CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVII THE TRUTH ABOUT SHAKSPERE AT LAST Miss Caroline dutifully returned the calls that were paid her, with never a suspicion that her slavery to strong drink had been the secret inspiration of them. She was not yet awake to our sentiments in this matter. She had given strong waters to the minister with a heart as innocent as their disguise of ice and leafage had made them actually appear to that good man. And I, who was well informed, hesitated to warn her, hoping weakly that she would come to understand. For I had seen there were many things that Miss Caroline had not to be told in order to know. For one, she had quickly divined that the ladies of Little Arcady considered her furniture to be unfortunate. She knew that they scorned it for its unstylishness; that some of them sympathized in the humiliation that such impossible stuff must be to her; while others believed that she was too unsophisticated to have any proper shame in the matter. These latter strove by every device to have her note the right thing in furniture and thus be moved to contrast it instructively with her own: as when Mrs. Judge Robinson borrowed for an afternoon Aunt Delia McCormick's best blue plush rocker, Mrs. Westley Keyts's new sofa, upholstered with gorgeous ingrain, and Mrs. Eubanks's new black walnut combination desk and bookcase with brass trimmings and little spindled balconies, in which could be elegantly placed the mineral specimens picked up along the river bank, and the twin statuettes of the fluting shepherd and his inamorata. As Mrs. Judge Robinson herself possessed new and high-priced furniture, including a gold-and-onyx stand to occupy the bay window and uphold the Rogers group, "Going for the Parson," as well as two fragile gilt chairs, which considerate guests would not sit in but leave exposed to view, and a complete new set of black walnut, the effect that day—which included a grand smell of varnish—was nothing less than sumptuous. The occasion was a semi-monthly meeting of the Ladies' Home Study and Culture Club, at which Miss Caroline was to be present. There had been a suspension of the Club's meetings while Mrs. Potts was in abeyance, but on this day she was to enter the world again and preside over the meeting as "Madam President," though the ladies sometimes forgot to call her that. The paper read by Mrs. Potts—who was not at all ineffective in her black—was on "The Lake Poets," with a few pointed selections from Wordsworth and others. Whether or not Miss Caroline was rightly impressed by the furniture exhibit was a question not easy to determine. True, she stared at it with something in her eyes beyond a mere perception of its lines; but whether this was the longing passion of an awakened soul or the simple awe of the unenlightened was not to be ascertained at the moment. Testimony as to her enjoyment of the President's paper was more circumstantial. In the midst of this, as the listeners were besought to "dwell a moment on this exquisite delineation of Nature,"—expertly pronounced "Nate-your" by Mrs. Potts,—Miss Caroline turned her head aside as one deeply moved by the poet's magic. But Marcella Eubanks, glancing at that moment into a mirror on the opposite wall,—a mirror in a plush frame on which pansies had been painted,—caught the full and frank exposure of a yawn. It was a thorough yawn. Miss Caroline had surrendered abjectly to it, in the belief—unrecking the mirror—that she could not be detected. The discussion that followed the paper—as was customary at the meetings—proved to be a bit livelier. Each lady said something she had thought up to say, beginning, "Does it not seem—" or "Are we not forced to conclude—" I suspect that Miss Caroline was sleepy. Perhaps she was nettled by the boredom she had been made to endure without just provocation; perhaps the fashionable fumes of varnish had been toxic to her unaccustomed senses. At any rate she now compromised herself regrettably. Mrs. Westley Keyts had been thinking up something to say, something choice that should yet be sufficiently vague not to incriminate her. It had seemed that these requirements would be met if she said, in a tone of easy patronage, "Mr. Wordsworth is certainly a very bright writer of poetry, but as for me—give me Shakspere!" She had thought of saying "the Bard of Avon," a polished phrase coined for his "Compendium" by the ingenious Mr. Gaskell; but, hearing her own voice strangely break the silence, Mrs. Keyts became timid at the last moment and let it go at "Shakspere." "Oh, Shakspere—of course !" said most of the ladies at once, and those not quick enough to utter it concertedly looked it almost reprovingly at the speaker. A silence fell, as if every one must have time to recover from this trivial platitude. But it was a silence outrageously shattered by Miss Caroline, who said:— "O dear! I've always considered Shakspere such an overrated man!" The silence grew more intense, only Mrs. Potts emitting a slight but audible gasp. But swift looks flashed from each lady to her horrified sisters. Was it possible that the unfortunate woman had been in no condition to come among them? "Oh, a greatly overrated man!" repeated Miss Caroline, terribly, "far too wordy—too fond of wretched puns—so much of his humor coarse and tiresome. By the way, have you ladies taken up Byron?" The moment was charged, almost to explosion. A crisis impended, out of the very speechlessness of the gathering. Mrs. Potts was aghast in behalf of William Shakspere, and Marcella Eubanks was crimsoning at the blunt query about Byron, well knowing that he could be taken up by a lady only with the wariest caution, and that he would much better be let alone. The others were torn demoralizingly between these two extremes of distress. But the situation was saved by the ready wit of Mrs. Judge Robinson. "I think the hour has come for refreshments, Madam President!" she said urbanely, and the meeting was nervously adjourned. Under the animation thus induced an approximate equilibrium was restored. The ladies gulped down chicken salad, many of them using forks with black thread tied about them to show they were borrowed from Mrs. Eubanks. They drank lemonade from a fine glass pitcher that had come as a gratuitous mark of esteem from the tea merchant patronized by the hostess; and they congealed themselves pleasantly with vanilla ice-cream eaten from dishes of excellent pressed glass that had come one by one as the Robinson family consumed its baking powder. But Miss Caroline would have been dense indeed had she not divined, even amid that informal babbling, that she was being viewed by the ladies of the Club with a shocked stupefaction. Precisely what emotion this knowledge left with her I have never known. But I do know that before the meeting broke up, it had been agreed to hold the next one at the house of Miss Caroline herself. It may be that she suggested and urged this in pure desperation, wishing to regain a favor which she had felt unaccountably withdrawn; and it may be that the ladies accepted in a similar desperation, knowing not how to inform her that she was grossly ineligible for membership in a Home Study Club. The intervening two weeks were filled with tales and talks of Miss Caroline's heresy. Excitement and adverse criticism were almost universally aroused. It was a scandal of proportions almost equal to that of her love for strong drink. About most writers one could be permitted to have an opinion. But it was not thought that one could properly have an opinion about Shakspere, and, so far as we knew, no one had ever before subjected him to this indignity. One might as well have an opinion about Virtue or the law of gravitation. An opinion of any sort was impossible. One favorable would be puny, futile, immodestly patronizing. An unfavorable opinion had heretofore not been within realms of the idlest speculation. There were but two of us, I believe, who did not promptly condemn Miss Caroline's violence of speech—two men of varying parts. Westley Keyts frankly said he had never been able to "get into" Shakspere, and considered it, as a book for reading purposes, inferior to "Cudjo's Cave," which he had read three times. The minister, whose church Miss Caroline now patronized,—that term being chosen after some deliberation,—held up both his hands at the news and mildly exclaimed, "Well!" Then, after a pause, "Well, well!" And still again, after another pause, "Well, well, well!" This was thought to be shifty and evasive—certainly not so outspoken as the town had a right to expect. Solon Denney, though in his heart true to Shakspere, affected to be gleeful. A paragraph, mysterious to many, including Miss Caroline, appeared in the ensuing Argus :— "An encounter long supposed by scientists to be a mere metaphysical abstraction of almost playful import has at last occurred in sober physics. The irresistible force has met up with the immovable body. We look for results next week." I knew that Solon considered Miss Caroline to be an irresistible force. I was uncertain whether Shakspere or Mrs. Potts was meant by the immovable body. I knew that he held them in equal awe, and I knew that Mrs. Potts felt, in a way, responsible for Shakspere this far west of Boston, regarding any attack upon him as a personal affront to herself. On the day of the next meeting the ladies of the Club gathered in the dingy and inelegant drawing-room of Miss Caroline. No vividly flowered carpet decked the floor; only a time-toned rug that left the outer edge of the floor untidily exposing its dull stain; no gilt and onyx table bore its sculptured fantasy by the busy Rogers. The mantel and shelves were bare of those fixed ornaments that should decorate the waste places of all true homes; there were no flint arrow-heads, no "specimens," no varnished pine cones, no "Rock of Ages," no waxen lilies, not even a china cup goldenly emblazoned with "Love the Giver," in German script. And there were no beautiful chairs with delicate gilded spindles—not an elegant and impracticable chair in the whole big room—not one chair which could not be occupied as comfortably as any common kitchen rocker. It was indeed a poor place; obviously the woman's best room, yet showing careless traces of almost daily use. To ladies who never opened their best rooms save to dust and air them on days when company was expected, and who would as soon have lounged in them informally as they would have desecrated a church, this laxity was heinous. And ordinarily, in the best rooms of one another, the ladies became spontaneously, rigidly formal as they assembled, speaking in tones suitably stiff of the day's paper, or viewing with hushed esteem those art treasures that surrounded them. But so difficult was it to attain this formality amid the homely surroundings of Miss Caroline that to-day they not only lounged with negligent ease in the big chairs and on the poor, broad sofas, but they talked familiarly of their household concerns quite as if they had been in one of their own second-best rooms on any common day. On a table in one cool corner was a huge bowl of thin silver, whence issued a baffling fragrance. Discreet observation, as the throng gathered, revealed this to contain a large block of ice and a colored liquid in which floated cherries with slices of lemon and orange. A ladle of generous lines reposed in the bowl, and circling it on the table were many small cups. There was a feeling of relief when these details had been ascertained. Fear had been felt that Miss Caroline might forget herself and offer them a glass of wine, or something worse, from a large black bottle; for Little Arcady believed, in its innocent remoteness, that the devil's stuff came in no other way than large black bottles. Miss Eubanks had made sure that the ladies wore their white ribbons. Marcella's own satin bow was larger than common, so that no one might mistake the principles of the heart beating beneath it. But the cool big bowl with its harmless fruit restored confidence at once, and when Miss Caroline urged them to try Clem's punch they refrained not. The walk to the north end of town on a sultry afternoon had qualified them to receive its consolations, and they gathered gratefully about. Marcella Eubanks quaffed the first beaker, a trifle timorously, it is true, for the word "punch" had stirred within her a vague memory of sinister associations. Sometime she had read a tale in which one Howard Melville had gone to the great city and wrecked a career of much promise by accepting a glass of something from the hands of a beautiful but thoughtless girl, pampered child of the banker with whom he had secured a position. For a dread moment Marcella seemed to recall that the fatal draught was named "punch." But after a tentative sip of the compound at hand, she decided that it must have been something else—doubtless "a glass of sparkling wine." For this punch before her was palpably of a babe's innocence. Indeed it tasted rather like an inferior lemonade. But it was cold, and Marcella tossed off a second cup of it. She could make better lemonade herself, and she murmured slightingly of the stuff to Aunt Delia McCormick. "It wants more lemons and more sugar," said Marcella, firmly. Aunt Delia pressed back the white satin bow on her bosom in order to manage her second glass with entire safety. "I don't know, Marcella," she said in a dreamy undertone, after draining the cup to its cherry. "I don't know—it does seem to take hold, for all it tastes so trifling." As each lady arrived she was led to the punch-bowl. When the last one had been taught the way to that cool nook, there was a pleasant hum of voices in the room. There was still an undercurrent of difference as to the punch's merit—other than mere coolness; though Miss Eubanks now agreed with Aunt Delia that it possessed virtues not to be discerned in the first careless draught. The conversation continued to be general, to the immense delight of the hostess, for she had dreaded the ordeal of that formal opening, with its minutes of the last meeting; and she had dared even to hope that the day's paper might, by tactful management, be averted. She waxed more daringly hopeful when Clem came to refill the punch-bowl. She felt that she owed much to the heat of the day, which was insuring the thirst of the arrivals. The punch and general conversation seemed to suffice them even after their first thirst had been allayed. She began to wonder if the ladies were not a more unbending and genial lot than she had once suspected. A considerable group of them now chatted vivaciously about the replenished bowl, including Madam the President, who had arrived very thirsty indeed, and who was now, between sips, accounting for the singular favor which the Adams family had always found in the sight of God and the people of Massachusetts. She seemed to be prevailed over, not without difficulty, by Aunt Delia, who related her failure to learn from Clem the ingredients of his acceptable punch. This was not surprising, for Clem was either never able or never willing to tell how he made anything whatever. Of this punch Aunt Delia had been able to wheedle from him only that it contained "some little fixin's." Insistent questioning did develop, further, that "cold tea" was one of these; but cold tea did not make plain its recondite potencies—did not explain why a beverage so unassuming to the taste should inspire one with a wish to partake of it continuously. "We might get him to make a barrel of it for the Sunday-school picnic," said Marcella, brightly, over her fourth cup. "If it contains only a little tea, perhaps the effect upon the children would not be deleterious." "We'll try it," said Aunt Delia, reaching for the ladle at sight of empty cups in the hands of Mrs. Judge Robinson and Mrs. Westley Keyts. " I'll furnish the cherries and the sugar and the tea." How it came about was never quite understood by the ladies, but the true and formal note of a Ladies' Home Study Club was never once struck that afternoon. Madam the President did not call the meeting to order, the minutes of the last meeting are unread to this day, and a motion to adjourn never became necessary. It had been thought wisest to keep entirely away from poetry at this meeting, and the paper for the day, to have been read by Marcella Eubanks, was "The Pathos of Charles Dickens." Marcella had taken unusual pains in its preparation, bringing with her two volumes of the author from which to read at the right moment the deaths of Little Nell and Paul Dombey. She had practised these until she could make her voice quaver effectively, and she had looked forward to a genuine ovation when she sat down. "WE MIGHT GET HIM TO MAKE A BARREL OF IT FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL PICNIC" If it is clearly understood, then, that no one thought of calling for the paper, that even its proud author felt the hours gliding by without any poignant regret, it should be seen that the occasion had strangely come to be one of pure and joyous relaxation, with never an instructive or cultured or studious moment. There was talk of domestic concerns, sprightly town gossip, mirth, wit, and anecdotes. Aunt Delia McCormick told her parrot story, which was risqué , even when no gentlemen were present, for the parrot said "damn it!" in the course of his surprisingly human repartee under difficulties. Mrs. Westley Keyts, the bars being down, thereupon began another parrot story. But Miss Eubanks, who had observed that all parrot stories have "damn" in them, suddenly conceived that matters had gone far enough in that direction. Affecting not to have heard Mrs. Keyts's opening of "A returned missionary made a gift of a parrot to two elderly maiden ladies—" Marcella led the would-be anecdotist to the punch-bowl, and, under the cover of operations there, spoke to her in an undertone. Mrs. Keyts said that the thing had been printed right out on the funny page of "Hearth and Home," but over the cup of punch that Marcella pressed upon her, she consented to forego it on account of the minister's wife being present. There were other anecdotes, however; not of a parrot character, but chiefly of funny sayings of the little ones at home. Mrs. Judge Robinson, with the artistic mendacity of your true raconteur , accredited to her own four-year-old a speech about the stars being holes in the floor of heaven, although it was said of this gem in "Harper's Drawer," where she had read it, that "the following good one comes to us from a lady subscriber in the well-known city of X——." It could not be recalled afterwards how, from this harmless exchange, they had come to be listening to passages from the adventurous life of Childe Harold, read crisply by their hostess. Still less could the ladies later comprehend how some of their number had been guilty of innuendos—or worse—against the well-known Bard of Avon. Yet, so it was. Miss Caroline herself had refrained from abusing him—had seemed to have forgotten him, indeed; but, as she read Byron to them, their hearts opened to her—rushed out, indeed, with a friendly wholeness that demanded something more than mere cordial applause of her favorite poet. Some intimation of a sympathy with her view of the other poet came to seem not ungraceful. During one of the reader's pauses to impress upon them the splendors of the Byronic imagery, and eke its human heart-warmth, good Aunt Delia, with defiant looks about the circle, broke in with:— "I shouldn't wonder if Shakspere has been made too much over." Mrs. Keyts stepped loyally into the breach thus effected. "Westley thinks Shakspere isn't such an awful good book," she said, feeling her way, "though it seems to me it has some very interesting and excellent pieces in it." "Shakspere is ver-ry uneven," remarked Mrs. Judge Robinson, in a tone of dignified concession. "There is always a word to be said on either side of these matters—there is undeniably room for controversy." Thus Mrs. Potts, in her best manner of authority, from the punch-bowl. "Let the dead rest!" gently murmured Miss Eubanks, from her dreamy corner of the biggest sofa. Her inflection was archly significant. One had to suspect that Shakspere, alive and a fair target for dispraise, might have learned something to his advantage if not to his delight. Miss Caroline was both surprised and gratified. At the previous meeting she had detected no sign of this concurring sentiment. She plunged again into Byron with renewed enthusiasm. The afternoon came to a glorious end, and the ladies departed with many expressions of rejoicing. They had found Miss Caroline so charming that several of them were torn with fresh pity and brought to the verge of tears when they thought of her furniture. Marcella Eubanks did cry on the way home and had to put down her green barege veil. But that was for thinking of poor little Paul Dombey. She was mourning him as a personal loss. Also must she have adored the genius of a master who could thus move her from a calm that was constitutional with every known Eubanks. CHAPTER XVIII IN WHICH THE GAME WAS PLAYED The next Argus said of Miss Caroline's afternoon that "the ladies present one and all report a most enjoyable time." There was another mysterious paragraph, too, farther down the column of "locals," which proclaimed that "The immovable body has at last been struck by the irresistible force and has failed to live up to its reputation. It moved and moved so you could see it move. Another bubble exploded! We live in a sensational age." Now, while it is true that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have acted after the incident of the mint juleps. Solon Denney, who had experienced the hospitality of Miss Caroline, and who could speak from a wider knowledge than our minister or the ladies of the town, had once said:— "Those mint juleps are simple, honest things. They taste injurious from the start. But that punch—it's hypocritical. It steals into your brain as a little child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with prattle; but afterwards—well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe. I'd be my old self again sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper about this had I not dissuaded him. But I saw that I must at once have with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for the ordeal. "I never dreamed—I never suspected—how should I?" she murmured pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling phrases. She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of the Club as nothing short of adventures—adventures which she had survived scathless not but by the favor of an indulgent Providence. "So that is what those little white satin bows mean?" she asked, and I said that it most emphatically was. "I suspected it might be some kind of mourning for babies—a local custom, you know, though it did seem queer. What can they think of me?" "They don't know what to think now," I said, "and if you are wise, you will never let them know." "The Colonel was proud of that punch," she mused. "I dare say he had reasons," I answered grimly. "Especially after Cousin Looshe Peavey came to spend Christmas with us one time. The Colonel had always considered Cousin Looshe rather arrogant about this punch, and it may have been a special brew. I know that Cousin had an immense respect for it after he was able—that is—afterwards—" "I can easily believe it." "Cherry brandy—Jamaica rum—pint of Madeira—gill of port—a bit of cordial—some sherry—I forget if there's anything else." I grasped the chair in which I sat. "Heaven forbid!" I cried; "and don't tell me, anyway—I'm reeling now." "But of course there are lemons and oranges and cherries and tea and quantities of ice to weaken it—" "The whole frozen polar sea itself couldn't weaken that mixture of elemental forces. See to it," I went on sternly, "that you remember only the innocent parts of it if you are ever asked for the recipe." She actually cowered. "Also as to mint juleps—remember that you have forgotten, if you ever knew how they are made." "Dear, dear —and our Bishop did enjoy his mint julep so!" "That's different," I said; "they were probably raised together." "And that afternoon, I thought something of the sort was necessary; do you know, they seemed rather cold to me at that other meeting—and of course there wasn't enough of it to hurt them." "Your intentions were amiable, I concede, but your carelessness was criminal—nothing short of it. You laid the train for a scandal that would have shaken Slocum County to its remotest outlying cornfield, and even made itself felt over this whole sovereign state." I was gratified to see that she shuddered. "I shall never learn," she pleaded; "their life is so different." "Let them at least live it out to its natural end, such as it is," I urged. Hereupon, confessing herself unnerved, Miss Caroline led me to the dining room, and in a glass of Madeira from a cask forwarded by Second-cousin Colonel Lucius Quintus Peavey, C.S.A., she pledged herself to preserve the decencies as these had been codified in Little Arcady by the Sons and Daughters of Temperance. For my part I drank to her continuance in the wondrous favor of Heaven. Thereafter, I am bound to say, Miss Caroline conducted herself with a discretion that was admirable. Upon more than one occasion I was made to notice this. One of them was at an evening entertainment at the Eubanks home that autumn, to which it was my privilege to escort her. "A large and brilliant company was present," to quote from a competent authority, and the refreshments were "recherche," to quote again, this being, I believe, the first of our social functions at which Japanese paper napkins were handed around. Eustace Eubanks entertained "one and all" by exhibiting and describing lantern views of important scenes in the Holy Land; Marcella sang "Comin' Thro' the Rye" with such iron restraint that the most fastidious among us could have found no cause for offence, and Eustace sang an innocent song of war and bloodshed and death. All went well until Eustace, being pressed for more, ventured a drinking song. Whether this had been censored by his household I have never learned. Perhaps there had been demurs—there were almost certain to have been; and possibly Eustace had held out for the thing because of the rare opportunity it afforded for the exercise of his lowest tones. Perhaps it had been deemed wise to indulge him in this, lest in rebellion he break all bonds of propriety and revert to the "Bedouin Love Song." At any rate he sang "Drinking," a song that lauds the wine-cup as chiefest of godless joys, and terminating in "drinking" thrice reiterated, of which each individual one finishes so much lower than it begins that the last one seems to expire in the bottomless pit. Many of those present appeared to enjoy this song. Even Marcella Eubanks seemed for once to have soared above mere principle into the unmoral realm of "Art for Art's sake." But it falls to be said, and I say it with a pride which I think should not excite cavil, that Miss Caroline frowned splendidly from the first moment that the song's true character was revealed. She superbly evinced uneasiness, moreover, when the thing was done, as if to say, "One can't tell what may occur in a place where that is permitted!" And her performance was not observed by myself alone. Marcella saw it and sped to her brother, who, after listening to hurried words from her, dashed into "The Lost Chord" with a swift and desperate fervor, as if to allay all alarm in the mind of this sensitive guest. Eustace was at heart as earnestly well meaning as any Eubanks that ever lived, and his vagaries in song were attributable solely to a trusting nature capriciously endowed with a dash of the artistic temperament. It was only a dash, however. Beyond doubt, had his family but known, he could have sung the "Bedouin Love Song," and been none the worse for it. If Miss Caroline's eloquent pantomime at this time aroused a suspicion that she had been maligned, as to her habits of drink, her behavior on a subsequent evening, when Mrs. Judge Robinson entertained, left no one to doubt it. There was music, too, on this occasion—described elsewhere as "a gala occasion"—after Eustace had concluded his part of the entertainment and gotten his lantern out of the way,—music by a quartet consisting of Messrs. Fancett and Eubanks, first and second bass, and Messrs. Updyke and G. Brown, first and second tenor. In excellent accord these tenors and basses, so blameless in their living, lifted up their voices and sang they "would that the wavelets of ocean were wavelets of sparkling champagne!" It was a blithe and rippling morceau if one could forget the well-nigh cosmic depravity of it; but Miss Caroline, it appeared, was not able to forget. She confided as much to Marcella Eubanks and Aunt Delia McCormick, intimating that while she was doubly desirous to be pleased because of her position as an outsider, she was, nevertheless, a silly old woman, encrusted with prejudice, and she could not deny that she found this song suggestive . Her eyes glistened when she said it, and Marcella felt like pinning a white ribbon to her then and there. Escorting Miss Caroline to her home that night, I listened to her account of this colloquy and found myself wishing that matters had been different. It seemed to me that I must ultimately become the victim of a romantic passion for her, and I told her as much when we parted. Gossip, the yellow-tongued dragon, had been tracked to its lair and done to death, or at least that one of its heads had been smitten off which babbled slander of Miss Caroline. Thenceforth she and I were free to think upon other matters. And there were these other matters in both our lives. As to most of them we did not hold speech together. Our intimacy as yet lay quite within a circle so charmed that it might not be entered by things too personal to either of us. By a kind of tacit treaty we brought thither none but those affairs which invited a not too serious tone. Our late common life had provided an abundance of these, and they had been hailed by my friend with an unfailing levity which the widow of J. Rodney Potts, for one, would have found it impossible to condone. "I am a light old woman," she had said to me; "I laugh at the world even when I fear it most." There was a desperate sprite of banter in her eye when she made this confession, a sprite that leaped forth to be gay when I shrived her. But, though we sacredly observed all mirthful conventions in our dallying, I knew that Miss Caroline had more than enough to ponder of matters weighty. I knew that she was likely to have regretted a too-ready sharing of Clem's easy enthusiasm over industrial conditions in the North. Clem believed by instinct not only that the evil thereof is sufficient unto the day, but that the incidental good sufficeth also. His quality of faith would have seemed a pointed rebuke to the common run of believers in a Providence that watches and sends. Confronted by the spectre of present want he could exorcise it neatly by the device of beholding, in a contrary vision, future limitless pullets of a marketable immaturity, or endless acres of garden produce ripe and ready to sell. Moreover, his experience with "gold money" was as yet insufficient to acquaint him with its truly volatile character. All sums greater than a hundred dollars were blessedly alike to him—equally prodigious. Two hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands sent the same rays of light through the spectrum of his poetic mind, and a bank was an institution of such abiding grace that, having once established a connection with it, one possessed forever a stout prop in time of need. I was sure indeed that Miss Caroline had defined these limitations of Clem as a financier. It was one of those enjoyable topics which we had been free to discuss. That she had discovered how lamentably his resources had been reduced by freight tolls on her furniture I could only infer. But I knew, at least, that she was aware of the blistering, rainless summer that had laid Clem's high hopes of a garden in dust and cut off half his revenue. Plainly, Miss Caroline had more than enough of matters fit to engage her graver moments. For my own part I, too, had matters to dwell upon of an equal gravity in their own poor way; though perhaps, too, I could not have defined them as understandingly as I did the perplexities of my neighbor. Happily the feat need not be attempted; I had the game, in which troubles may be played away at least beyond the necessity for analyzing them—the game which requires two decks and is to be played alone—the most efficacious of those devices for the solitary which cards afford. I had been made acquainted with its scheme and with some of its cruder virtues by a certain illustrious soldier whom I was once much thrown with. He confessed to me that he played it before a battle to inspire him with coolness, and after a battle to learn wise behavior under victory or defeat, as it might have been. I was persuaded to learn more of it. I played the thing at first, to be sure, as I have noticed that novices always do, with a mind so bent upon "getting it" that I was insensible of its curative and refining agencies. "You haven't the secret yet," said my mentor, who watched me as I won for the first time, and was moved to warn me by my unconcealed pride in this achievement. "After you've played it a few years, you'll learn that the value of it lies chiefly in losing. You'll try like the devil to win, of course, but you'll learn not to wish for it. To win is nothing but an endless piling up of the right cards, beginning with the ace and ending with the king, and it only means more shuffling for next time. But every time you lose you will learn things about everything." It was even as he said,—it took me years to learn this true merit of the game; and still, as he had said, I learned much from it of life. There is a fine moment at the last shuffling of the cards, a moment when free will and fatalism are indistinguishably merged. I am ready to lay down eight cards in a horizontal row off my double deck. Who will say that the precise number of shuffles I have given to it was preordained? "I do," exclaimed an obliging fatalist. "The sequence of every one of those cards was determined when we were yet star-dust." I bring confusion to him by performing half a dozen other shuffles. I am thus far the master of my unborn game—another last shuffle to prove it, though I shuffle clumsily enough. I glance disdainfully at the fatalist whom I have refuted, and prepare again to lay down the first row of cards. But the fellow comes back with, "Those last shuffles were also determined, as was this challenge—" "Very well!" and I prepare for still another rearrangement. But here I reflect that this could be endless and not at all interesting. I dismiss the fatalist as a quibbler and play on. Now there is no dispute, unless there be other quibblers. Fixed is the order in which the cards shall fall, eight at a time. There is pure fatalism. But in the movings after each eight are dealt, I shall consciously choose and judge, which is pure free will—or an imitation of it sufficiently colorable to satisfy any, but quibblers. There, for me, is the fatalism of body, the free will of soul. Of these I learn when I play the game. Now my first eight cards are down in a horizontal row. There are two kings among them, which is auspicious, for kings must be placed sometime at the top. There is a red queen, also auspicious, to be placed on one of the black kings. There is an ace of diamonds and its deuce. Good, again! The ace is placed above the row, beginning a row of aces to be placed there as fast as they fall, and the deuce is placed atop of it, for in that row the suits will be built up , each in its kind. In the lower rows the suits are to be built down and crossed, as when I played the red queen on the black king, so that only the top of his crowned head can be seen. Then I play a red eight on a black nine and a black seven on the red eight. I am now left most fortunately with five spaces when I deal off my second row of eight,—five spaces into which, it may be, a king or two shall happily fall. The game usually becomes intense after the third eight cards are played. By that time a choice must be made. Shall this black six or the other be played on the red seven? One must be wise, for either will release important cards. The game has started so well that it promises to play out too easily—which is one of its tricks. Presently a deuce will be covered by a king for which no space is ready, a dark queen will be buried under a succession of smaller cards, crowding along with apparent carelessness, but relentlessly. Now a space is opened for the king that covers the deuce, but the king has meantime been covered by an insignificant but unmanageable four-spot, and cannot be reached. The game is not so absurdly easy as it promised to be. Still it may be won by clever playing. There follow eight cards that prove to be immovable, and the issue is almost in doubt. Now the last eight cards are down, and the game is suddenly seen to be lost. One small other shuffle might have won it; if that tray of spades had fallen one place to the right or left, the thing would now be easy; if it were a deuce or a four, the thing were easy. One spot on the card has brought ruin. The game has foiled us with its own peculiar cleverness. But then, we learn to expect failure; and, most important of all, we learn to succeed while failing. We learn to see our cards fall wretchedly without a tremor. We learn to take small gains that offer, and to watch unmoved while splendid chances come to naught. We learn to live life and to waste no energy in vain wishing that we had shuffled differently. We learn even to marvel admiringly at the unobtrusive cunning which thwarts us of our dream's own—to wonder that cards ever should come right for any player in that maze of chances and faulty judgments. And we learn, above all, to brush the things together without loss of time and to play a new hand with the same old hope. As I studied the cards, making sure of my defeat—one must be most careful to do that; a way is sometimes to be found—it was not strange that I fell to thinking of the face on my neighbor's wall. I had mused often upon it since that first night. It seemed, curiously enough, to be a face that had long been mistily afloat in my shut eyes, a girl's face that had a trick of blending from time to time with the face of another I had better reason to know. Unaccountably they had come and gone, one followed by the other. Of that last new face in my vision I could make nothing, save that some one seemed to have painted it over there in the other house. How I had come by my own mind copy of it was a mystery to me beyond solution. I played the game again to still this perplexity which had a way of seizing me at odd moments. It is an especially good game for a man who has had to believe that life will always beat him. CHAPTER XIX A WORTHLESS BLACK HOUND After an autumn speciously benign came our season of cold and snow. It proved to be a season of unwonted severity, every weather expert in town, from Uncle William McCormick, who had kept a diary record for thirty years, to Grandma Steck, who had foretold its coming from a goose-bone, agreeing that the cold was most unusual. The editor of the Argus not only spoke of "Nature's snowy mantle," but coined another happy phrase about Little Arcady being "locked in the icy embrace of winter." This was admitted to be accurately literal, in spite of its poetic daring. Miss Caroline confessed homesickness to me after the first heavy snow. She spoke as lightly of it as she should have done, but I could see that her own land pulled at her heart with every blast that shook her casements. No longer, however, was there even a second-cousin whose hospitality she was free to claim, for Colonel Lucius Quintus Peavey, C.S.A., now slept with his fathers in far-off Virginia, leaving behind him only traditions and a little old sherry. The former Miss Caroline had always shared with him, and a cask of the latter he bequeathed to her with his love. And the valley being now void of her kin, she was doubly an exile. Such new desolation as she must have felt was masked under jesting dispraise of our execrable Northern climate. Surely a land permitted to congeal so utterly had forfeited the grace of its Maker. Clem's lack of executive genius also earned a meed of my neighbor's disparagement. He was a worthless, trifling "boy," an idling dreamer, an irresponsible, inconsequent visionary, in whose baseless fancies it was astounding that a woman of her years should fatuously place reliance. I must confess that I was more than once guilty of irritation when Miss Caroline spoke thus slightingly of her "boy"—of one who had been unable to view himself as other than her personal property. Again and again it seemed to me that, fine little creature that she was, her tone toward Clem lacked the right feeling. I should not have demanded gratitude precisely; at least no bald expression of it. But a manner of speech denoting, if not wording, a recognition of his unswerving loyalty would have accorded better with the estimate I had otherwise formed of her character. The absence of any tone or word that even one so devoted as I could construe to her advantage was puzzling in the extreme. Still, feeling toward her as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished. But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a secret satisfaction when I thought of Clem's empty reward for his life-work and remembered that I had helped, though ever so little, to free him and his kind from a bond so unfortunate for each of the parties to it. The winter deepened about us, chill and bleak and ravaging. The smoke from our chimneys went up in tall columns that lost themselves in the gray sky. The snow shut us in, and presently the wind lay in wait to blast us when we dared the drifts. Yet Miss Caroline throve, despite her nostalgia. She was even jaunty in her recital of the weather's minor hardships. To its rigors she brought a front of resolute gayety. A new stove graced the parlor, a stove with the proud nickeled title of "Frost King"; a title seen to be deserved when Clem had it properly gorged with dry wood. Within its tropic radiations Miss Caroline bloomed and was hale of being, like some hardy perennial. Of Clem, nothing but hardiness was to be anticipated. He had been toughened by four other of our winters, all said to have been unusual for severity. And yet it was Clem, curiously enough, and not Miss Caroline, who found the season most trying. True, he had to be abroad most of the time, procuring sustenance for the insatiable "Frost King," or performing labor for other people by which Miss Caroline should preserve her independence; but it was not supposed that a creature of his sort could be subject to weaknesses natural enough to a superior race. I believe this was his own view of the matter; for when he admitted to me one morning that he had "took cold in the chest," his manner was one of deprecating confusion, and he swore me against betrayal of his lapse to Miss Caroline. She discovered his guilt for herself, however, after a few days, from his very annoying cough. She taxed him with it so sturdily that efforts at deception availed him not. His tale that the snow sifted into his "bref-place" and "tickled it" was pitifully unconvincing, for his cough was deeper than Eustace Eubanks's proudest note in the drinking song. "He's a worthless thing," said Miss Caroline, telling me of his fault, and I said he was indeed—that he hadn't served me four years without my finding that out. I added that he was undoubtedly shamming, but that at the same time it might be as well to take a few simple precautions. Miss Caroline said that of course he was shamming, in order to get out of work, and that she would soon drive that nonsense out of his head if she had to wear the black wretch out to do it. She added that she was about tired of his nonsense. It may be known that I have heretofore lost no opportunity to foist all faults of understanding upon the heads of my fellow-townsmen. And I should have liked to keep my record clear in that matter; but it would be uncandid to pretend, even at this late day, that I have ever divined the precise relationship that exists between Miss Caroline and her slave. I may know a bit more of its intricacies than does Little Arcady at large, but not enough to permit that certain thrill of superior discernment which I have so often been able to enjoy in Slocum County. Each of the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible. But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me—something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators were either imperfectly observed or unintelligently reported. Up to a certain point my own studies of this slave-holder aligned perfectly with the information which we of the North had been at such pains to gather. And I tried to hold Miss Caroline blameless, remembering that she had been long schooled to the inhumanity of it. I resolved, nevertheless, to take Clem under my own roof—there was a small unused room almost directly under it—the moment Miss Caroline's impatience with him should move her to the extremes foretold by her abusive fashion of speech. I would not see even a negro turned out in the coldest of winters for no better reason than that he was sick and useless, though I planned to intervene delicately, so as not to affront my neighbor. For my heart was still hers, despite this hardness, for which I saw that she must not be blamed. As I had feared, Clem's cough became more obtrusive, and with this Miss Caroline's irritation deepened toward him. She declared that his trifling, no-account nature made him all but impossible. Then one morning—one to be distinguished by its cold even among many unusual mornings—there was no Clem to light my fires and to scent my snug dining room with unparalleled coffee. This brought it definitely home to me that the situation had become grave. I dressed with what speed I could and hurried to Miss Caroline's door. The time had come when I should probably have to do something. My neighbor met me and said that Clem had meanly decided to remain in bed for the day. I searched her face for some sign of consideration as she said this, but I was disappointed. She seemed to feel only a fierce disgust for his foolishness. "But you may go up and look at the black good-for-nothing if you like," she said, grudgingly enough I thought. I climbed the brief flight of stairs. I knew that Clem had not refused to get up without reasons that seemed sufficient to him. In a narrow bed in one of the doll-house rooms he lay coughing. "So you can't get up this morning?" I asked. "Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah, Ah was a-gittin' up, but Ah was fohced to cough raght smahtly an' Miss Cahline she yehs it an' she awdeh me back to baid, seh. Then Ah calls out to huh that Ah ain't go'n' a' have no sech foolishness in this yeh place, an' so she stahts to come up, which fohces me to retiah huhiedly. Then she stands theh at th' head of th' staihs an' she faulted me—yes, seh—she threaten me, Mahstah Majah, an' she tek mah clothes away, an' so on an' so fothe. Then Ah huhd huh a' mekin' th' fiah an' then she brung this yeh cawfee an' she done mek it that foolish that Ah can't tech it. Yes, seh, she plumb ruined that theh cawfee, that's what she done!" His tone was peevish. Clem himself was not talking as I thought would have been becoming in him. And there was a definite issue of veracity between him and his mistress. I went down again, for the room was cold. "He has some fever," I said. "He is a lazy black hound," said Miss Caroline. "He says you ordered him to stay in bed—threatened him and hid his clothes." "Oh, never fear but what that fellow will always have an excuse!" she retorted shortly. Observing that she had a day's supply of wood at hand, I left, not a little annoyed at both of them. I missed my coffee. When I knocked at the door that evening, no one came to admit me. I went in, hearing Clem's voice in truculent protest from a large room on the first floor which had been called the room of Little Miss. I went to the door of this room. Clem and his bed were there. We had two physicians in Little Arcady, Old Doc and Young Doc. Young Doc was now present measuring powders into little papers which he folded neatly, while Miss Caroline stood at hand, cowering but stubborn under Clem's violence. "Miss Cahline, yo' suttinly old enough t' know betteh'n that. Ah do wish yo' Paw was about th' house—he maghty quickly put yo'-all in yo' place. Now Ah tole yo' Ah ain't go'n' a' have none o' this yeh Doctah foolishness. Yo' not go'n' a' stravagate all that theh gole money on sech crazy doin's an' mek us be indigent in ouah ole aige. What Ah want with a Doctah? Hanh! Anseh me that! Yo'-all jes' git me a little bit calamus an' some catnip, an' Ah do all th' doctahin' tha's advisable." All this he brought out with difficulty, for his breathing was by no means free. "He's up to his tricks," said Miss Caroline, contemptuously, to me. Then, to Clem, seeming to draw courage from my presence, "You be quiet, there, you lazy, black good-for-nothing, or I'll get some one here to wear you out!" And Clem was again the vanquished. "Pneumonia," said Young Doc. "Bad," he added as we stepped into the drawing-room. "Take lots of care." I thought it as well that Young Doc had come. Old Doc, though well liked, boasted that all any man of his profession needed, really, were calomel and a good knife. Young Doc had always seemed to be subtler. Anyway, he was of a later generation. I learned that Old Doc had scorned to make the call, believing that a "nigger" could not suffer from anything but yellow fever or cracked shins. For this reason he became genuinely interested in Clem's case as it was later reported to him by Young Doc. To the rest of Little Arcady the case was also of interest. Sympathy had heretofore been with Clem, because Miss Caroline paid him no wages, and was believed to take what he earned from other people. Now, however, an important number of persons veered—in wonder if not in absolute sympathy. That the woman should watch and nurse the black fellow, apparently with perfect single-heartedness, was not to be squared with any known laws of human association. "Nursing a nigger in her own house with her own hands," was the fashion of describing this untoward spectacle. It was like taking a sick horse into your house, and making play that it was human. The already puzzled town was further mystified, and it is probable that Miss Caroline fell a little in public esteem. Her course was not thought to be edifying. She could have sent Clem to the county poor farm, where he would have been seen to, after a fashion good enough for one of his color, by the proper authorities. My own bewilderment was at first hardly less than the town's. Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility. But she continued to disparage him to his face and to me. She was venomous—scurrilous in her abuse. Yet only with the greatest difficulty could I persuade her to let me share the watch that must be kept over him. She called him an infamous black wretch, in tones befitting her words, but I could not get her to leave him even so long as her own health demanded. There came nights, however, as the disease ran its course, when she had to give up from sheer lack of force. Then she permitted me to watch, though even at these times she often broke from sleep to come and be assured that the worthless black hound had not changed for the worse. One dim, early morning, when she thought I had gone, after my night's watch, I returned softly to the half-opened door with a forgotten injunction about the medicines. All night Clem had babbled languidly of many things, of "a hunded thousan' hatchin' aigs," and "a thousan' brillion dollahs," of "Mahstah Jere" and "Little Miss," of a visiting Cousin Peavey whom he had been obliged to "whup" for his repeated misdemeanors; and darkly and often had he whispered, so low I could scarcely hear it, of an enemy that was entering the room with a fell design. " Tha' he is—he go'n' a' sprinkle snake-dust in mah boots—tha' he is—watch out !" He still maundered weakly as I reached the door, but it was not this that detained me at its threshold. It was Miss Caroline, who had actually knelt at his side. At first I thought she wept over one of his blue-black hands, which she clung eagerly to with both her own. Then I saw that there seemed to be no tears—yet silently, almost impassively, she gave me a sense of hopeless grief that I thought no outburst of weeping could have done. I wondered wildly then if her fashion of speech for Clem might not mask some real affection for him. But this was unsatisfying. On the spot I gave up all wondering forever about Miss Caroline. I have ever since constrained myself to accept her without question, even in situations of difficulty. There is so much vain knowledge. That day, too, was the bad day when news came that Little Miss had been stricken with the same dread pneumonia. When she told me this, Miss Caroline had a look in her eyes that I suspect must often have been there in the first half of the sixties. It was calm enough, but there was a resistance in it that promised to be unbreakable. And to my never-ending wonder she seemed still to be more concerned about Clem than about her daughter. "Will you go to her?" I asked. She smiled. "That could hardly be afforded just now." "You could manage it, I think. Clem has some money due from me." "Even so, I couldn't leave Clem. My daughter will be cared for, but Clem wouldn't have anybody. We'll fight it out on this line, Major." I now saw that continuous questioning about Miss Caroline would bring one in time to madness, and I was glad of my resolve never again to indulge in this unprofitable occupation. But even pneumonia has its defeats. Young Doc surprised Old Doc again; for the latter, once convinced that an African could suffer so civilized an affliction as pneumonia, had declined to believe that he could ever "throw it off," and had disclosed good reasons why he could not to an attentive group at the City Drug Store. Yet after a night when Miss Caroline had refused to let me watch, she met me at the door as Young Doc was leaving. She was wearied but chipper, though there was an unsteady little lift in her voice as she said:— "That lazy black wretch is going to get well!" "It's about time," I said grimly. "I've been in a bad way without him. Indeed I'm very glad to hear you say so." Her eyes twinkled approval upon me, I thought. "You've behaved excellently, Major. Really, I am glad that we left you that other arm." This was almost in her old manner, though her eyes seemed a little dimmed by her excitement. Then, with a sudden return to the patient:— "I wonder if you would be good enough to go in and swear at Clem. He's perfectly rational now, and it will hearten him wonderfully. He's dreadfully mortified because he's been sick so long. And it needs a man, you know, really. I'll close the door for you. Do it hard! Call him a damned black hound, if you please, and ask him what he means by it!" I hurried in, for Miss Caroline's eyes were threatening to betray her.