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May Eve; or, What You Must/Part 3

ONSIEUR L'INCONNU turned to his other captors. He, for the first time, seemed thoroughly roused. He did not look at the fifth man. He addressed himself to the others, his eyes wandering rapidly from face to face.

“Gentlemen,” he said earnestly, “I appeal to you. I seem to be unable to convince the person who—justifiably or not, I don't know, I have no means of knowing—has constituted himself your spokesman. But I hope you will listen to me. I can't seem to prove to him that I am not Boston Harry—there are no means, of course, of proving it to you—if you are, like him, convinced. I can only give you my word that I am not he, and trust to your knowledge of human nature to show you that I am speaking the truth.”

He was interrupted by the man with the pudding-face. “Ah, g'wan, Harry,” he said; “give us a breeze!”

Monsieur l'Inconnu bit his lips. “I see I don't convince you,” he said. “Well, I can only ask you to release me. What earthly good will it do,” he questioned reasonably, “if I stay here?”

The one-eyed man turned to their chief. “That's so, boss,” he said. “What's the use? Get rid of them, I say.”

“Oh, no,” the other disagreed. “I've got my little argument with Harry. I sha'n't have such a chance to talk with him again in a hurry. Let me have it out with him.” He turned half-way round in his chair and addressed his companions. “I haven't told you who I am yet, have I? Well, I'll tell you now. I'm John Farrell. I had just escaped from Charlestown when I joined you a week ago. I had to come here; I didn't have any choice. Well, you all know that I was settled fifteen years ago, after the Fenton Job, because Harry here squealed. Well, here's my chance to get square with him, and I'm going to do it, even if I send you all to the stir and I go back to Charlestown.”

“John Farrell!” his companions repeated surprisedly, and there was suddenly a something in their manner besides respect, a something of admiration, a something almost of awe. They drew together, and there was a short, excited parley.

Silver-Rose listened keenly. Incomprehensible words and phrases were bandied between them. “Chi” and “Cincie” she heard them say, and there were frequent references to the “queer,” to “paper,” to “shovers,” “beefers,” “bundles,” “blokes,” “bulls.” Their discussion lasted for five minutes. And then, suddenly, they were silent. “Go on, John,” one of them said; “this is your business—we won't interfere.”

“It's your funeral, Farrell,” Cig added, “and we'll let you run it—only remember we don't want to be pulled.”

“I'll take care of that,” Farrell promised smoothly. He transferred his attention to Boston Harry. The others talked in mysterious low tones among themselves, but gradually they became interested in the conversation again.

Boston Harry had watched them carefully. “If you want money,” he said to the group, “and you'll give me the necessary time, I'll get for you any sum in reason.”

They smiled at this offer, but nobody bothered to take any notice of it. He turned to Farrell. “Do I understand that you all refuse to release me?” he asked.

“That's what we're trying to drive into you,” Farrell said, his tones so smooth and soft they seemed almost a whisper.

Here Silver-Rose suddenly obtruded herself. “Shall I scream?” she asked of her companion, in her clear, silvery tones.

She had been, up to that instant, absolutely quiet, but she had listened keenly. At first, after the revelation of her companion's identity, all the possibilities of her adventure had rushed madly back and forth through her mind. The situation had filled her with a terror of him so piercing that it seemed to dry her blood, to render her numb. But the more terrifying turn that the conversation had taken later had had, curiously enough, the opposite effect. It seemed to calm her, as if her fright were so great that it devoured itself. She must be alert, she realized, on her guard, ready for anything. Strange things were going to happen. Much might depend on herself. And after awhile she became aware of a novel mental condition, of a new element in her consciousness. Her blood was tingling, her pulses snapping, her thoughts leaping with the sense of danger. But the sensation was not an unpleasant one.

The men in the room hitherto, had paid little attention to her. It was as if she were invisible to them, or that she seemed a being of so different an order that she failed to interest them. Once in awhile a glance had been shot in her direction, and then withdrawn; and so quickly that she wondered afterward if she had imagined its come and go. Her question brought the gaze of every pair of eyes in the room upon her, and thereafter, openly, they stared at her.

She stood erect, her hands clasping and unclasping, or pulling nervously at her golden chain, Her big hat flared in front up and away from her brow. The situation seemed to have changed her physically, to have exaggerated every tint in her face. It no longer appealed delicately to the sight like an opening flower. She bloomed opulently, like a woman. The close, hot air of the foul-smelling room had brought to her cheeks a flush that seemed actually to flame through her pure skin. Her lips parted and curled away from her white teeth, like a rosebud that had been split and filled with snow. Her eyes were dilated with excitement; they had grown purple—a change that her eyelids, drooping from their weight of shadows, augmented. Her hair had pulled low on her forehead—it lay like a wave of gold there; little, straggling wisps of its abundance crowded about her temples and ears.

Farrell surveyed her with easy nonchalance before he spoke.

“Scream away, my dear; scream your pretty head off,” he adjured her affably; “and that's all right—that's all the good it will do you. You're as safe as if you were in a padded cell. If your own father was in the next room, he couldn't hear you.”

His words dropped like successive leaden plummets into her heart, sounding there unguessed depths of horror and despair. But, with her eyes on her comrade's face, she continued to ignore him, That face underwent a swift change at the familiarity that came with their tormentor's words and manner. A look so sinister overspread it—it was as if a black cloud blotted out its expression—a menace so murderous breathed from it, that her own heart contracted.

“Scream!” his stern lips commanded.

Silver-Rose drew a long breath; then, with all the strength of her vigorous young lungs, she screamed once, twice; frenziedly again and again. There was no movement among the occupants of the room. They listened politely, almost in a detached sort of a way. But the thick bundle of clothes on one of the shake-downs on the floor stirred feebly, revealing itself thereby to be a man.

“Very nice, indeed,” Farrell commented suavely, as she paused, exhausted; “very pretty. Try it again, my love, I like to hear it. We ain't heard for a long time here the sweet voice of a woman.”

“Doesn't the fact that I asked this lady to scream prove to you that I'm not Harry Pryor?” Monsieur l'Inconnu said. His free look asked the question of his entire audience. “If I had just escaped from State's prison, would I be likely to invite the aid of the police in this manner?”

“I've just been thinking, Harry, what a clever dodge that was,” Farrell said. “You know as well as we do that outside this house you can't hear a sound of what's going on inside. You remember the last time we was here together, we had occasion to make a test of that. You surely ain't forgotten our little experience with Cincie Charley? That was over a lady, as I remember—a pretty little lady, too; Charley's sister, weren't she? I didn't like your taste in those days, but I must say you've improved.” He stared at Silver-Rose a moment. “Who's your friend?” he asked urbanely.

“Leave the lady out of the question,” Monsieur l'Inconnu commanded curtly. “Well, supposing I am Harry Pryor,” he went on peremptorily; “what's your business with me? Out with it, and have it over with.”

“Then you admit it?” Farrell sneered questioningly.

Monsieur l'Inconnu appeared to undergo a short mental struggle. “I suppose I've got to admit it,” he said sullenly.

“I thought you would,” the other laughed.

“Well, what do you want of me?” Boston Harry threw at him.

“What do I want of you?” Farrell repeated, in a high, thin voice. “What do I want of you? To wish you a happy New Year, I don't think. What do you suppose I want of you, after the Fenton job?”

“That's not telling me,” said his interlocutor coolly. “Still I don't understand.”

“Well, let me help you a little,” the other suggested kindly. “We went into the Fenton affair together. When we were caught, to save your precious skin you peached, and I went to prison. I paid for both of us. I paid for myself and I paid for you. I didn't kick at the time, but I didn't forget. Now I want you to pay me back.”

“What do you want?” the other asked. “Money?”

His tormentor laughed his silent, irritating laugh. “No, dear,” he said mockingly. “Money won't pay me—not a little bit.”

“What do you want, then?” Pryor demanded.

Farrell brought his ten finger-tips together again, in the position that was, evidently, a mannerism with him. He put his lean, long head luxuriously back against the rickety chair-top. He contemplated Boston Harry with half-closed lids and smiling lips, but there smoldered deep down in his eyes a steady glow, as of a rising fire—it burned through the fringe of his thick lashes. Between his thin, waxy lips flashed the white of strong, me looking teeth. “That's just what I'm thinking about,” he admitted purringly; “just what I'm thinking about.”

He continued to meditate with half-shut eyes. The room was very silent; all conversation, even the occasional buzz of comment, had ceased. Boston Harry moved nearer to Silver-Rose. He turned his back upon their audience.

“Don't let anything I say frighten you,” he breathed; “I've got to play a strange game.”

His eyes were glittering with excitement, but they softened as they rested on her face. “Keep your courage up. Things can't be so bad as they look, and I'll save you some way or other.”

“If only,” she breathed, with equal quiet; “if only we could put that light out, Mr. Pryor; we're standing just in front of the secret closet. The spring's in a knot in the wood, in the series that runs up from the floor. It's the fifth—just where your hand is.”

Pryor contemplated the door fixedly, as if still hoping that he might burst it open. His gaze wandered away from it, and casually he examined the wall back of them.

Farrell contemplated their whisperings with amused indulgence.

“I don't know,” he said tolerantly, “as I can handle the two of you. I guess I'll get rid of one of you. Say, Cig, take that poker and heat it over that lamp, will you?”

“Say, you ain't going to make this any murder,” Cig charged him, his alarmed eyes widening. “I ain't in it, if you do.”

There was a little assenting murmur from the others.

“Oh, no, nothing of the sort,” their chief reassured him. He waved his hand airily to the others. “It's only a little lesson I'm going to teach Harry. Those long nights in Charlestown I worked it out just what I was going to do to pretty Harry if ever I got my claws on him again. That's all settled in my mind, and it won't hang anybody.” He paused with the utmost nonchalance, and thought further. “But I can't for the life of me think,” he continued, interestedly taking them all into his confidence, “what else I want to do with him. I don't know's I want to bother with both of you. Here,” he decided, “I guess I've got to make a choice. Well, I tell you what I'll do,” he burst out suddenly, as if seized with a fit of generosity; “I'll tell you what I will do. I'll be perfectly fair and square with you, Harry dear. After I've attended to that little matter of the poker, I'll give,you your choice of two things. You can stay here with us, and we'll send the lady away; or we'll keep the lady for awhile, and send you away. Now, that's a square deal, isn't it, boys? Which'll you take, Harry?”

Boston Harry's face went white, and it contracted strangely. Farrell watched him appreciatively.

“I guess if you're really consulting me, you can send me away, and keep the lady,” Boston Harry decided, after a pause.

“Why, why, why!” the other exclaimed, in a voice filled with pseudo surprise. “That ain't at all what a gentleman should do, Harry. It ain't pretty at all. You jess shock me beyond words. No, come to think of it, Harry, we can't do that. No, Harry, I guess we'll have to send her away, and keep you.”

“I refuse to be separated from Mr. Pryor,” Silver-Rose struck in clearly, her enunciation as keen as a silver bell.

Farrell fixed his sneering eyes on her. “Oh, do you, my dear?” he said indulgently. “Well, how are you going to prevent yourself from being separated?”

“I'll go to the nearest police station,” she asserted, “the moment I am free.”

“We shouldn't any of us be here by that time, lovey. My, you are a nice looking girl,” he paused to say, as if it had just dawned on him. “I don't see how Harry could bear to leave you. Harry ain't the boy he was once, or he'd never do it.”

“You're welcome to her, if you'll let me go,” Boston Harry asserted sullenly.

Farrell looked steadily at him. “Is that the way you feel about it?” he said. “All right, then, you shall have you way; it'll suit me to a T. Ain't she a sweet little dear, boys? Looks like a swell, too. I do like blondes—oh, we won't let her regret that she joined us. One of us'll just keep her amused every second of the time. Say, Cig, you've got plenty of peter left?”

“Plenty,” Cig promised cheerfully. He was still busy heating the poker over the lamp.

“Well, then, I'll tell you just what the program's going to be. You see, Harry's always been a great boy with the ladies. They always like him somehow, and his heart is so big it can hold any number at a time, as easy as falling off a log. He don't seem to get old, like other men; he looks younger and handsomer now than he did four years ago. Now, I think I'll take this opportunity to fix Harry up so's he won't bother the ladies any more. I guess what we'd better do is to spoil his pretty looks. What I propose is to mark his initials with the red-hot poker on both his cheeks; it'll be a great help to the police, too. Then we'll give him some of the knockout drops, and take him out into the garden and leave him. As for you, my dear, you can stay here to-night. By to-morrow we'll have to leave these pleasant quarters. You don't have to go with us, but by that time I wouldn't be surprised if you was so attached to our company that you'd prefer to.”

There was a long silence.

Then Boston Harry spoke. “Gentlemen,” he said, and his voice rang out sternly, “I am in your power, and I know it. I'm willing to pay all the penalties of the situation; and I'll pay them like a man. But I want to do the paying myself. Surely you can't intend to revenge on this lady your feeling against me. Gentlemen, I throw myself on your mercy—she is my wife, and I love her better than my own safety and my own life. Only take her away from here, open that door, let her get out, and I'll submit to any revenge that your ingenuity will suggest.”

One of his auditors—the little ferret-faced Cig—sneered: “Let her go, that's a healthy idea—and come back with a dozen cops.”

“That's exactly what I will do—if you separate me from Mr. Pryor,” Silver-Rose informed them generally.

“I'll make her swear on her sacred word of honor not to reveal what has passed to-night,” Boston Harry said. “I can make her, I think; and I will make her. Look at her—you know she's different from any woman you ever saw; you know she's a lady; you know her word would be absolutely good.”

“My word would be good,” Silver-Rose pronounced deliberately, “so good that no power on earth will make me take that oath.”

Boston Harry turned to her. He pleaded with her. “Sylvia,” he said, “if you have an atom of mercy in your heart don't interrupt, now that I see a way out. You can fancy what I'm suffering. I can handle these men, once you're off my mind. Let me get you out of here.”

She smiled wonderfully up at him. She shook her head. “Not without you,” she said.

He groaned. He turned to their audience again. “I can make her swear that,” he assured them; “and I will yet. You see the sort of woman she is. You are as safe with her as with each other. Give her,” he suggested electrically, and he smiled with the joy that the idea brought him—“give her the knockout drops. Then we can carry her over to the Wrexmere place, and leave her somewhere near the house. She won't be found until to-morrow morning. They're giving a dance there this evening. Every servant in the house will be busy all night long. You can gag me and leave me here—when you've finished with me.”

Farrell shook his head. “She's too pretty,” he said casually; “I can't bear to see her go.”

Boston Harry thought for a moment. “You want revenge,” he said; “and you want it more than anything else in the world. Well, I can understand that feeling, and I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll take her away, I'll agree to shoot myself here before you all—or you can shoot me, if you won't trust me with a weapon. I'll sign a paper, confessing to suicide, if you wish.”

“If you agree to that,” Silver-Rose turned on her captors, “you'll have to kill me, too. I have, as it happens, plenty of money at my disposal. I'll hunt you all down if it takes every cent I have in the world. I'll swear in court that you made him write that letter, that you made him kill himself to protect me.”

Boston Harry looked at her somberly. Then he smiled into her face. “If you'll give me a revolver I'll shoot her and then myself,” was his final proposal.

Farrell's eyes fell to the floor. “Harry Pryor,” he admitted, “you've got grit.”

“Harry Pryor?” Monsieur l'Inconnu said impatiently. He laughed shortly. “What nonsense! Let's drop that. I'm not Harry Pryor, and I've never been Harry Pryor.” He drew his hand over his face for a second, as if to cover his eyes. “Oh, by Jove!” he cried, “it's these things that deceive you, of course.” With a double movement of his hand he ripped off his mustache and imperial.

It made a change in him. It drew from the foreign quality of his appearance, and added to the American look that, with every hour, Silver-Rose saw growing more strong in his face. It further displayed a firm chin and a determined mouth, the latter with clean-cut corners.

“Now am I Harry Pryor?” he demanded.

“Of course you're Harry Pryor,” Farrell reassured him.

And then two things happened.

The bundle of rags lying on the floor pulled itself up to a sitting posture—a fat, bulbous creature, with the pale-brown bristles of three-days' beard protruding from its flabby cheeks and pendulous chin, the sleep of unnumbered, torpid hours hanging in its watery eyes and its cracked lips. It blinked and scowled, it sighed and groaned, but it looked, through it all, steadfastly at Boston Harry. It looked for a full half minute.

“What yer giving us?” its husky voice promulgated after awhile. “Harry Pryor your grandmother! Harry Pryor had a three-cornered scar under his left eye.”

The others started. Their eyes darted swiftly to Harry Pryor's face. In their look Silver-Rose saw swift denial change to uncertainty; saw uncertainty deepen into convinced surety; saw every face grow serious, grow pale with the sense of complication that the new outlook brought.

“By thunder, he's right!” Farrell said.

And then, as they still all stood silent, some rigid, some gaping, the door burst open, and four policemen came into the room.

The confusion was immediate. The lamp was overturned and, miraculously, in its own fall, put out. There was the sound of voiceless scramblings and struggles, then the rush of locked bodies into the hall, their race and pitch down-stairs. In the midst of it there was a slight clicking sound. Silver-Rose felt her companion's arm go swiftly about her. She felt herself being lifted and drawn backward, and she submitted blindly to the power that was compelling her. She felt herself surrounded by a staler air and a deeper gloom. There was another click, and they were alone. She realized that they were in the secret closet.

They stood and listened, his arm still about her, holding her firm and close. The racket in the old house lessened, ceased; the echoes died. The silence, for fifteen minutes, was complete. Then there was the sound of heavy footsteps, and they were conscious that two men had returned to the garret room. She conjectured that they were the policemen, searching with their lanterns every nook and cranny of the old place.

“It was Boston Harry,” one of them said; “I could swear to that.”

“But how did they get out? Where'd they get out? And when'd they get out?” the other asked.

“That's it,” the first man retorted grimly. “They was the first ones to get out; they was safe, and getting safer every minute, while we was grappling with the others. They wasn't the only ones to get away.”

“Well, we've got Farrell,” the other said; “that's sure.”

“And there ain't no reward for him,” his companion returned disgustedly.

There was no more conversation, and presently it was evident that they gave up the search. The heavy footsteps went clumping down the stairs and about the house, as they pursued their last, hopeless, fruitless search.

“We must stay here,” Monsieur l'Inconnu breathed into Silver-Rose's ear, “just as long as you can stand the air.”

And they stayed, noiseless, moveless, almost breathless, as long as she could stand the air; and, indeed, a little longer. For suddenly, after an immeasurable sweep of time, as, still open-eyed, she gazed straight ahead into impenetrable gloom, that gloom, like a solid block of black adamant, seemed to rise out of space and fall directly on her, crushing her into bleak insensibility. She felt herself collapse—it was as if she shut up, like a fan. She fell forward into her companion's arms.

When Silver-Rose regained consciousness she was being carried swiftly through the garden. She could feel the evening air blowing soft and cool on her face. She stirred languidly, and lifted her head from the shoulder on which it rested.

“Where—where” she murmured.

“Don't move. You're all right.” It was the voice of Boston Harry. “In a moment we shall be over the wall and in your own grounds.”

But she was struggling definitely now, and her struggles grew mad as his grip on her slender body tightened.

“Put me down,” she commanded.

“Quietly,” he urged softly. “I am not sure that we are quite safe yet. Wait until you are on your own estate. I can carry you more quickly than you can walk. You are not strong enough.” She relaxed weakly. In a few minutes she felt him lift her over the wall, and then he put her carefully on her feet. But he was right; she staggered as he withdrew his support, and wilted uncontrollably into the arms he quickly held out. Without further ado he threw his arm about her. They walked for a distance into the pine-grove. Suddenly he stopped.

“Perhaps you would like to recover a bit before you go indoors,” he explained.

It was a glorious night still—warm and dry. But the air seemed cool beside the fetid warmth of the garret room or the musty staleness of the secret chamber, and Silver-Rose took long breaths, filling her lungs with it. Then she lay for awhile silent, allowing the dark and dew to revive her. When she opened her eyes she stared up into the sky for a long interval. It was almost as if her gaze got tangled, got lost, among the stars; through the interlacing pine-needles they seemed actually to drip—multitudes of gold globules, pendulous from the purple sky. The pine-needles were soft to her tired figure, and soothing to her wearied head; but after awhile she sat up, with her back against a tree-trunk.

The light from the house flooded near. If she had turned her head, a shaft would have illumined her face. Her companion stood still all this time. Once he walked away a few irresolute steps, then he came back. At length he threw himself on the ground beside her, and waited.

“Tell me you feel better,” he begged finally.

“Who are you?” she asked collectedly.

“The king of the fairies,” he replied forlornly.

“Who are you?” she reiterated.

“Monsieur l'Inconnu,” he rejoined smilelessly.

“Who are you?” she persisted.

He did not, at first, answer, and the pause grew monotonous. He turned his head away and back.

“I am Harry Eveleth,” he said finally.

She was silent.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered quietly.

Another pause.

“Tell me about it, but begin at the beginning,” she commanded presently.

“To begin with, you must know,” he said, “that ever since that first time I saw you in the Louvre I have been in love with you—hopelessly, of course, but none the less; perhaps, in consequence, the more madly. I tell you this not to be impertinent, but because it is the keynote of everything. I saw you twice in Paris four years ago, as I told you. That was not very much, of course, to account for such an obsession, but I began to theorize about you, to romance about you, to put you, as it were, bodily into my existence. You became the constant companion of my thoughts; you were as inevitable in my life as my very shadow. Of course I knew the whole thing was idiotic; I've had the matter out with myself millions of times. There was no chance of my meeting you, no hope of impressing you if I did meet you. I was as poor as the Marquis of Carrabas, and perhaps even more infernally proud; and you—oh, of course everybody was at your feet. I read about you from time to time—everything I could find, in short. The papers, you know, had a cheerful habit of engaging you to a new lover regularly once a month. That sort of thing kept up for two years. My infatuation—my unrest—grew rather than diminished. You, in the meantime, had gone back to America. I thought—I even hoped—that that might end it. But it didn't end it; it made it worse. After awhile I couldn't stand it any longer. I decided to come to America for the chance of seeing you. I confess it with shame I had always regarded the United States with loathing. Until you came here I had never had the sign of an impulse to look up the record of my ancestors. That was two years ago—remember, please, that I had been in love with you for two years. Does this prolixity bore you?” he asked suddenly.

“Go on,” she said.

“I came to America—it was in the spring recess. You were in New York. I stayed in New York. You went to Washington. I followed you there. There I saw you at a dance, as I told you—that was my third glimpse of you. I went to the dance. I had been doing newspaper work, and I got in that way. Oh, the exquisite refinement of the tortures of that night—to see you dancing with men—any number of them, lucky beggars! Montfort was there—it was his first visit to America. You danced with him three times. There was murder in my heart.” He stopped.

“Go on,” she commanded.

“You came to Boston. I followed you. You were doing work in Radcliffe. In the fall I took some courses at Harvard. And then suddenly, although we were in the same city, under the same sky, breathing the same air, you dropped out of my life completely. That is to say, I didn't see you again for nearly a year; until the spring, in fact. I haunted the places where I fancied you might be. I have sauntered for hours at a time up and down before your house. I was always casually just passing Fay House, but I never saw you once—never, not one comforting once. And all the time my hunger for you ate at my heart. I grew morbid, despairing, desperate. Finally there was the rumor in Cambridge that you were going to play Maire in 'The Land of Heart's Desire.' I was beside myself. There was no possible way of my seeing the thing—the English Club is so pig-headedly exclusive. The sum and substance of it was, finally, that I bribed the caterer to let me black up and go as a waiter. I actually did that. I went there. I saw you act. I stared at you for a whole evening. I even handed you an ice.”

Silver-Rose laughed.

“I wish I could laugh,” he said simply. He stopped. “Shall I go on?” he asked carefully.

“Please,” she entreated.

“I made all sorts of efforts to see you the next year—that was this last year, of course. But still a malign fate seemed to follow me. Wherever I was you were not; where you were I was not. We were like buckets in a well. The eternal hide and seek got on my nerves. And two months ago I had it out with myself. I had put in, I reckoned, the better part of four miserable years adoring you. I didn't begrudge the adoration; it was the uncertainty of it all that was wearing me out. It was, literally, a chase of a phantom, or a will-o'-the-wisp. I made a mighty resolution to put an end to it. Perhaps I should say that I am, by ambition, a novelist; that I have a trunk full of rejected manuscripts. I received a month ago a big offer—Paris correspondent of the London Hour. I decided to accept it; I did accept it. I sail, by the way, on the Sappho to-morrow. In the meantime, however, I had got into the Hasty Pudding Club theatricals. They came off to-night, you know. I appeared only in the first act; I had a song. I intended, when my stunt was over, to get out into the audience and watch the show from the front. But when I came off and went into the dressing-room, it came over me very suddenly, and with a terrible—oh, an aching—sense of desolation that I was leaving you forever. I could not stand the thought that we should be thereafter in separate hemispheres. I am very erratic, as you doubtless have discovered, and the impulse came over me to go out to your house and make one final effort to see you. The idea took hold of me like a kind of possession. It left me no peace; I could not wait an instant; I had to obey immediately. I didn't even stop to take off my mustache and imperial. I had, during the evening, managed to give my arm a nasty sort of cut, but I couldn't take the time to do that up properly. I simply rolled it in a muffler and started off. It seemed like something providential, something psychic, because when I got into my car you were there.” He stopped.

“Go on,” she commanded inflexibly.

“Here's the part I'm ashamed of,” he muttered. “There's no excuse for it,” he insisted to himself, “except that I wanted to know you and talk with you more than I had ever before wanted anything. You were almost the first person I noticed after I got into the car. I discovered that you were alone, and the situation nearly crazed me. I cast over in my mind all the possibilities of my opportunity, and I could see only one way out of it—to throw myself on your mercy and tell you the whole history. But I was very averse to doing that. Presently, in spite of my preoccupation, I noticed that there were two men opposite me who were watching, and very furtively, every movement that I made. I realized in a second, of course, that it was my very palpable disguise that was attracting their attention. And then, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, the whole scheme came to me—a way to your sympathy. To pretend that I was in danger and throw myself on your protection. I calculated if the plan failed I would have lost nothing, and if it succeeded I would have gained heaven itself. The rest you know. Of course it never entered my head that the night could end with the awful scrape we got into.” He stopped and groaned. “It's inconceivable, even to myself, that I have the effrontery to ask your forgiveness,” he went on quietly; “and yet you must be able to imagine what I feel—to have endangered all that I hold loveliest and most precious, and in such a monstrous way. God, my blood runs ice!” He shuddered. “It's worse now than then. Then I had to think, to act; now I can meditate coolly on the possibilities.”

Silver-Rose sat silent, her head still leaning against the tree-trunk.

“Sylvia,” he began softly, after awhile, “I'm going to leave you presently, but tell me first that you forgive the way. I've lied to you; tell me you forgive me that awful experience in the Eveleth house. If you knew how I've loved you, how I've worshiped you, how I've hungered for a sight of you and thirsted for a sound of you. Oh, Sylvia—Sylvia” he stopped suddenly.

Silver-Rose stirred at length. “As for what happened in the Eveleth house, that's my own fault,” she said clearly. “I made you go into it—I made you take me with you. But as for the lying—well, they say all's fair, you know. I suppose I would have done the same thing in your place.”

“Ah!” he uttered. He rose slowly to his feet. He looked down at her for an intent second—at her white face, set in an oval of gold; her big eyes, shining in the shaft of light. “Good-by,” he whispered; and he turned and walked away.

“Don't go,” Silver-Rose called softly after him; “don't go—yet.”

He walked swiftly back.

“You must resemble Boston Harry very closely,” she began abruptly.

He laughed a little. “Yes, it's pleasant, isn't it, to discover that you've got a criminal record, and that your picture's in the rogues' gallery?”

“I wonder if they got Farrell?” she mused.

“Oh, yes, one of the policeman distinctly said so. Anyway, we shall read all about it in to-morrow's papers.”

“Do you suppose he really would have branded you?” she inquired.

“Oh, very likely,” he replied indifferently; “he was a determined duffer; and then he wanted revenge—I can understand that perfectly—I believe in revenge, you know. I am naturally very vindictive.”

“And what would they have done to you afterward?” she continued fearfully.

“I haven't the remotest idea. I think very likely the branding would have satisfied him.”

“Do you know,” she apprised him suddenly, “I wasn't so awfully frightened during our imprisonment—at least not so frightened as I would have prophesied about myself?”

“Frightened,” he repeated. “I should say you weren't. You were my despair. I couldn't seem to wake you up to the seriousness of the occasion.”

“Of course,” she murmured, “at first I was afraid, but more particularly of you; and it hurt me to think that you had deceived me, had allowed me to get in such a position. But when you said you were not Harry Pryor, I believed you. And after that, after my trust in you had returned, I—I almost enjoyed myself. At any rate, I had a sensation that was not unpleasant—a tingling consciousness of peril. I felt that I was living. Oh, I can't tell you how heavenly it was to live—I can't describe it to you. If you could only realize the frightful monotony of my life, its maddening iterations—oh, how it tires me—how it bores me! I am as much on a wheel as any squirrel in a cage.”

“'Oh, Rose,'” he quoted under his breath; “'thou art sick.'”

“Egypt's the only place that's never bored me,” she pursued her meditations dreamily. “You've never seen stars until you've camped out on the desert. They're sheer white fire—a conflagration in the sky. And the sunsets melted ruby and beryl. And the storms, and the silence—oh, it's different.”

She broke off. “Do you know,” she said suddenly, in very businesslike tones, “that there's a chance that I may sail on the Sappho to-morrow?”

He threw himself at her feet. “A chance,” he echoed. “Come,” he pleaded; then a little softer: “Come, dear.”

“Why?” she asked, still dreamily.

“Because you must, my child,” he said quietly; “because it's your fate to go, and you can't fight fate. Sylvia,” he said, “all my life I have known that some time I should have a big moment. I have known that that moment would bring me the bliss of heaven or the pangs of hell. I've waited all my life for it to come, and I've held myself in readiness for anything that it might hold for me. And I say to you now, whatever it brings, I'm glad I've waited for it. It has come, Sylvia—Sylvia—this is my moment.”

Silver-Rose started. She stared at him steadily. When he ceased to speak she turned and stared quite as intently away from him. The light from the window fell on eyes that blazed like happy stars.

“Oh, the wonderful coincidences,” she murmured at last; “the wonderful, wonderful coincidences!”

“You see—you must come on the Sappho to-morrow,” he ventured.

“I'm afraid,” she whispered.

“Do you recall,” he helped her whimsically, “that the fairies may steal new-married brides upon May Eve? And you are, by your own confession, a new-married bride; and I am, by your own selection, the king of the fairies.”

She smiled at him.

“'Come newly married bride,'” he quoted softly.

“I”

“White bird, white bird, come with me, little bird.'”

“But”

“Come little bird with crest of gold”

“'I think that I would stay—and yet—and yet'” she supplemented him softly.

“'Come little bird with silver feet.'”

“Let's look at the dancers,” she said suddenly, rising.

He sighed deeply, but he followed her.

They found a secluded, vine-wreathed corner in the wide piazza, where, through one of the long windows, they could see without being seen.

It was like looking into a crystal. Many of the long, high walls were merely mirrors, and these alternated frequently with high, wide windows. There were, suspended from the ceiling, three huge crystal chandeliers, of an old-fashioned tiered and bulbous variety. Along the walls there were supplementing sprays of lights, whose flames spurted through calyxes of crystal. It happened that many of the women wore tulle that night—pale pinks and blues and greens. They drifted in the ambient atmosphere like flowers submerged in liquid, like complicated floating bells, that would have arisen to the surface and escaped if they had not been moored to their black and white partners.

Silver-Rose turned to her companion suddenly. “You must be about my brother's height,” she said.

“Yes, I have seen him—we must be about the same height,” Eveleth assured her.

“And what time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “One to those people in there, eleven to me, he said. “Oh, what will they say to you? What will they do to you?” he groaned.

“Nothing,” she said composedly. “I am my own mistress. Now, let me see; there are at least two more hours of dancing. My brother Beaufort is away. Won't you come in and get into his things?—and we'll have a dance together.”

He stared at her. “You do have ideas,” he said dazedly, “but—but is it possible?”

“Perfectly,” she announced tranquilly; “the servants will take care of you beautifully; and I'll tell mother I brought you along from Doris'. I'll fix Doris over the phone to-morrow. Do you care?”

“Care?” he said. Then he sighed again, but this time not unhappily.

“Well, come, then,” she ordered.

“I'll make a bargain with you,” he said ardently. “I'll wear your brother's things if you'll wear the gown I saw you in—in Langwall's studio—that white, crapy affair.”

“It's very old,” she said.

“Please.”

“I don't think it fits now. I'm not nearly so slender.”

“Please.”

“And I have a new one—a very pretty one.”

“Please.”

“White tulle,” she tempted him; “it's as delicate as a cobweb.”

“Please.”

She stared again into the dance. “There are a great many tulles,” she meditated; “they will take it as another evidence of my eccentricity—my insanity,” she added. “Well, I will,” she conceded. “Come.”

“I hate to leave them,” he admitted, with a backward glance.

“Leave whom?” she asked surprisedly.

“Prince Hal and the Princess Daylight.”

“Perhaps we shall find them again some time,” she suggested softly. “Are you coming?” He seized her hands.

“Tell me first,” he begged, “that you will sail to-morrow on the Sappho—tell me—oh, tell me.” He pressed her hands hard.:

Silver-Rose gazed inscrutably into the darkness. Dreams were filling her brilliant eyes; and tired shadows, that her youth rendered pearly, were accentuating them.

“Perhaps,” she said, at length.

“My little Daylight, my heart of gold, my lune de miel,” he whispered; and suddenly his words broke away from their English cages, softening into a flood of Italian diminutives. His arms went gently about her. Her lids drooped, but she did not stir. He drew her closer to him, and their lips met in a long kiss; soft as velvet, fine as fire.

title: May Eve; or, What You Must/Part 3


text:
The Red Book Magazine/Volume 14/Number 2/A Shift in Values

BEDIENT to her mother's commands, Dodie revolved in the middle of the room. She held herself stiff. She looked like a Dresden china tea-bell, of which her many starched petticoats made the body, her slender torso, the handle. On one side her mother held the new white dress. On the other side her grandmother unrolled the new blue sash. Myrtle Rollins slipped the dress over the child's head, and standing off, closely examined the effect.

“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed in a relieved tone. “Those petticoats are short enough. I guess it's the first time I ever got them right. That's the advantage of being such an idiot about dressmaking.”

It was taking the efforts of both the women to dress the child for the Christmas tree. Ever since Philippa Meade's invitation came, they had talked of little else. Myrtle had always relied on her mother-in-law in regard to every detail of the child's wardrobe. That oracle decided promptly in favor of a new dress for this occasion. Though Myrtle made it from materials of an expensive fineness that she had never dared before, she cut it by the pattern she invariably used—a pattern that her mother-in-law had provided when Dodie went into short dresses. The elder Mrs. Rollins presented Dodie with the sash and shoes. Indeed, she was even more interested and excited than her daughter-in-law over the child's first appearance in society. It was, of course, that she wanted King's baby to make the proper sensation among the relatives of King's wife.

“You do a good deal better than I ever thought you would, Myrtle,” Mrs. Rollins said. “When I consider what a flyaway little thing you were when you married King—why you couldn't much more than sew a straight seam. I think it's a great deal to your credit what you've accomplished.”

“I have tried,” Myrtle admitted, “and tried hard. But I guess I haven't the knack.”

“Knack! I don't see but you have plenty of knack,” Mrs. Rollins protested.

“Well, I owe it all to you, mother.”

Myrtle took the sash from Mrs, Rollins' hand and tied it about Dodie's waist.

“It's an awful pretty blue. If she spills any ice-cream on it, it will break my heart.”

“I'm glad you're going out for once, Myrtle,” Mrs. Rollins went on. “You need a little change now and then. Besides, it gives you ideas. I do wish there were some young folks round here for you to sew with. Why when my children were growing up, I always belonged to a sewing-circle.”

“But, mother, where do I get the time? Don't I sew and embroider every blessed moment? I'm too busy for anything like that. And as for being lonely—how can I be with Dodie and you?”

She finished her daughter's toilet with a few perking dashes at ribbon-loops and ruffles.

“Now you sit just as still as a little mouse, lamb-baby!” she apostrophized her, lifting her into a chair, “until mother's all ready. Don't slip down on to the floor, for you'll be sure to get into something. And. mother wants her baby to be as neat as a pin when she meets all her little cousins.”

There could be no doubt that Myrtle Rollins took her motherhood hard. It softened her wide brown eyes with a delicate starriness just to look at Dodie. It flooded her voice with a rich, vibrating quality just to speak to her. It was hard for her, in conversation, to keep long away from her daughter. She lived in a world into which considerations other than Dodie's infantile needs no longer entered.

“I'm glad Dodie's going to see some other children at last,” said Mrs. Rollins.

She sank into a chair and absently watched Myrtle complete her own toilet.

“She'll enjoy it a sight. I do wish there were some nice little children round here for her to play with. Sometimes I'm afraid being with grown people so much isn't good for her. It makes her too old fashioned.”

Myrtle's mouth took its most inflexible curve. She was a fragile-looking woman, with a flickering brunette coloring and a thread of silver here and there in her jet-black hair. Maternity had brought out in her a certain physical tensity. Her forehead was sown with a net-work of fine lines. Sometime, when the ivory and rose faded, she would grow old all at once. The more tired she was, the deeper her cheeks blushed, the whiter grew her slim, nervous hands. To-day her face blazed.

“No children are better than bad ones,” she pronounced crisply. “I can't let Dodie play with those common children at the foot of the street. And they're all the children there are round here.”

Mrs. Rollins, the elder, was wide and pudgy. She always accented her stoutness by wearing short-waisted blouses with broad flat belts. Always, too, she wore flat sailor-collars with large flat bows, held down by a large cameo pin. At first Myrtle had thought her—with her mothy brown skin, her blurred brown eyes and her high, long-nostriled nose the “homeliest” woman she had ever seen. Now she wondered how she ever could have thought her “homely.” There was something about her face—you always turned to her whenever you had anything to say. This compelling power, had Myrtle only known it, was sympathy—a sympathy so deep that it had created a subtle beauty of its own. And how Dodie loved her! Myrtle did not mind that her daughter would, at any time, leave her mother for her grandmother.

Mrs. Rollins had a hard time when her son, King, brought his wife home to live. Myrtle was frivolous and arrogant. She hated the faded Dorchester neighborhood, from which all the young people fled as soon as they were married. She hated the gloomy old house, the stark, black-walnut rooms, the atmosphere of an uncompromising, aged routine. She had not hesitated to show her disgust, and she had taken every opportunity to slip back to Maywood, the scene of her ante-marital belleship. Disagreements had arisen that were only saved by the older woman's tact from becoming open quarrels.

Then Dodie was born and the differences vanished utterly. A common interest drew the two women into a constant companionship. A common affection built friendship between them, then love. Myrtle discovered her mother-in-law's good sense and, practically, she deferred to her in everything that touched Dodie's material welfare. All the foolish interests of her girlhood and bridehood fell away from her. And, on her side, Mrs. Rollins, mother of many, observed, with a respect sometimes deepening to a vague uneasiness, a conception of motherhood which seemed to eat up every atom of the girl's energy, which threatened to sap her very youth.

It was perhaps of all these things that Mrs. Rollins thought in the moment before she answered.

“No,” she agreed, “you can't do that.”

But her voice held a wavering note of uncertainty.

It was the tone Myrtle answered.

“You know perfectly well, mother, she'd learn all kinds of things from them—naughty words, for instance. And she might be saucy.”

“Well, anyway, she'll be going to kindergarten another year.” Mrs. Rollins spoke as if that prospect mitigated much. “Miss Whitney never has any but the nicest children. When I think King went to her—it don't seem possible that his little girl is going, too. Dodie'll be older then and know how to play with other children.”

“Oh, she'll know how to play with other children all right,” Myrtle said easily. “That always comes to them.”

This, Mrs. Rollins did not answer at all. She hooked Myrtle into her lace waist, the look of preoccupation still accenting her extraordinary plainness.

“And you'll trim the Christmas tree while we're gone, mother?”

Myrtle said this in an undertone, her eyes sliding past her own reflection and fixing on a counterfeit Dodie in the glass

“Yes, it'll be all ready when you get home. She'll be so tired that she'll want to go right to bed.”

“All right. Be sure to lay out all the little furniture in rooms under the Tree. I'1l let her run in, in her nightie, the first thing in the morning. I'll fill her stocking, myself, after she's got to sleep. Oh mother, look at her—isn't she beautiful?” Myrtle ended in an ecstatic hiss.

Both the women stopped to adore the child for a moment. It was a ritual they performed half-a-dozen times a day. Unwontedly docile through the splendor of an unaccustomed gold locket and an unaccustomed turquoise ring, her little hands were disposed primly that they might not muss her skirt. She seemed to focus in her vivid little person all the scant light and color of the big bleak chamber. Dodie was in the very flower of infantile condition. Her flesh, velvety, pearly; her cheeks, a warm peony-pink; her eyes, brilliant, long-lashed, blue; her ravishing little red-and-white mouth all dotted with dimples, proved this. Smiling from concentric whirls of hamburg, she looked like an old-fashioned bouquet in a circle of embroidered paper.

“Your cousin's going to see a pretty child and a healthy child—if she's never seen one in her life before.”

Mrs. Rollins spoke quietly, but her voice rang with the conviction of grandmotherhood.

“Oh, Philippa's children are both lovely,' Myrtle remonstrated.

She felt that she must say this in the interest of fair play. But she knew, with the conviction of motherhood—which is only a shade less sure than the conviction of grandmotherhood—that what the older woman had insinuated was true. There would be no child at Philippa Meade's Christmas-tree to compare with Dodie. It was going to be a social triumph for her, Dodie's mother. And she was anticipating it with tumultuous throbs of exultation. Owing to the distance and to Dodie's fragile infancy, she had not been able to accept Philippa's previous invitations. But every refusal had cost her a pang. Now she was glad of the delay. Dodie was so much bigger, stronger, and more beautiful. She would burst like a vision on that whole Maywood crowd. Myrtle could hardly wait.

Her glow of complacency carried her over the realization that her lace waist and dark, broadcloth skirt had a curiously old fashioned look. It lifted her above the minor irritations of the start. After the process of getting Dodie into leggings, rubbers, coat, collar, muff, mittens, veil, hood, there were the special inconveniences of the slippery walk down—no, up the street.

By choice Myrtle took the car-line at the head of the street. She did not like to take Dodie through the little squatter settlement at the foot that had set so many of the old Dorchester families to buying new houses in Brookline. Her exhilaration did not evaporate during the railroad trip. Indeed, it took a distinct leap upwards when the guard called, “Maywood!”

Philippa had ordered a carriage to bring her to the house. Myrtle leaned back against the cushions, which seemed to symbolize the more splendid luxury to come, and drank in the shifting view. Maywood was a lively, crisp little town, wilderness of tortured, wooden architecture, laid out as symmetrically as a toy-village, across velvet lawns and between rows of maples. Some day, when King had money enough, they were coming out here to live. Any one of the houses would satisfy Myrtle. She loved rooms that were not square, that had all kinds of breaks and turns and twists in them. In imagination she could see her wedding-presents, which still lay in their boxes, against such a background.

To-day, Christmas positively sizzled in the air. The ground was powdered with snow. The trees sparkled brilliantly in the flooding December sun. Huge green wreaths with flying crimson streamers glimmered through the frost on the window-panes. In the doorway, a postman, festooned with packages from knee to shoulder, was rapidly running through his impedimenta. At one house they were unloading a Christmas-tree. At another, a glossy black delivery-wagon, with the name in gilt letters of a Boston firm, was disgorging huge bundles after huger ones—a sled, a doll's carriage—the last was surely a doll's house.

Philippa came running out bare-headed to meet them—a stouter Philippa but a radiant one, still with the faint coat of her summer tan overlaying her vigorous blondness. Myrtle noted that she wore a new yellow, princess gown, that her hair was done a different way, a big yellow bow in its puffed elaboration.

“Oh, Myrtie, I'm so glad to see you!” she boomed in her deep, hearty voice. “I've been on pins and needles for an hour, I was so afraid that something would happen at the last moment to prevent—and here's Dorothy Persis! Oh, you darling bunny-duck, come and kiss you' Auntie Phil!”

But Dodie, in a sudden fit of shyness, shrank to her mother's side.

“Oh, she's frightened—the love!” Philippa went on. “Never mind, pettie-lamb, you' Auntie Phil wont [sic] bother you till we get acquainted. Then she's going to eat you up. Come right in!”

She bustled them into the big square hall that seemed to brim with the flaming colors of an oriental corner, to snap with the vivacity of an open fire. Myrtle caught glimpses through the portières of the dining-room: she had a confused impression of holly-wreaths, cut glass, beer-mugs, a shining table with circles of Mexican drawn-work, a white-capped maid moving about. Coming in from the cold, she exulted in this dazzling detail and haphazard color. It spelled ease and opulence to her. Even the luscious heat seemed to intensify that effect. And she looked upon it, not as Philippa's home, but as the proper frame for Dodie's beauty, a background laid by a scenic master for her coming triumph.

Still talking in her deep-voiced, vigorous way, Philippa urged them up the broad stairs and into a big Delft-blue bedroom. She started to roll Dodie out of her wraps, but another access of shyness gripped the little girl.

She ran to her mother.

Both the women laughed.

“Well, what's got into the child?” Myrtle exclaimed.

But in her eyes shone the pride that mothers feel when their children will have none of aliens for little intimate services. She pulled Dodie upright and began to unpeel her, chatting frantically all the time. Philippa's presence exerted its old-time intoxication—she felt inclined to frisk—even to giggle.

Dodie emerged from her cocoon more brilliantly flushed than ever and with a positive blue fire sparkling between her fringing lashes. A stroke or two from Philippa's brush and the thick, hanging hair broke into ripples and waves. Myrtle pulled out sash-ends and petticoats. She looked over at her cousin in open triumph.

“Oh, what a darling!” Philippa responded promptly to this wordless cue. “You certainly have taken every care of her, Myrtle.”

“I guess I have,” Myrtle admitted. “There isn't an inch of her skin that isn't like satin.”

“Come upstairs now,” Philippa urged. “We're having the Tree in the nursery. Lou Thayer's come with Baby Marjory—you remember Lou Eliot—you know she lost her first one—awfully sad, wasn't it? Marjory's about Dorothy's—Dodie, you call her—about Dodie's age. She's a perfect little fairy. Then Polly Perkins is here with her two boys—she's got a handful in them, I can tell you. But she knows just how to manage them—that tomboy's turned out the loveliest mother. And Miriam Dodge is here with her family. And Ella Stacey with the twins. Then I'm expecting Edith Whittier with Thomas. Why, you haven't seen these girls since—not for four years, have you?”

“I guess not—not since before Dodie was born. Don't you remember that you had a whist on your birthday and I came out for that?”

Philippa led the way up a second flight of stairs. They opened directly into the big garret nursery. In the middle of the floor glittered the Tree, bulging with tinsel toys and veiled in silver sheen. The children playing about it turned round eyes of curiosity on the new-comers. Clustered about a couch in the corner, a group of mothers looked up inquiringly as they entered. Subconsciously, Myrtle noted pretty silken bags gaping to expose dainty sewing utensils, bits of linen and embroidery.

“Why, it's Mrs. Rollins!” one of the mothers exclaimed. She came rushing forward—a pretty little dark woman sparking out of a raspberry-colored gown, all ruffles. “We were so afraid something would prevent you from coming.”

Myrtle recognized her as Polly Perkins.

“How do you do?”

She held out a formal hand. Dodie was still anchored to her skirts.

“And this is little Dorothy,” Mrs. Perkins said, kneeling down. “Oh, you cunning bunch! Come, girls, come and see Mrs. Rollins' little girl! Do kiss me, lambie!”

The other women came forward. They greeted Myrtle cordially, but devoted themselves to the child. Dodie could not be coaxed out of her shyness, however. The more entreating grew their voices, the more beguiling their ways, the closer she clung, the deeper she buried her face in her mother's skirts.

“She's frightened, of course,” Mrs. Perkins said, relieving the situation with her quick tact. “Wait until she gets used to all these new faces. Take this chair, Mrs. Rollins.”

Myrtle sat down, embarrassed. She pulled Dodie to her side. The child clung to her like a little limpet.

Appreciating Myrtle's dilemma, they brought the children up to her for inspection, first Philippa's black browed, sturdy boys, last Mrs. Stacey's baby, who cooed approval for a second from Myrtle's arms. Dodie would look at none of them. But the children, as they slipped moistly polite little paws into the strange lady's hand, stared very hard at the strange little girl, awed by her air of haughty exclusiveness.

“I hope you brought your sewing, Mrs. Rollins,” Polly Perkins said, after this ordeal was over.

“No, I didn't. I wish I had.”

“If you lived in Maywood,” laughed Lou Thayer, “you'd soon learn to go nowhere without it. We sew at everything but weddings and funerals.” And she went on with her hem-stitching. “At present we're all crazy about hand-work and we're doing the children's best dresses without a stitch on the machine. I'm naturally slow myself. I have to work like a beaver to keep up with the rest.”

Myrtle did not reply to this and the group swung easily into talk of their own concerns. She listened. They recognized her presence with an occasional remark, in a courteous explanation of local allusions. But in spite of it all, Myrtle had that sense of being on the outside that inevitably comes when a stranger joins a group closely knit by neighborhood interests. She had a feeling that she was older than the rest and yet, by a curious paradox, less experienced. How well they talked! How they seemed to know each other! And then the extraordinary number of things they had in common! They drifted from a consideration of the next “whist,” through an argument about a play running in Boston, to a discussion of a magazine-serial whose very name Myrtle had not heard. Then they got back with much laughter and anecdote to servants, household economy, and clothes.

Left to herself, Dodie gradually lifted her head. Urged by her mother, she slipped to the floor. Still holding Myrtle's hand, she gazed in wonder at the romping children.

Philippa observed.

“Come here, children!” she called sonorously. “The little girl's all ready to play with you now. Come, Marjory and Daisy and Ted and Billy! Come, Freddie and Rutherford! Come, Eleanor!”

Obedient to her call, the group danced over to her side. Myrtle stared at them as if seeing them for the first time. Had she ever children seen before? Little fairy girls all ruffles and ribbon and ringlets—stalwart boys in the most shining of freshly laundered linen, the most polished of patent leather slippers—they gathered in an appreciative circle about Dodie. Tiny, blonde Marjory—it looked as if a puff of wind would send her across the slippery floor in an involuntary dance—ventured to take her hand.

Dodie watched their approach with an apprehension that grew rapidly into alarm. At Marjory's shy touch, her self-control went utterly. She burst into a sob that voiced sheer terror. She caught convulsively at Myrtle's neck.

Again the group of mothers rang with sympathetic cries.

“Run away, children!” This was Philippa. “The little girl will play with you later. Poor little dear! She's frightened at the confusion.”

“She's not used to other children, is she, Mrs. Rollins?” from the others.

Myrtle answered the last question.

“No, she's never played with other children.”

She spoke with composure. But inwardly she was suffering. Dodie was not doing her mother proud. Dodie was not doing herself justice. However, she'd get over her terrors after a while and then they'd see her beauties and graces, all her little darling, baby ways. A wild surge of adoration came over her. She lifted the child into her arms, pressing a flurry of kisses on the round velvety cheeks. Soothed by this demonstration, Dodie subsided into a quiescent heap.

The talk among the mothers had turned to children's clothes. An argument about a pattern provoked laughing contradictions on one side, wagers on the other. Philippa disappeared, came back with all the month's harvest of women's magazines. Her guests grabbed them from her hand, ransacked them, studied the illustrations. They talked in terms Myrtle did not understand, but she listened avidly. It all helped to crystallize in her mind something that had been growing there, vague but definite. Furtively she examined the little girls playing about the Tree. Once or twice, with a premeditated effect of unconsciousness, she swept Dodie with a critical gaze. There was something about the little girls. What was it? There was something about Dodie. What was it? It came to her after a while. They looked “smart.” Dodie looked—well, she might as well admit it—Dodie looked “gorming.”

Dodie's dress was too long to be graceful, yet not long enough to be “quaint.” Their skirts came just above the bend of the knee. Dodie wore long black stockings. They wore delicately tinted, silk socks that left bare delicious areas of dimpled flesh. Dodie wore button boots that were too wide at the top for her slender legs. They wore dainty strapped slippers. Dodie's hair, left to hang unconfined to her waist, had tangled and snarled. Their heads—they wore either the “Dutch cut” or curls, smartly bowed—looked trim. Dodie wore a sash too wide for her height, gathered into a big awkward bow at the back. Sashless, their little bodies were dotted at pretty intervals with choux of nursery ribbon, were striped with insertions of filmiest lace.

Dodie looked horrid!

Well, what wonder in a dress made from a pattern that dated back to the babyhood of King's youngest sister? Dodie's clothes might be all wrong, but Dodie herself was surely beautiful. She examined the child's face in a kind of terror. Dodie smiled limpidly up at her out of eyes that were wells of pure color. Wait until she got at some of those fashion magazines. Wait until next Christmas. She'd show them!

The arrival of Edith Whittier created a diversion. With her came Thomas, the boy-toy of the whole united little circle—Thomas, a thing of chubby cheeks, eyes like black O's and a baby smile of rare ingenuousness—a Thomas, moreover, in the glories of his first trousers—a Thomas who stood for inspection in the doorway, thrusting dimpled hands into black velvet pockets. A shriek of grown-up appreciation greeted this sartorial debut. But the excitement would doubtless have tapered down to the calm that precedes the gift-giving if Thomas had not marked Dodie for his own. Speeding to her side, he kissed her.

It was a fatal impulse. From it came confusion and chaos, came utter rout and ruin. Dodie's terrified screams could not be hushed. Myrtle kissed her and patted her, walked her and rocked her, entreated her. Everybody offered a new scheme for placating her and each scheme plunged the child into deeper woe. Myrtle retreated, finally, to Philippa's bedroom, where she nursed Dodie to tranquility and her own sense of outrage to composure.

Always in memory, the rest of the party was a blur to Myrtle Rollins—a series of greater mortifications rolling on lesser ones to make a sum total that she always shrank from considering. After an hour of calm with Dodie, Myrtle ventured back to the nursery with her. But the confusion of gift-giving proved too much for Dodie. She spurned the fruitage of the marvelous tree. She spurned the children who made friendly overtures. She spurned the parents who tried to make amends. Finally, she spurned her mother. All this went to the accompaniment of wails and sobs and screams. At last Myrtle bore her, yelling and kicking back to Philippa's bedroom and hushed her to an exhausted sleep.

Myrtle made herself assist Philippa in putting the last touches to the table. She made herself join the pretty procession coming, gift-laden and laughing, down the stairs. She made herself sit with them when every detail of the picture—the child-encircled table, a mother behind each little head—threw into aching contrast her own childlessness. She made herself answer calmly the kindly inquiries of those happier mothers, made herself accept with smiles their tactful explanation of Dodie's behavior. She laughed and appreciated. But, all the time, she carried the picture of Dodie asleep upstairs, tumbled, disheveled, her features swollen out of shape, her exquisite coloring a mottled ruin. All the time she swayed in the turmoil of a mental hurricane; she was enduring the acutest mortification of her life.

She was too dispirited to notice that she had taken the car-line that went by the foot of the street until the hated crowd of cheap wooden houses came into view.

Frowning involuntarily, she helped Dodie out of the car and started up the hill.

Half-way up a voice arrested her.

“Why, Myrtle Meade,” it called, “of all things!”

Myrtle looked around in surprise.

“Why, Maggie Kelly,” she said, “is it really you?”

She stood irresolutely at the gate, but Maggie came bounding down the steps.

“The sight of you's good for sore eyes!” Maggie said, shaking Myrtle's hand.

“I'm glad to see you, too,” Myrtle said, formally.

The two girls had sat beside each other in the grammar school, had, in fact, graduated from the same class. Myrtle had adored Maggie in those democratic days of her early teens. Now it amused and embarrassed her a little to see that Maggie expected that the intimacy could be taken up just where it was left off.

“I'm married. My name's Flaherty. My man's a motorman,” Maggie explained, breathlessly. “Come in, Myrtle—do. I want you to see my house and my—is that your little girl?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, do come in,” Maggie begged, jumping up and down as if in the throes of the most delicious emotions. “Oh, do come in. I want to show you something.”

And Myrtle went, Dodie tagging at her heels.

Maggie, not stopping to explain, disappeared. Myrtle, loosening Dodie's coat, removed her hat and fur collar, gazed disdainfully about the mean little room. Maggie whisked back into sight. She was pulling something by the hand.

“Here's my little girl,” she said.

She looked at Myra with all the pride of motherhood beaming in her face. Then her gaze went to Dodie.

Dodie, in that lucent physical calm which follows a storm and a nap, was a vision of ravishing color—all velvety pinks and seraphic blues, all long lashes and shining masses of hair. And with the perversity of childhood she was dimpling at the strange child.

Myrtle saw Maggie's look, turning swiftly back to her own daughter's face, change subtly. For little Maggie was not beautiful. She was a big-nosed, freckled child—one of those coarse flowers of babyhood, predestined to grow uglier and uglier as the years should steal from her the inalienable freshness of infancy.

Maggie's radiance began to fade.

“Here's my little girl,” she said again—and then more slowly, “she's not so very beautiful, I guess, but she's the best child that ever—”

But Myrtle had bounded across the room, was down on her knees, was kissing the little freckled face. Her voice caught and broke.

“She's a lovely little girl, Maggie,” she said, “you ought to be proud of her. Wont you let her come to Dodie's Christmas tree to-morrow? And now, Maggie, that you're so near, you must come up every single afternoon and sew with me. Oh, do come!”

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text: Talk:The Red Book Magazine/Volume 14/Number 2/A Shift in Values