Fennel and Rue

XIX. The phantom sank straight down as if sinking through the floor, but lay there like a white shawl trailed along the bottom of the dark curtain. “And is that all?” Miss Macroyd asked Verrian. “I was just getting up my courage to go forward. But now, I suppose—” “Oh, dear!” Miss Andrews called out. “Perhaps it’s fainted. Hadn’t we better—” There were formless cries from the women, and the men made a crooked rush forward, in which Verrian did not join. He remained where he had risen, with Miss Macroyd beside him. “Perhaps it’s only a coup de theatre!” she said, with her laugh. “Better wait.” Bushwick was gathering the prostrate figure up. “She has fainted!” he called. “Get some water, somebody!” XIX. The early Monday morning train which brought Verrian up to town was so very early that he could sit down to breakfast with his mother only a little later than their usual hour. She had called joyfully to him from her room, when she heard the rattling of his key as he let himself into the apartment, and, after an exchange of greetings, shouted back and forth before they saw each other, they could come at once to the history of his absence over their coffee. “You must have had a very good time, to stay so long. After you wrote that you would not be back Thursday, I expected it would be Saturday till I got your telegram. But I’m glad you stayed. You certainly needed the rest.” “Yes, if those things are ever a rest.” He looked down at his cup while he stirred the coffee in it, and she studied his attitude, since she could not see his face fully, for the secret of any vital change that might have come upon him. It could be that in the interval since she had seen him he had seen the woman who was to take him from her. She was always preparing herself for that, knowing that it must come almost as certainly as death, and knowing that with all her preparation she should not be ready for it. “I’ve got rather a long story to tell you and rather a strange story,” he said, lifting his head and looking round, but not so impersonally that his mother did not know well enough to say to the Swedish serving-woman: “You needn’t stay, Margit. I’ll give Mr. Philip his breakfast. Well!” she added, when they were alone. “Well,” he returned, with a smile that she knew he was forcing, “I have seen the girl that wrote that letter.” “Not Jerusha Brown?” “Not Jerusha Brown, but the girl all the same.” “Now go on, Philip, and don’t miss a single word!” she commanded him, with an imperious breathlessness. “You know I won’t hurry you or interrupt you, but you must—you really must-tell me everything. Don’t leave out the slightest detail.” “I won’t,” he said. But she was aware, from time to time, that she was keeping her word better than he was keeping his, in his account of meeting Miss Shirley and all the following events. “You can imagine,” he said, “what a sensation the swooning made, and the commotion that followed it.” “Yes, I can imagine that,” she answered. But she was yet so faithful that she would not ask him to go on. He continued, unasked, “I don’t know just how, now, to account for its coming into my head that it was Miss Andrews who was my unknown correspondent. I suppose I’ve always unconsciously expected to meet that girl, and Miss Andrews’s hypothetical case was psychologically so parallel—” “Yes, yes!” “And I’ve sometimes been afraid that I judged it too harshly—that it was a mere girlish freak without any sort of serious import.” “I was sometimes afraid so, Philip. But—” “And I don’t believe now that the hypothetical case brought any intolerable stress of conscience upon Miss Shirley, or that she fainted from any cause but exhaustion from the general ordeal. She was still weak from the sickness she had been through—too weak to bear the strain of the work she had taken up. Of course, the catastrophe gave the whole surface situation away, and I must say that those rather banal young people behaved very humanely about it. There was nothing but interest of the nicest kind, and, if she is going on with her career, it will be easy enough for her to find engagements after this.” “Why shouldn’t she go on?” his mother asked, with a suspicion which she kept well out of sight. “Well, as well as she could explain afterwards, the catastrophe took her work out of the category of business and made her acceptance in it a matter of sentiment.” “She explained it to you herself?” “Yes, the general sympathy had penetrated to Mrs. Westangle, though I don’t say that she had been more than negatively indifferent to Miss Shirley’s claim on her before. As it was, she sent for me to her room the next morning, and I found Miss Shirley alone there. She said Mrs. Westangle would be down in a moment.” Now, indeed, Mrs. Verrian could not govern herself from saying, “I don’t like it, Philip.” “I knew you wouldn’t. It was what I said to myself at the time. You were so present with me that I seemed to have you there chaperoning the interview.” His mother shrugged, and he went on: “She said she wished to tell me something first, and then she said, ‘I want to do it while I have the courage, if it’s courage; perhaps it’s just desperation. I am Jerusha Brown.’” His mother began, “But you said—” and then stopped herself. “I know that I said she wasn’t, but she explained, while I sat there rather mum, that there was really another girl, and that the other girl’s name was really Jerusha Brown. She was the daughter of the postmaster in the village where Miss Shirley was passing the summer. In fact, Miss Shirley was boarding in the postmaster’s family, and the girls had become very friendly. They were reading my story together, and talking about it, and trying to guess how it would come out, just as the letter said, and they simultaneously hit upon the notion of writing to me. It seemed to them that it would be a good joke—I’m not defending it, mother, and I must say Miss Shirley didn’t defend it, either—to work upon my feelings in the way they tried, and they didn’t realize what they had done till Armiger’s letter came. It almost drove them wild, she said; but they had a lucid interval, and they took the letter to the girl’s father and told him what they had done. He was awfully severe with them for their foolishness, and said they must write to Armiger at once and confess the fact. Then they said they had written already, and showed him the second letter, and explained they had decided to let Miss Brawn write it in her person alone for the reason she gave in it. But Miss Shirley told him she was ready to take her full share of the blame, and, if anything came of it, she authorized him to put the whole blame on her.” Verrian made a pause which his mother took for invitation or permission to ask, “And was he satisfied with that?” “I don’t know. I wasn’t, and it’s only just to Miss Shirley to say that she wasn’t, either. She didn’t try to justify it to me; she merely said she was so frightened that she couldn’t have done anything. She may have realized more than the Brown girl what they had done.” “The postmaster, did he regard it as anything worse than foolishness?” “I don’t believe he did. At any rate, he was satisfied with what his daughter had done in owning up.” “Well, I always liked that girl’s letter. And did they show him your letter?” “It seems that they did.” “And what did he say about that?” “I suppose, what I deserved. Miss Shirley wouldn’t say, explicitly. He wanted to answer it, but they wouldn’t let him. I don’t know but I should feel better if he had. I haven’t been proud of that letter of mine as time has gone on, mother; I think I behaved very narrow-mindedly, very personally in it.” “You behaved justly.” “Justly? I thought you had your doubts of that. At any rate, I had when it came to hearing the girl accusing herself as if she had been guilty of some monstrous wickedness, and I realized that I had made her feel so.” “She threw herself on your pity!” “No, she didn’t, mother. Don’t make it impossible for me to tell you just how it was.” “I won’t. Go on.” “I don’t say she was manly about it; that couldn’t be, but she was certainly not throwing herself on my pity, unless—unless—” “What?” “Unless you call it so for her to say that she wanted to own up to me, because she could have no rest till she had done so; she couldn’t put it behind her till she had acknowledged it; she couldn’t work; she couldn’t get well.” He saw his mother trying to consider it fairly, and in response he renewed his own resolution not to make himself the girl’s advocate with her, but to continue the dispassionate historian of the case. At the same time his memory was filled with the vision of how she had done and said the things he was telling, with what pathos, with what grace, with what beauty in her appeal. He saw the tears that came into her eyes at times and that she indignantly repressed as she hurried on in the confession which she was voluntarily making, for there was no outward stress upon her to say anything. He felt again the charm of the situation, the sort of warmth and intimacy, but he resolved not to let that feeling offset the impartiality of his story. “No, I don’t say she threw herself on your mercy,” his mother said, finally. “She needn’t have told you anything.” “Except for the reason she gave—that she couldn’t make a start for herself till she had done so. And she has got her own way to make; she is poor. Of course, you may say her motive was an obsession, and not a reason.” “There’s reality in it, whatever it is; it’s a genuine motive,” Mrs. Verrian conceded. “I think so,” Verrian said, in a voice which he tried to keep from sounding too grateful. Apparently his mother did not find it so. She asked, “What had been the matter with her, did she say?” “In her long sickness? Oh! A nervous fever of some sort.” “From worrying about that experience?” Verrian reluctantly admitted, “She said it made her want to die. I don’t suppose we can quite realize—” “We needn’t believe everything she said to realize that she suffered. But girls exaggerate their sufferings. I suppose you told her not to think of it any more?” Verrian gave an odd laugh. “Well, not unconditionally. I tried to give her my point of view. And I stipulated that she should tell Jerusha Brown all about it, and keep her from having a nervous fever, too.” “That was right. You must see that even cowardice couldn’t excuse her selfishness in letting that girl take all the chances.” “And I’m afraid I was not very unselfish myself in my stipulations,” Verrian said, with another laugh. “I think that I wanted to stand well with the postmaster.” There was a note of cynical ease in this which Mrs. Verrian found morally some octaves lower than the pitch of her son’s habitual seriousness in what concerned himself, but she could not make it a censure to him. “And you were able to reassure her, so that she needn’t think of it any more?” “What would you have wished me to do?” he returned, dryly. “Don’t you think she had suffered enough?” “Oh, in this sort of thing it doesn’t seem the question of suffering. If there’s wrong done the penalty doesn’t right it.” The notion struck Verrian’s artistic sense. “That’s true. That would make the ‘donnee’ of a strong story. Or a play. It’s a drama of fate. It’s Greek. But I thought we lived under another dispensation.” “Will she try to get more of the kind of thing she was doing for Mrs. Westangle at once? Or has she some people?” “No; only friends, as I understand.” “Where is she from? Up country?” “No, she’s from the South.” “I don’t like Southerners!” “I know you don’t, mother. But you must honor the way they work and get on when they come North and begin doing for themselves. Besides, Miss Shirley’s family went South after the war—” “Oh, not even a REAL Southerner!” “Mother!” “I know! I’m not fair. I ought to beg her pardon. And I ought to be glad it’s all over. Shall you see her again?” “It might happen. But I don’t know how or when. We parted friends, but we parted strangers, so far as any prevision of the future is concerned,” Verrian said. His mother drew a long breath, which she tried to render inaudible. “And the girl that asked her the strange questions, did you see her again?” “Oh yes. She had a curious fascination. I should like to tell you about her. Do you think there’s such a thing as a girl’s being too innocent?” “It isn’t so common as not being innocent enough.” “But it’s more difficult?” “I hope you’ll never find it so, my son,” Mrs. Verrian said. And for the first time she was intentionally personal. “Go on.” “About Miss Andrews?” “Whichever you please.” “She waylaid me in the afternoon, as I was coming home from a walk, and wanted to talk with me about Miss Shirley.” “I suppose Miss Shirley was the day’s heroine after what had happened?” “The half-day’s, or quarter-day’s heroine, perhaps. She left on the church train for town yesterday morning soon after I saw her. Miss Andrews seemed to think I was an authority on the subject, and she approached me with a large-eyed awe that was very amusing, though it was affecting, too. I suppose that girls must have many worships for other girls before they have any worship for a man. This girl couldn’t separate Miss Shirley, on the lookout for another engagement, from the psychical part she had played. She raved about her; she thought she was beautiful, and she wanted to know all about her and how she could help her. Miss Andrews’s parents are rich but respectable, I understand, and she’s an only child. I came in for a share of her awe; she had found out that I was not only not Verrian the actor, but an author of the same name, and she had read my story with passionate interest, but apparently in that unliterary way of many people without noticing who wrote it; she seemed to have thought it was Harding Davis or Henry James; she wasn’t clear which. But it was a good deal to have had her read it at all in that house; I don’t believe anybody else had, except Miss Shirley and Miss Macroyd.” Mrs. Verrian deferred a matter that would ordinarily have interested her supremely to an immediate curiosity. “And how came she to think you would know so much about Miss Shirley?” Verrian frowned. “I think from Miss Macroyd. Miss Macroyd seems to have taken a grandmotherly concern in my affairs through the whole week. Perhaps she resented having behaved so piggishly at the station the day we came, and meant to take it out of Miss Shirley and myself. She had seen us together in the woods, one day, and she must have told it about. Mrs. Westangle wouldn’t have spoken of us together, because she never speaks of anything unless it is going to count; and there was no one else who knew of our acquaintance.” “Why, my son, if you went walking in the woods with the girl, any one might have seen you.” “I didn’t. It was quite by accident that we met there. Miss Shirley was anxious to keep her presence in the house a secret from everybody.” Mrs. Verrian would not take any but the open way, with this. She would not deal indirectly, with it, or in any wise covertly or surreptitiously. “It seems to me that Miss Shirley has rather a fondness for secrecy,” she said. “I think she has,” Verrian admitted. “Though, in this case, it was essential to the success of her final scheme. But she is a curious study. I suppose that timidity is at the bottom of all fondness for secrecy, isn’t it?” “I don’t know. She doesn’t seem to be timid in everything.” “Say it out, mother!” Verrian challenged her with a smile. “You’re not timid, anyway!” “She had the courage to join in that letter, but not the courage to own her part in it. She was brave enough to confess that she had been sick of a nervous fever from the answer you wrote to the Brown girl, but she wouldn’t have been brave enough to confess anything at all if she had believed she would be physically or morally strong enough to keep it.” “Perhaps nobody—nobody but you, mother—is brave in the right time and place.” She knew that this was not meant in irony. “I am glad you say that, Philip.” “It’s only your due. But aren’t you a little too hard upon cowards, at times? For the sort of person she is, if you infer the sort from the worst appearance she has made in the whole business, I think she has done pretty well.” “Why had she left the Brown girl to take all your resentment alone for the last six or eight months?” “She may have thought that she was getting her share of the punishment in the fever my resentment brought on?” “Philip, do you really believe that her fever, if she had one, came from that?” “I think she believes it, and there’s no doubt but she was badly scared.” “Oh, there’s no doubt of that!” “But come, mother, why should we take her at the worst? Of course, she has a complex nature. I see that as clearly as you do. I don’t believe we look at her diversely, in the smallest particular. But why shouldn’t a complex nature be credited with the same impulses towards the truth as a single nature? Why shouldn’t we allow that Miss Shirley had the same wish to set herself right with me as Miss Andrews would have had in her place?” “I dare say she wished to set herself right with you, but not from the same wish that Miss Andrews would have had. Miss Andrews would not have wished you to know the truth for her own sake. Her motive would have been direct-straight.” “Yes; and we will describe her as a straight line, and Miss Shirley as a waving line. Why shouldn’t the waving line, at its highest points, touch the same altitude as the straight line?” “It wouldn’t touch it all the time, and in character, or nature, as you call it, that is the great thing. It’s at the lowest points that the waving line is dangerous.” “Well, I don’t deny that. But I’m anxious to be just to a person who hasn’t experienced a great deal of mercy for what, after all, wasn’t such a very heinous thing as I used to think it. You must allow that she wasn’t obliged to tell me anything about herself.” “Yes, she was, Philip. As I said before, she hadn’t the physical or moral strength to keep it from you when she was brought face to face with you. Besides—” Mrs. Verrian hesitated. “Out with it, mother! We, at least, won’t have any concealments.” “She may have thought, she could clinch it in that way.” “Clinch what?” “You know. Is she pretty?” “She’s—interesting.” “That can always be managed. Is she tall?” “NO, I think she’s rather out of style there; she’s rather petite.” “And what’s her face like?” “Well, she has no particular complexion, but it’s not thick. Her eyes are the best of her, though there isn’t much of them. They’re the ‘waters on a starry night’ sort, very sweet and glimmering. She has a kind of ground-colored hair and a nice little chin. Her mouth helps her eyes out; it looks best when she speaks; it’s pathetic in the play of the lips.” “I see,” Mrs. Verrian said. XX. The following week Verrian and his mother were at a show of paintings, in the gallery at the rear of a dealer’s shop, and while they were bending together to look at a picture he heard himself called to in a girlish voice, “Oh, Mr. Verrian!” as if his being there was the greatest wonder in the world. His mother and he lifted themselves to encounter a tall, slim girl, who was stretching her hand towards him, and who now cried out, joyously, “Oh, Mr. Verrian, I thought it must be you, but I was afraid it wasn’t as soon as I spoke. Oh, I’m so glad to see you; I want so much to have you know my mother—Mr. Verrian,” she said, presenting him. “And I you mine,” Verrian responded, in a violent ellipse, and introduced his own mother, who took in the fact of Miss Andrews’s tall thinness, topped with a wide, white hat and waving white plumes, and her little face, irregular and somewhat gaunt, but with a charm in the lips and eyes which took the elder woman’s heart with pathos. She made talk with Mrs. Andrews, who affected one as having the materials of social severity in her costume and manner. “Oh, I didn’t believe I should ever see you again,” the girl broke out impulsively upon Verrian. “Oh, I wanted to ask you so about Miss Shirley. Have you seen her since you got back?” “No,” Verrian said, “I haven’t seen her.” “Oh, I thought perhaps you had. I’ve been to the address that Mrs. Westangle gave me, but she isn’t there any more; she’s gone up into Harlem somewhere, and I haven’t been able to call again. Oh, I do feel so anxious about her. Oh, I do hope she isn’t ill. Do you think she is?” “I don’t believe so,” Verrian began. But she swept over his prostrate remark. “Oh, Mr. Verrian, don’t you think she’s wonderful? I’ve been telling mother about it, and I don’t feel at all the way she does. Do you?” “How does she feel? I must know that before I say.” “Why, of course! I hadn’t told you! She thinks it was a make-up between Miss Shirley and that Mr. Bushwick. But I say it couldn’t have been. Do you think it could?” Verrian found the suggestion so distasteful, for a reason which he did not quite seize himself, that he answered, resentfully, “It could have been, but I don’t think it was.” “I will tell her what you say. Oh, may I tell her what you say?” “I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It isn’t very important, either way, is it?” “Oh, don’t you think so? Not if it involved pretending what wasn’t true?” She bent towards him in such anxious demand that he could not help smiling. “The whole thing was a pretence, wasn’t it?” he suggested. “Yes, but that would have been a pretence that we didn’t know of.” “It would be incriminating to that extent, certainly,” Verrian owned, ironically. He found the question of Miss Shirley’s blame for the collusion as distasteful as the supposition of the collusion, but there was a fascination in the innocence before him, and he could not help playing with it. Sometimes Miss Andrews apparently knew that he was playing with her innocence, and sometimes she did not. But in either case she seemed to like being his jest, from which she snatched a fearful joy. She was willing to prolong the experience, and she drifted with him from picture to picture, and kept the talk recurrently to Miss Shirley and the phenomena of Seeing Ghosts. Her mother and Mrs. Verrian evidently got on together better than either of them at first expected. When it came to their parting, through Mrs. Andrews’s saying that she must be going, she shook hands with Mrs. Verrian and said to Philip, “I am so glad to have met you, Mr. Verrian. Will you come and see us?” “Yes, thank you,” he answered, taking the hand she now offered him, and then taking Miss Andrews’s hand, while the girl’s eyes glowed with pleasure. “I shall be very glad.” “Oh, shall you?” she said, with her transparent sincerity. “And you won’t forget Thursdays! But any day at five we have tea.” “Thank you,” Verrian said. “I might forget the Thursdays, but I couldn’t forget all the days of the week.” Miss Andrews laughed and blushed at once. “Then we shall expect you every day.” “Well, every day but Thursday,” he promised. When the mother and daughter had gone Mrs. Verrian said, “She is a great admirer of yours, Philip. She’s read your story, and I suspect she wants an opportunity to talk with you about it.” “You mean Mrs. Andrews?” “Yes. I suppose the daughter hasn’t waited for an opportunity. The mother had read that publisher’s paragraph about your invalid, and wanted to know if you had ever heard from her again. Women are personal in their literary interests.” Philip asked, in dismay, “You didn’t give it away did you, mother?” “Certainly not, my dear. You have brought me up too carefully.” “Of course. I didn’t imagine you had.” Then, as they could not pretend to look at the pictures any longer, they went away, too. Their issue into the open air seemed fraught with novel emotion for Mrs. Verrian. “Well, now,” she said, “I have seen the woman I would be willing my son should marry.” “Child, you mean,” Philip said, not pretending that he did not know she meant Miss Andrews. “That girl,” his mother returned, “is innocence itself. Oh, Philip, dear, do marry her!” “Well, I don’t know. If her mother is behaving as sagely with her as you are with me the chances are that she won’t let me. Besides, I don’t know that I want to marry quite so much innocence.” “She is conscience incarnate,” his mother uttered, perfervidly. “You could put your very soul in her keeping.” “Then you would be out of a job, mother.” “Oh, I am not worthy of the job, my dear. I have always felt that. I am too complex, and sometimes I can’t see the right alone, as she could.” Philip was silent a moment while he lost the personal point of view. “I suspect we don’t see the right when we see it alone. We ought to see the wrong, too.” “Ah, Philip, don’t let your fancy go after that girl!” “Miss Andrews? I thought—” “Don’t you be complex, my dear. You know I mean Miss Shirley. What has become of her, I wonder. I heard Miss Andrews asking you.” “I wasn’t able to tell her. Do you want me to try telling you?” “I would rather you never could.” Philip laughed sardonically. “Now, I shall forget Thursdays and all the other days, too. You are a very unwise parent, mother.” They laughed with each other at each other, and treated her enthusiasm for Miss Andrews as the joke it partly was. Mrs. Verrian did not follow him up about her idol, and a week or so later she was able to affect a decent surprise when he came in at the end of an afternoon and declined the cup of tea she proposed on the ground that he had been taking a cup of tea with the Andrewses. “You have really been there?” “Didn’t you expect me to keep my promise?” “But I was afraid I had put a stumbling-block in the way.” “Oh, I found I could turn the consciousness you created in me into literary material, and so I was rather eager to go. I have got a point for my new story out of it. I shall have my fellow suffer all I didn’t suffer in meeting the girl he knows his mother wants him to marry. I got on very well with those ladies. Mrs. Andrews is the mother of innocence, but she isn’t innocence. She managed to talk of my story without asking about the person who wanted to anticipate the conclusion. That was what you call complex. She was insincere; it was the only thing she wanted to talk about.” “I don’t believe it, Philip. But what did Miss Andrews talk about?” “Well, she is rather an optimistic conscience. She talked about books and plays that some people do not think are quite proper. I have a notion that, where the point involved isn’t a fact of her own experience, she is not very severe about it. You think that would be quite safe for me?” “Philip, I don’t like your making fun of her!” “Oh, she wasn’t insipid; she was only limpid. I really like her, and, as for reverencing her, of course I feel that in a way she is sacred.” He added, after a breath, “Too sacred. We none of us can expect to marry Eve before the Fall now; perhaps we have got over wanting to.” “You are very perverse, my dear. But you will get over that.” “Don’t take away my last defence, mother.” Verrian began to go rather regularly to the Andrews house, or, at least, he was accused of doing it by Miss Macroyd when, very irregularly, he went one day to see her. “How did you know it?” he asked. “I didn’t say I knew it. I only wished to know it. Now I am satisfied. I met another friend of yours on Sunday.” She paused for him to ask who; but he did not ask. “I see you are dying to know what friend: Mr. Bushwick.” “Oh, he’s a good-fellow. I wonder I don’t run across him.” “Perhaps that’s because you never call on Miss Shirley.” Miss Macroyd waited for this to take effect, but he kept a glacial surface towards her, and she went on: “They were walking together in the park at noon. I suppose they had been to church together.” Verrian manifested no more than a polite interest in the fact. He managed so well that he confirmed Miss Macroyd in a tacit conjecture. She went on: “Miss Shirley was looking quite blooming for her. But so was he, for that matter. Why don’t you ask if they inquired for you?” “I thought you would tell me without.” “I will tell you if he did. He was very cordial in his inquiries; and I had to pretend, to gratify him, that you were very well. I implied that you came here every Tuesday, but your Thursdays were dedicated to Miss Andrews.” “You are a clever woman, Miss Macroyd. I should never have thought of so much to say on such an uninteresting subject. And Miss Shirley showed no curiosity?” “Ah, she is a clever woman, too. She showed the prettiest kind of curiosity—so perfectly managed. She has a studio—I don’t know just how she puts it to use—with a painter girl in one of those studio apartment houses on the West Side: The Veronese, I believe. You must go and see her; I’ll let you have next Tuesday off; Tuesday’s her day, too.” “You are generosity itself, Miss Macroyd.” “Yes, there’s nothing mean about me,” she returned, in slang rather older than she ordinarily used. “If you’re not here next Tuesday I shall know where you are.” “Then I must take a good many Tuesdays off, unless I want to give myself away.” “Oh, don’t do that, Mr. Verrian! Please! Or else I can’t let you have any Tuesday off.” XXI. Upon the whole, Verrian thought he would go to see Miss Shirley the next Tuesday, but he did not say so to Miss Macroyd. Now that he knew where the girl was, all the peculiar interest she had inspired in him renewed itself. It was so vivid that he could not pay his usual Thursday call at Miss Andrews’s, and it filled his mind to the exclusion of the new story he had begun to write. He loafed his mornings away at his club, and he lunched there, leaving his mother to lunch alone, and was dreamily preoccupied in the evenings which he spent at home, sitting at his desk, with the paper before him, unable to coax the thoughts from his brain to its alluring blank, but restive under any attempts of hers to talk with him. In his desperation he would have gone to the theatre, but the fact that the ass who rightfully called himself Verrian was playing at one of them blocked his way, through his indignation, to all of them. By Saturday afternoon the tedious time had to be done something with, and he decided to go and see what the ass was like. He went early, and found himself in the end seat of a long row of many rows of women, who were prolonging the time of keeping their hats on till custom obliged them to take them off. He gave so much notice to the woman next him as to see that she was deeply veiled as well as widely hatted, and then he lapsed into a dreary muse, which was broken by the first strains of the overture. Then he diverted himself by looking round at all those ranks of women lifting their arms to take out them hat-pins and dropping them to pin their hats to the seat-backs in front of them, or to secure them somehow in their laps. Upon the whole, he thought the manoeuvre graceful and pleasing; he imagined a consolation in it for the women, who, if they were forced by public opinion to put off their charming hats, would know how charmingly they did it. Each turned a little, either her body or her head, and looked in any case out of the corner of her eyes; and he was phrasing it all for a scene in his story, when he looked round at his neighbor to see how she had managed, or was managing, with her veil. At the same moment she looked at him, and their eyes met. “Mr. Verrian!” “Miss Shirley!” The stress of their voices fell upon different parts of the sentences they uttered, but did not commit either of them to a special role. “How very strange we should meet here!” she said, with pleasure in her voice. “Do you know, I have been wanting to come all winter to see this man, on account of his name? And to think that I should meet the other Mr. Verrian as soon as I yielded to the temptation.” “I have just yielded myself,” Verrian said. “I hope you don’t feel punished for yielding.” “Oh, dear, no! It seems a reward.” She did not say why it seemed so, and he suggested, “The privilege of comparing the histrionic and the literary Verrian?” “Could there be any comparison?” she came back, gayly. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the histrionic Verrian yet.” They were laughing when the curtain rose, and the histrionic Verrian had his innings for a long, long first act. When the curtain fell she turned to the literary Verrian and said, “Well?” “He lasted a good while,” Verrian returned. “Yes. Didn’t he?” She looked at the little watch in her wristlet. “A whole hour! Do you know, Mr. Verrian, I am going to seem very rude. I am going to leave you to settle this question of superiority; I know you’ll be impartial. I have an appointment—with the dressmaker, to be specific—at half-past four, and it’s half-past three now, and I couldn’t well leave in the middle of the next act. So I will say good-bye now—” “Don’t!” he entreated. “I couldn’t bear to be left alone with this dreadful double of mine. Let me go out with you.” “Can I accept such self-sacrifice? Well!” She had put on her hat and risen, and he now stepped out of his place to let her pass and then followed her. At the street entrance he suggested, “A hansom, or a simple trolley?” “I don’t know,” she murmured, meditatively, looking up the street as if that would settle it. “If it’s only half-past three now, I should have time to get home more naturally.” “Oh! And will you let me walk with you?” “Why, if you’re going that way.” “I will say when I know which way it is.” They started on their walk so blithely that they did not sadden in the retrospect of their joint experiences at Mrs. Westangle’s. By the time they reached the park gate at Columbus Circle they had come so distinctly to the end of their retrospect that she made an offer of letting him leave her, a very tacit offer, but unmistakable, if he chose to take it. He interpreted her hesitation as he chose. “No,” he said, “it won’t be any longer if we go up through the park.” She drew in her breath softly, smoothing down her muff with her right hand while she kept her left in it. “And it will certainly be pleasanter.” When they were well up the path, in that part of it where it deflects from the drive without approaching the street too closely, and achieves something of seclusion, she said: “Your speaking of him just now makes me want to tell you something, Mr. Verrian. You would hear of it very soon, anyway, and I feel that it is always best to be very frank with you; but you’ll regard it as a secret till it comes out.” The currents that had been playing so warmly in and out of Verrian’s heart turned suddenly cold. He said, with joyless mocking, “You know, I’m used to keeping your secrets. I—shall feel honored, I’m sure, if you trust me with another.” “Yes,” she returned, pathetically, “you have always been faithful—even in your wounds.” It was their joint tribute to the painful past, and they had paid no other. She was looking away from him, but he knew she was aware of his hanging his head. “That’s all over now,” she uttered, passionately. “What I wanted to say—to tell you—is that I am engaged to Mr. Bushwick.” He could have answered that she had no need to tell him. The cold currents in and out of his heart stiffened frozenly and ceased to flow; his heart itself stood still for an eternal instant. It was in this instant that he said, “He is a fine fellow.” Afterwards, amid the wild bounding of his recovered pulse, he could add, “I congratulate him; I congratulate you both.” “Thank you,” she said. “No one knows as I do how good he is—has been, all through.” Probably she had not meant to convey any reproach to Verrian by Bushwick’s praise, but he felt reproach in it. “It only happened last week. You do wish me happy, don’t you? No one knows what a winter I have had till now. Everything seeming to fail—” She choked, and did not say more. He said, aimlessly, “I am sorry—” “Let me sit down a moment,” she begged. And she dropped upon the bench at which she faltered, and rested there, as if from the exhaustion of running. When she could get her breath she began again: “There is something else I want to tell you.” She stopped. And he asked, to prompt her, “Yes?” “Thank you,” she answered, piteously. And she added, with superficial inconsequence, “I shall always think you were very cruel.” He did not pretend not to know what she meant, and he said, “I shall always think so, too. I tried to revenge myself for the hurt your harmless hoax did my vanity. Of course, I made believe at the time that I was doing an act of justice, but I never was able to brave it out afterwards.” “But you were—you were doing an act of justice. I deserved what you said, but I didn’t deserve what has followed. I meant no harm—it was a silly prank, and I have suffered for it as if it were a crime, and the consequences are not ended yet. I should think that, if there is a moral government of the universe, the Judge of all the earth would know when to hold his hand. And now the worst of it is to come yet.” She caught Verrian’s arm, as if for help. “Don’t—don’t!” he besought her. “What will people think?” “Yes, Yes!” she owned, releasing him and withdrawing to the other end of the seat. “But it almost drives me wild. What shall I do? You ought to know. It is your fault. You have frightened me out of daring to tell the truth.” Had he, indeed, done that? Verrian asked himself, and it seemed to him that he had done something like it. If it was so, he must help her over her fear now. He answered, bluntly, harshly: “You must tell him all about it—” “But if he won’t believe me? Do you think he will believe me? Would you believe me?” “You have nothing to do with that. There is nothing for you but to tell him the whole story. You mustn’t share such a secret with any one but your husband. When you tell him it will cease to be my secret.” “Yes, yes.” “Well, then, you must tell him, unless—” “Yes,” she prompted. Then they were both silent, looking intensely into each other’s eyes. In that moment all else of life seemed to melt and swim away from Verrian and leave him stranded upon an awful eminence confronting her. “Hello, hello!” a gay voice called, as if calling to them both. “What are you two conspiring?” Bushwick, as suddenly as if he had fallen from the sky or started up from the earth, stood before them, and gave a hand to each—his right to Verrian, his left to Miss Shirley. “How are you, Verrian? How are you, Miss Shirley?” He mocked her in the formality of his address. “I’ve been shadowing you ever since you came into the park, but I thought I wouldn’t interrupt till you seemed to have got through your conversation. May I ask what it was all about? It seemed very absorbing, from a respectful distance.” “Very absorbing, indeed,” Miss Shirley said, making room for him between them. “Sit down and let me tell you. You’re to be a partner in the secret.” “Silent partner,” Bushwick suggested. “I hope you’ll always be silent,” the girl shared in his drolling. She began and told the whole story to the last detail, sparing neither herself nor Verrian, who listened as if he were some one else not concerned, and kept saying to himself, “what courage!” Bushwick listened as mutely, with a face that, to Verrian’s eye, seemed to harden from its light jocosity into a severity he had not seen in it before. “It was something,” she ended towards Bushwick, with a catch in her breath, “that you had to know.” “Yes,” he answered, tonelessly. “And now”—she attempted a little forlorn playfulness—“don’t you think he gave me what I deserved?” Bushwick rose up and took her hand under his arm, keeping his left hand upon hers. “He! Who?” “Mr. Verrian.” “I don’t know any Mr. Verrian. Come, you’ll take cold here.” He turned his back on Verrian, who fancied a tremor in her hat, as if she would look round at him; but then, as if she divined Bushwick’s intention, she did not look round, and together they left him. It was days before Verrian could confess himself of the fact to his mother, who listened with the justice instinctive in her. She still had not spoken when he ended, and he said, “I have thought it all over, and I feel that he did right. He did the only thing that a man in love with her could do. And I don’t wonder he’s in love with her. Yes”—he stayed his mother, imperatively—“and such a man as he, though he ground me in the dirt and stamped on me, I will say, it, is worthy of any woman. He can believe in a woman, and that’s the first thing that’s needed to make a woman like her, true. I don’t envy his job.” He was speaking self-contradictorily, irrelevantly, illogically, as a man thinks. He went on in that way, getting himself all out. “She isn’t single-hearted, but she’s faithful. She’ll never betray him now. She’s never given him any reason to distrust her. She’s the kind that can keep on straight with any one she’s begun straight with. She told him all that before me be cause she wanted me to know—to realize—that she had told him. It took courage.” Mrs. Verrian had thought of generalizing, but she seized a single point. “Perhaps not so much courage as you think. You mustn’t let such bravado impose upon you, Philip. I’ve no doubt she knew her ground.” “She took the chance of his casting her off.” “She knew he wouldn’t. She knew him, and she knew you. She knew that if he cast her off—” “Mother! Don’t say it! I can’t bear it!” His mother did not say it, or anything more, then. Late at night she came to him. “Are you asleep, Philip?” “Asleep? I!” “I didn’t suppose you were. But I have had a note to-day which I must answer. Mrs. Andrews has asked us to dinner on Saturday. Philip, if you could see that sweet girl as I do, in all her goodness and sincerity—” “I think I do, mother. And I wouldn’t be guilty of her unhappiness for the world. You must decline.” “Well, perhaps you are right.” Mrs. Verrian went away, softly, sighing. As she sealed her reply to Mrs. Andrews, she sighed again, and made the reflection which a mother seldom makes with regard to her son, before his marriage, that men do not love women for their goodness. PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

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