"More honored than I can tell you by your--confidence."

"Austin--when it"s _in_ you to say such nice things as you have several times to-night, _why_ do you waste time saying disagreeable ones--the way you usually do to everybody?"

"I"ve just told you, I don"t know, but I"m going to do better."

"Well--there was once a girl, whose father had died when she was a baby and who lived with her mother and a maid in a tiny flat in New York City.

It was a pretty little flat, and they had plenty to eat and to wear, and a good many pleasant friends and acquaintances; but they didn"t have much money--that is, compared to the other people they knew. This girl went to a school where all her mates had ten times as much spending money as she did, who possessed hundreds of things which she coveted, and who were constantly showering favors upon her which she had no way of returning.

So, from the earliest time that she could remember, she felt discontented and dissatisfied, and regarded herself as having been picked out by Providence for unusual misfortunes; and her mother agreed with her.

"I fancy it is never very pleasant to be poor. But if one can be frankly poor, in calico and overalls, the way you"ve been, I don"t believe it"s quite so hard as it is to be poor and try "to keep up appearances"; as the saying is. This girl learned very early the meaning of that convenient phrase. She gave parties, and went without proper food for a week afterwards; she had pretty dresses to wear to dances, and wore shabby finery about the house; she bought theatre tickets and candy, but never had a cent to give to charity; she usually stayed in the sweltering city all summer, because there was not enough money to go away for the summer, and still have some left for the next winter"s season; and she spent two years at miserable little second-rate "pensions" in Europe--that pet economy of fashionable Americans who would not for one moment, in their own country, put up with the bad food, and the unsanitary quarters, and the vulgar a.s.sociates which they endure there.

"Before she was sixteen years old this girl began to be "attractive to men," as another stock phrase goes. I may be mistaken, and I"ll never have a chance now to find out whether I am or not, but I believe if I had a daughter like that, it would be my earnest wish to bring her up in some quiet country place where she could dress simply, and spend much time outdoors, and not see too many people until she was nineteen or twenty.

But the mother I have been talking about didn"t feel that way. She taught her daughter to make the most of her looks--her eyes and her mouth, and her figure; she showed her how to arrange her dress in a way which should seem simple--and really be alluring; she drilled her in the art of being flippant without being pert, of appearing gentle when she was only sly, of saying the right thing at the right time, and--what is much more important--keeping still at the right time. The pupil was docile because she was eager to learn and she was clever. She made very few mistakes, and she never made the same one twice.

"Of course, all this education had one aim and end--a rich husband. "I hope I"ve brought you up too sensibly," the mother used to say, "for you to even think of throwing yourself away on the first attractive boy that proposes to you. Your type is just the kind to appeal to some big, heavy, oversated millionaire. Keep your eyes open for him." The daughter was as obedient in listening to this counsel as she had been in regard to the others, for it fell in exactly with her own wishes; she was tired of being poor, of scrimping and saving and "keeping up appearances." The innumerable young bank clerks and journalists and teachers and college students who fluttered about her burnt their moth-wings to no avail. But that _rara avis_, a really rich man, found her very kind to him.

"Well, you can guess the result. When she was not quite eighteen, a man who was beyond question a millionaire proposed to her, and she accepted him. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, and was certainly big, heavy, and oversated. Her uncle--her father"s brother--came to her mother, and told her certain plain facts about this man, and his father and grandfather before him, and charged her to tell the child what she would be doing if she married him. Perhaps if the uncle had gone to the girl herself, it might have done some good--perhaps it wouldn"t have--you see she was so tired of being poor that she thought nothing else mattered. Anyway, he felt a woman could break these ugly facts to a young girl better than a man, and he was right. Only, you see, the mother never told at all; not that she really feared that her daughter would be foolish and play false to her excellent training--but, still, it was just as well to be on the safe side. The millionaire was quite mad about his little fiancee; he was perfectly willing to pay--in advance--all the expenses for a big, fashionable wedding, with twelve bridesmaids and a wedding-breakfast at Sherry"s; he was eager to load her with jewels, and settle a large sum of money upon her, and take her around the world for her honeymoon journey; he loved her little soft tricks of speech, the shy way in which she dropped her eyes, the curve of the simple white dress that fell away from her neck when she leaned towards him; and though she saw him drink--and drank with him more than once before her marriage--he took excellent care that it was not until several nights afterwards that she found him--really drunk; and they must have been married two months before she began to--really comprehend what she had done.

"There isn"t much more to tell--that can be told. The woman who sells herself--with or without a wedding ring--has probably always existed, and probably always will; but I doubt whether any one of them ever has told--or ever will--the full price which she pays in her turn. She deserves all the censure she gets, and more--but, oh! she does deserve a little pity with it! When this girl had been married nearly a year, she heard her husband coming upstairs one night long after midnight, in a condition she had learned to recognize--and fear. She locked her bedroom door. When he discovered that, he was furiously angry; as I said before, he was a big man, and he was very strong. He knocked out a panel, put his hand through, and turned the key. When he reached her, he reminded her that she had been perfectly willing to marry him--that she was his wife, his property, anything you choose to call it; he struck her. The next day she was very ill, and the child which should have been born three months later came--and went--before evening. The next year she was not so fortunate; her second baby was born at the right time--her husband was away with another woman when it happened--a horrible, diseased little creature with staring, sightless eyes. Thank G.o.d! it lived only two weeks, and its mother, after a long period of suffering and agony during which she felt like a leper, recovered again, in time to see her husband die--after three nights, during which she got no sleep--of delirium tremens, leaving her with over two million dollars to spend as she chose--and the degradation of her body and the ruin of her soul to think of all the rest of her life!"

"Sylvia!"--the cry with which Austin broke his long silence came from the innermost depths of his being--"Sylvia, Sylvia, you shan"t say such things--they"re not true. Don"t throw yourself on the ground and cry that way." He bent over her, vainly trying to keep his own voice from trembling. "If I could have guessed what--telling this--this hideous story would mean to you, I never should have let you do it. And it"s all my fault that you felt you ought to do it--partly because of those vile speeches I made the other evening, partly because I"ve let you see how wickedly discontented I"ve been myself, partly because you must have heard me urging my own sister to make practically this same kind of a marriage. Oh, if it"s any comfort to you to know it, you haven"t told me in vain! Sylvia, do speak to me, and tell me that you believe me, and that you forgive me!"

She managed to give him the a.s.surance he sought, her desperate, pa.s.sionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and drew closer to her to listen to her breathing; at first there was a little catch in it, betraying sobs not yet wholly controlled, then gradually it grew calm and even; she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Austin, sitting motionless beside her, found the night one of purification and dedication. To men of Thomas"s type, slow of wit, steady and stolid and unemotional, the soil gives much of her own peaceful wholesomeness. But those like Austin, with finer intellects, higher ambitions, and stronger pa.s.sions, often fare ill at her hands. Their struggles towards education and the refinements of life are balked by poverty and the utter fatigue which comes from overwork; while their search for pleasure often ends in a knowledge and experience of vices so crude and tawdry that men of greater wealth and more happy experience would turn from them in disgust, not because they were more moral, but because they could afford to be more fastidious. Between Broadway and the "main street" of Wallacetown, and other places of its type--small railroad or manufacturing centres, standing alone in an otherwise purely agricultural community--the odds in favor of virtue, not to say decency, are all in favor of Broadway; and Wallacetown, to the average youth of Hamstead, represents the one opportunity for a "show," "something to drink," and "life" in general. Sylvia had unlocked the door of material opportunity for Austin; but she had done far more than this. She had given him the vision of the higher things that lay beyond that, and the desire to attain them. Further than that, neither she nor any other woman could help him. The future, to make or mar, lay now within his own hands.

And in the same spirit of consecration with which the knights of old prayed that they might attain true chivalry during the long vigil before their accolade, Austin kept his watch that night, and made his vow that the future, in spite of the discouragements and mistakes and failures which it must inevitably contain, should be undaunted by obstacles, and clean of l.u.s.t and high of purpose.

The wind and rain ceased, the clouds grew less heavy, and at last, just before dawn, a few stars shone faintly in the clearing sky; then the sun rose in a blaze of glory. Sylvia had not moved, and lay with one arm under her dark head, the undried tears still on her cheeks. Austin lifted her gently, and started towards the highroad with her in his arms. She stirred slightly, opened her eyes and smiled, then lifted her hands and clasped them around his neck.

"It"ll be easier to carry me that way," she murmured drowsily.

"Austin--you"re awfully good to me."

Her eyes closed again. A sheet of white fire, like that of which he had been conscious on the afternoon when they straightened out the yard together, only a thousand times more powerful, seemed to envelop him again. He looked down at the lovely, sleeping face, at the dark lashes curling over the white cheeks and the red, sweet lips. If he kissed her, what harm would be done--she would never even know--

Then he flung back his head. Sylvia was as far above him as those pale stars of the early dawn. It was clear to him that no one must ever guess how dearly he loved her; but he knew that it was far, far more essential that he, in his unworthiness, should not profane his own ideal. She was not for his touch, scarcely for his thoughts. The kiss which did not reach her lips burned into his soul instead, and cleansed it with its healing flame.

CHAPTER V

Sylvia"s sprain, as Austin had suspected, proved much more serious than she had admitted, but when the village doctor came about noon to dress her ankle, she insisted that she was none the worse for her long exposure, and that if she must lie still on a lounge for two weeks, the least the family could do would be to humor her in everything, and spend as much time as possible with her, or she would certainly die of boredom. She pa.s.sed the entire day in making and unfolding plans, looking up the sailing dates of steamships, and writing letters of introduction for Austin. By night she had the satisfaction of knowing that Weston"s offer for the south meadow had been accepted, that the Wallacetown Bank and the insurance money would furnish part of the needed funds, and that she was to be allowed to loan the rest, and that the little brick cottage belonged to her. The fact that Austin had had a long talk with his father and brother, and that his pa.s.sage for Holland had been engaged by telegraph, seemed scarcely less of an achievement to her; but Mrs. Gray noticed, as she kissed her little benefactress after seeing her comfortably settled for the night, that her usually pale cheeks were very red and her eyes unnaturally bright, and worried over her all night long.

The next morning there could be no doubt of the fact that Sylvia was really ill, and two days later Dr. Wells shook his head with dissatisfaction after using his thermometer and stethoscope. He was a conscientious man who lacked self-confidence, and the look of things was disquieting to him.

"I think you ought to get a nurse," he said in the hall to Mrs. Gray as he went out, "and probably she would like to have her own doctor from the city in consultation, and some member of her family come to her. It looks to me very much as if we were in for bronchial pneumonia, and she"s a delicate little thing at best."

Sylvia was laughing when Mrs. Gray, bent on being both firm and tactful, reentered her room. "Tell Dr. Wells he must make his stage-whispers softer if he doesn"t want me to overhear him," she said, "and don"t think of ordering the funeral flowers just yet. I"m not delicate--I"m strong as an ox--if I weren"t I shouldn"t be alive at all. Get a nurse by all means if it will make things easier for you--that"s the only reason I need one.

They"re usually more bother than they"re worth, but I know of two or three who might do fairly well, if any one of them is free. My doctor is an old fogey, and I won"t have him around. As for family, I"m not as greatly blessed--numerically or otherwise--in that respect as the Grays, but my Uncle Mat would love to come, I feel sure, as he"s rather hurt at my runaway conduct." She gave the necessary addresses, and still persisting that they were making a great fuss about nothing, turned over on her pillow in a violent fit of coughing.

Sylvia was right in one thing: she was much stronger than Dr. Wells guessed, and though the next week proved an anxious one for every member of the household except herself, it was not a dismal one. Even if she were flat on her back, her spirit and her vitality remained contagious.

Thomas, whose state of mind was by this time quite apparent to the family, though he imagined it to be a well-concealed secret, hung about outside her door, positive that she was going to die, and brought offerings in the shape of flowers, early apples, and pet animals which he thought might distract her. Austin, who shared his room, insisted that he could not sleep because Thomas groaned and sighed so all night; Molly pertly asked him why he did not try rabbits, as kittens did not seem to appeal to Sylvia, and his mother bantered him half-seriously for thinking of "any one so far above him" whose heart, moreover, was buried "in the grave." Austin"s somewhat expurgated version of Sylvia"s story put an end to the latter part of the protest, but sent his hearers into a new ferment of excitement and sympathy. Sally, who was all ready to start for a "ball" in Wallacetown with Fred when she heard it, declared she couldn"t go one step, it made her feel "that low in her spirits," and Fred replied, by gosh, he didn"t blame her one mite; whereat they wandered off and spent the evening at a very comfortable distance from the house, but fairly close together, revelling in a wealth of gruesome facts and suppositions. Katherine said she certainly never would marry at all, men were such dreadful creatures, and Molly said, yes, indeed, but what else _could_ a girl marry?--while Edith determined to devote the rest of _her_ life to attending and adoring the lovely, sad, drooping widow, whose existence was to be one long poem of beautiful seclusion; and she was so pleased with her own ideas, and her manner of expressing them, that she wept scalding tears into the broth she was making for Sylvia as she stirred it over the stove.

The presence of "Uncle Mat," greatly dreaded beforehand, proved an unexpected source of solace and delight. He was a quiet, shrewd little man, not unlike Sylvia in many ways, but with a merry twinkle in his eye, and a brisk manner of speech which she did not possess. He sized up the Gray family quickly, and apparently with satisfaction, for he talked quite freely of his niece to them, and they saw that they were not alone in their estimate of her.

"It certainly was a great stroke of luck all round--for her as well as for you--when she blew in here," he said, "but if you knew what an awful hole we think she"s left behind her in New York you"d think yourselves doubly lucky to have her all to yourselves. There"s more than one young man, I can tell you"--with a sly look at Thomas--"watching out for her return. You should have seen her at a party I gave for her three years ago or more, dressed in a pink frock looped up with roses, and with cheeks to match! She wasn"t always this pale little shadow, I can tell you. Well, the boys were around her that night like bees round a honeysuckle bush--no denying there"s something almighty irresistible about these little, soft-looking girls, now, is there? Ah! her roses didn"t last long, poor child. Now you"ve given her a good, healthful place to live in, and something to think about and do--she"d have lost her reason without them, after all she"s been through. But when you"re tired of her, I want her. I"m a poor, forlorn lonely old bachelor, and I need her a great deal more than any of you.

What do you say to a little walk, Mr. Gray, before we turn in? I want to have a look at your fine farm. I have a farm myself--no such grand old place as this, of course, but a neat little toy not far from the city, where I can run down Sundays. Sylvia used to be very fond of going down with me. It"s from my foreman, a queer, scientific chap--Jenkins his name is--that she"s picked up all these notions she"s been unloading on you. Pretty good, most of them, aren"t they, though? You must run down there some time, boys, and look things over--it"s well to go about a bit when one"s thinking of building and branching out--Sylvia"s idea, exactly, isn"t it?"

Mr. Gray and Thomas did "run down," seizing the opportunity while Austin was still at home, and while there was practically no farm-work to be done. Jenkins did the honors of Mr. Stevens"s little place handsomely, and they returned with magnificent plans, from the erection of silos and the laying of concrete floors to the proper feeding of poultry. When "Uncle Mat" was obliged to return to his business, after staying over two weeks with the Grays, Austin went with him, for he suggested that he would be glad to have the boy as his guest in New York for a few days before he sailed.

"You better have a glimpse of the "neat little toy," too," he said, "and perhaps see something of a rather neat little city, too! You"ll want to do a little shopping and so on, and I might be of a.s.sistance in that way."

"I don"t see how you can go," said Thomas to Austin the night before he left, as they were undressing, "while Sylvia is still in bed, and won"t be around for another week at least. She"s responsible for all your tremendous good fortune, and you"ll leave without even saying thank you and good-bye. You"re a darned queer ungrateful cuss, and always were."

"I know it," said Austin, "and such being the "nature of the beast,"

don"t bother trying to make me over. You can be grateful and devoted enough for both of us. Now, do shut up and let me go to sleep--I sure will be thankful to get a room to myself, if I"m not for anything else."

"I don"t see how any one can help being crazy over her," continued Thomas, thumping his pillow as if he would like to pummel any one who disagreed with him.

"Don"t you?" asked Austin.

The next night he was in New York with Mr. Stevens, trying hard to feel natural in a tiny flat which was only one of fifty in the same great house. A colored butler served an elaborate dinner at eight o"clock in the evening, and brought black coffee, liqueurs, and cigars into the living-room afterwards, and, worst of all, unpacked all his scanty belongings and laid them about his room. Austin really suffered, and the cold perspiration ran down his back, but he watched his host carefully and waited from one moment to another to see what would be expected of him next; he managed, too, before he went to bed, to ask a question which had been on his mind for some time.

"Would you mind telling me, sir, where Sylvia"s mother is?"

Uncle Mat shot one of his keen little glances in Austin"s direction.

"Why, no, not at all, as nearly as I can," he said. "My brother, Austin, made a most unfortunate match; his wife was a mean, mercenary, greedy woman, as hard as nails, and as tough as leather--but handsome, oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I a.s.sure you. I have often been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in her real colors. She married, very soon after Sylvia herself, a worthless Englishman--discharged from the army, I believe, who had probably been her lover for some time. Cary gave her a check for a hundred thousand to get rid of her the day after his wedding to Sylvia, and the pair are probably living in great comfort on that at some second-rate French resort."

"Thank you for telling me; but it"s rather awful, isn"t it, that any one should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother--" He stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his father"s "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the bone for all of us, and I believe she"d let herself be chopped in pieces to help us gladly any day."

"Yes," a.s.sented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are--several different kinds of mothers in the world. It"s a thousand pities Sylvia did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one of the successful kind, I fancy."

"It would seem so," said Austin.

CHAPTER VI

New York City August 25

DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER:

I"m going to lay in a stock of picture post-cards to send you, for if things move at the same rate in Europe that they do in New York, I certainly shan"t have time to write many letters. But I"ll send a good long one to-night, anyhow. I always thought I"d like to live in the city, as you know, but a few days of this has already given me a sort of breathless feeling that I ought always to be on the move, whether there"s anything special to do or not. The noise never stops for one minute, night or day, and the streets are perfect miracles of light and dirt and _hurry_. This whole flat could be put right into our dining-room, and we"d hardly notice it at that, and _hot!_ Mr. Stevens says in the winter he nearly freezes to death, but I can"t believe it.

All day Friday he kept me tearing from shop to shop, buying more clothes than I can wear out in a lifetime, I believe, lots of them things I"d never even seen or heard of before. Some of the suits had to be altered a little, so in the afternoon we went back to the same places we"d been to in the morning, and tried the blamed things on again. How women can like that sort of thing is beyond me--I"d rather dig potatoes all day. By five o"clock I was so tired that I was ready to lie right down on Fifth Avenue, and let the pa.s.sing crowds walk over me, if they liked. But Mr.