seem natural." And she slowly added: "I wish some good woman would marry him."

"I don't!" said Eugenia sharply. She rose with a spring from the rug, and left Miss Chris to her reflections and her raisins. In her own room she sat down before the fire and loosened her hair from the low coil on her neck. She drew out the hairpins one by one, until her hands were full, and the thick black rope fell across her bosom. Then she tossed the pins upon her bureau and shook a veil over her face and shoulders. As she settled herself into her chair she glanced impatiently at the clock. Dudley was late, and she listened for his footsteps with the composure of a woman from whom the flush of marriage has passed away. His footsteps were as much a part of her days as the ticking of the clock upon the mantel. If the clock were to stop, she would miss the accustomed sound, but so long as it went on she was almost unconscious of its presence. Her affection for Dudley had grown so into her nature that it was like the claim of kinship--quiet, unimpassioned, full of service--the love that is the end of many happy marriages, the beginning of few.

As she sat there she fell vaguely to wondering what her lot would have been had her pulses fluttered to his footsteps as they came and went. She would have known remorseless waitings and the long agony of jealous nights--all the passionate self-torture that she had missed--that she had missed, thank God! She made the best of her life to-day, as she would have made the best of blows and bruises. It was the old buoyant instinct of the Battle blood--the fighting of Fate on its ground with its own weapons. She had insisted strenuously upon her own happiness--and she had found it not in the great things of life, but in the little ones. She was happy because happiness is ours in the cradle or not at all--because it is of the blood and not of the environment.

During the first years of her marriage she had intensely sought the relief of outside interests. She had worked zealously on hospital boards and had exhausted herself in the service of the city mission. Then a new call had quivered in her life, and she had let these things go. With the passion of her nature she had pledged herself to motherhood, and that, too, had foiled her--for the child had died. Looking back upon the years she saw that those months of tranquil waiting were the happiest of her life--those monotonous months when each day was as the day before it, when her hands were busy for the love that would come to her, and her heart warmed itself before the future. The child was hers for a single week, and afterwards she had put her grief away and gone back to the old beginning. She had given herself to little kindnesses and trivial interests, for the fulfilment of her nature had withered in the bud.

The key turned in the door downstairs and in a moment she heard Dudley in the hall. As her door opened she looked up brightly. "Up, old girl?" he asked cheerfully, and as he came to the fire he bent to kiss her.

"Did you make a speech? and what did you say?" she inquired.

"Oh, they got a good deal out of me," he responded with a genial recollection which he proceeded to unfold. His eyes shone and his face was flushed. As he stood on the hearth rug before her she admitted with a sigh of satisfaction his physical splendour. The glow of his personality warmed her into an emotion half maternal. She regarded him with the eyes of tolerant affection.

"Oh, yes, I think I made a friend of Diggs," he was adding complacently as he flecked a particle of cigar ash from his coat. "He got off a capital story, by the way. I'd give it to you, but I'm half afraid--you're so squeamish."

"His jokes don't amuse me," returned Eugenia indifferently. "Who else was there?"

"Well, the governor was very much there. He did some stiff talking. I say, Eugie, do you know, I believe he used to have a pretty strong fancy for you--didn't he?"

Eugenia looked at him with a laugh. "Oh, a fancy?" she repeated.

She moved away, gathering her hair from her shoulders; but in a moment she came back again and rubbed her cheek against Dudley's arm as she used to rub it against General Battle's old linen sleeve. "Dudley," she said with a sudden break, "the baby would have been ten years old to-night--do you remember?"

Dudley was looking into the fire; his face grew grave, and he patted Eugenia's head. "You don't say so! Poor little chap!" he exclaimed.

They were both silent. Dudley's eyes were still on the flame, but the shadow lifted from his brow. Eugenia's lips quivered and grew firm. She gently drew herself away and began braiding her hair, but her hands were unsteady.

In a moment Dudley spoke again. "It was a great pity I lost that governorship," he said abstractedly.

A week after this Eugenia went with Juliet Galt to the Capitol to hear a speech in which Dudley was interested. The Senate Chamber was crowded, and as the atmosphere grew oppressive while Dudley's gentleman held the floor, she rose and went out into the lobby where a noisy circle pulsed round Houdon's Washington. She had spoken to several acquaintances, and her hand was in the clasp of a house member from her old county, when she started at the sound of a shrill voice rising above the persistent hum of the legislators and the lobbyists.

"I'm a-lookin' for the governor, Nick Burr," it said.

"I didn't know the governor posed as a cavalier," laughed the house member, and as a wave of humour lighted the faces around her, Eugenia turned to find Marthy Burr standing in the doorway. She wore a stiff alpaca dress, and beneath the green veil above her bonnet she cast alert, nervous glances from side to side. Her hands clutched, in a deathlike grip, a cotton umbrella and a small, covered basket.

Eugenia hesitated for a single instant, and then took a step forward with outstretched hand, a kindly glow in her face; but as she did so the crowd parted and Nicholas Burr reached his stepmother's side.

"Why, this is a treat, ma!" he said heartily, and he took the umbrella and the basket from her reluctant hands, despite her warning whisper, "thar's new-laid eggs in thar!"

"My dear Mrs. Burr!" exclaimed Eugenia. She lifted her gaze from the homely figure in its awkward finery, to the man who stood beside her. Then she stooped and kissed Marthy Burr on the cheek.

"Do let her come home with me," she said.

Her eyes fell and a wave of colour beat into her face. An instant before she had felt her act to be entirely admirable; now it flamed before her in a mental revelation that she was a sycophant who sought the reward of an assumed virtue. With the reward had come the knowledge--she had found both in Nicholas's eyes; and as she felt the thrust of self-abasement, she felt also that for the sake of that look she would have kissed a dozen Burrs a dozen times.

"You are very kind," said the governor. "But you know I have an empty house."

Then he put his arm about Marthy Burr and assisted her down the steps to the walk below. She looked about her with half-frightened, half-defiant eyes, and clung grimly to his powerful figure.

As Eugenia watched them, a quick remembrance shot before her. She saw Nicholas Burr as she had seen him in his youth--ardent, assured, holding out his arms to the future, which was to be love, love, love. Now the future had become the present, and the one affection that remained to him was that of the old, illiterate woman, with the rasping voice. He had lost the thing he had lived for--and he was happy.