Valentine's Chance

I.

THE May day was so soft and warm that Dr. John Valentine flung himself on the ground, at the edge of the pond. Alder and oak bushes shaded his head. Swamp lands rose just above the surface of the water, and with their wet greenness hid from his eyes the current of the river, whose gentle ripples defined its course through the smoother waters. Valentine’s boat was moored near him, its keel well aground in the shallows. Behind him a steep bank rose to the level of the fields, which sloped away to the village. The river changed its direction when it left the pond, and cut the village in halves; then turned again, and sought the southern tide waters.

Valentine stared a moment at a robin which stood with an erect head near his feet, and then took out a block of paper and began to write. He was a wealthy youth, and neglected his office hours to scribble. Failure had not yet seared his faith, and he believed that what he so ardently longed to say some one must really need to hear. An unuttered thought seemed to him like a seed that does not germinate, something wasted. He came of a country family of good standing in an inland Massachusetts district. His people were the “ best people ” of the neighborhood, and the lad had grown up among kinsfolk who read good books and exercised a generous social spirit, although they lived simply, and kept a healthy interest in the soil, in seed-time and harvest, in cattle and in trees. Thus between the influences of nature and culture, he grew refined, sensitive, emotional, and well-bred. He had had enough town life to perfect, but not enough to wear away, the outlines of his character. Noble manners and real thoughts had held such authority in the life with which he was familiar, that the rules by which conventional people govern themselves seemed chiefly amusing to him. An inheritance of antislavery blood contributed to render easy his disregard of trammels. He had never learned to be afraid of his own individuality, but his sweet nature had hindered him from thinking it necessary to assert that individuality by being disagreeable. A self-analyzing tendency was the one thing in him which endangered his growth in sunny and vigorous manhood. Here lay the germ of possibly morbid action or ruinous introversion.

The robin sped away, and Valentine wrote on through the May afternoon, till steps sounded from the narrow path which led along the bank half-way up the slope, and a girl’s voice, odd and sweet, broke upon the quiet. Valentine perceived that she was speaking Canadian French. Suddenly, there was the noise of some one slipping, tearing at the bushes, and then a man came crashing down and fell headlong, muttering an oath, at Valentine’s feet. The girl gave a quick cry and darted after him.

“ Jack and Jill,” said the doctor, rising in amazement. But the girl had not fallen, although she was already on her knees beside the man. Valentine lifted the fellow up and set him against the bank, and looked at him with disgusted interest.

“ He drunk,” said the girl in a matter-of-fact tone.

The man did not seem to be hurt, but very much dazed.

“ What you bring me such a place for. Rose Beauvais ? ” he asked, accusing her stupidly in French. “ Course I fall.”

“ Well, you sit still now,” she answered calmly. “ Don’t you go home till night. Then no one will see how horrid you look. Promise me.”

He turned his great, beautiful eyes on her. The smile that crossed his lips, though silly with intoxication, still had something of the flashing radiance mingled with sweetness so characteristic of the smiles of his race.

“ I don’t know,” he said.

She looked in the man’s face, and replied in an unmoved tone, “ I know.”

Valentine watched her curiously. She seemed to be about fifteen years old. She wore a coarse dark jersey and a short calico skirt. Her shoes were rough and tied with strings. She put a thin, long hand on the Canadian’s shoulder. There were flecks of cotton on her jersey and the factory stain was on her fingers, but there was a peculiar youthful grace in her figure and motions.

“You will stay,” she said, and the Canadian nodded. She stood up then, and for an instant her eyes met Valentine’s frankly. To his surprise, he felt a momentary awkwardness and was overcome by a sense that he had been de trop in this scene.

“ Can I do anything for you ? ” he asked hastily.

She answered. “ No,” in English, and to the other continued in French, “You stay here, Frank, and I’ll bring you some supper.”

The man was too drowsy to reply. She regarded him with serious but undisturbed gaze. It struck the doctor that drunkenness might be a familiar factor in her life. She turned away at last, and without any parting salutation went along the river bank towards the village. Valentine spoke to the Canadian, but receiving no response picked up his writing materials from the dirt, climbed the bank, and crossed some fields to the road, and to a farm-house on the opposite side. This farm-house stood a little distance from the village, and the farm belonging to it extended on both sides of the road, forming a portion of the country dividing the Blackbird Hollow village from the town above it. Valentine boarded at this house. It was not a good place for his practice, but he was indifferent to that, his stay in the village being in the nature of an experiment preparatory to his serious settling down to professional life.

The evening continued mild, and a little before sunset Valentine seated himself in a hammock under a spreading apple-tree, whose buds were beginning to show themselves pink in the balmy air.

He was reading Miss Burney’s Letters by the fading light, when a little wagon came up the path, drawn by a white goat. A rosy girl, wearing an unnecessarily warm red hood, sat on the corner of the wagon and drove. Two big buckets were the freight. Two dark eyed boys walked at the goat’s head, and ever and anon tugged at the animal to make her go faster. A girl, whom Valentine recognized as the Rose Beauvais whom he had seen in the afternoon, walked behind the absurd equipage. A little boy in petticoats ran out from the house, his short yellow curls dancing all over his head and shining in the light.

“ Oh, the swell boys have come!” he cried, and joined the children us they went on to the barn. Valentine had seen them before. They gathered up swill in the village, and brought it to Farmer Pettingell’s pigs. Rose did not go to the barn, but, after loitering in an aimless way near the kitchen door for a few minutes, she sat down on the step.

Mrs. Pettingell came out of the house, bringing a pitcher and tumbler.

“ Have some buttermilk ? ” she called to Valentine.

“ Yes, thank you.”

As he took the glass, he inhaled the odor of new-made butter which clung about her hands. When he had drunk, she beckoned to Rose, and poured out some milk for her in the tumbler which Valentine had just emptied.

“ I guess I ’ll get some doughnuts for them children,” said she, and went into the house.

Valentine glanced at Rose, and decided that she was not very pretty. She had very luminous, soft eyes, but she was pale. Even the lips lacked color, though they were beautifully cut, and her features were a little thin. Her black hair was braided and scarcely reached her shoulders. A perfectly straight bang covered her forehead. She held a package in one hand.

“ Is that the supper for that man ? ” asked Valentine, at last. It did not seem necessary to use any ceremony with her. She flushed, and drew her fingers across her lips.

“ Yes.”

“ Do you think he has stayed where you left him ? ”

“ Oh, yes. He be afraid to go away.”

“ Afraid of what ? ”

She smiled as if she did not mean to tell, and Valentine asked,—

“ Who is he ? ”

“ He Joe’s brudther.”

“ And who is Joe ? ”

“ Oh, Joe, — a machinist in the Jeffreys mill. He come first. So when the brudther come, work in machine shop too, ev’rybody not know his name. The boss, ev’rybody, call him Joe’s brudther. Only we, — we call him Frank.”

“ You knew him before? ”

“ Yes, in Canada. Always.”

What an odd, sweet note was in her voice ! A light came into her eyes.

“ She is pretty, after all,” thought the young man, and he said aloud, “ He’s a bad fellow. Not good company for you.”

She laughed, and turned her body slightly, without moving her feet. Here, the children came rushing back with the goat and empty buckets, calling to her as they passed, — dark, rosy creatures, whose vivid coloring made the American child toddling after them look insipid.

“ You go home ! ” she cried. “ I come by and by.” She turned back to Valentine, and spoke quietly : “ No, Joe’s brudther not bad fellow.” It was evidently a little difficult for her to find and utter the words she wanted. Her pretty lips seemed to stumble over the sounds. “ Him never get drunk before. Something trouble him. He feel bad. He no work to-day. Some fellows get him off, — tease him. He tell me. It lucky I fine him. I make him stay in the woods. He do so no more. It be all right.”

Again that flashing smile, so bright, so unintelligent. Valentine did not feel pleased. At this moment, little Bobby Pettingell, tired of following the goat wagon with ineffectual feet, came up the path crying. Rose led him to the kitchen door. His mother met them, and he extended his tiny arms far beyond his sleeves, and turned up a tearstained face, saying, “ Please do sumfin’ to comfort me.”

Rose came slowly back to the appletree.

“ Do you work in Mr. Jeffreys’ mill ? ” asked Valentine.

“ Yes.”

“ You were not at work to-day.”

No, I been sick ; so stay out this week. Monday, I go in.”

“ Do you like to work ? ”

“ I no mind in winter. Like to be in mill as well as anywhere then. Only getting up in morning,—so cold and dark. I think that bad. My fadther have to come up an’ wake me.”

“ And in summer ? ”

“ Oh,” she cried, with soft energy, “ I like to be out-doors in summer, an’ feel the air. I guess I lazy. Celia,” she went on, " s’e sit in the sitting-room, an’ we have an organ, an’ s’e play on it. An’ Georgine sew the clothes, when s’e not in the mill, an’ the little girls sweep up an’ mind the baby, but I never stay in the house. I stand by the gate, an’ see the people, an’ go in the woods, an’ look at the sky.”

She smiled, as if she thought herself both whimsical and amusing.

“ What kind of work do you do ? ”

“ I weave. I run six looms. White goods. I couldn’t do the colored goods. So much harder. That would make me sick.”

These words called his attention to the dark shade under her eyes.

“ I must go now,” she said at last, paused, then added, “ You not tell about Joe’s brudther ? ”

“ No. Good-by, Rose.”

He nodded, felt ashamed of his scant courtesy, touched his hat, grew suddenly more ashamed, and went hurriedly into the house, saying to himself, “ She has real beauty even now. She might grow to be very beautiful, but I suppose she will marry that drunken fellow and get coarse.”

Poor Frank was sober enough when Rose reached him ; that is, he was sober enough to cry and say that he was sure Celia would never speak to him now, seeing that she was mad at him before, just because Georgine said she saw him talking with that Rosalba Pluff, — and it was not he that was with her ; it was Joe. “ Celia don’t like men that drink,” he remarked, as if it was a peculiar taste on her part.

“ You’d better not drink, then,” said Rose coolly.

“ But this time,” he answered dejectedly, “ it would shame me to hide it.” He sighed, then rose like a man. “I was a fool,” he muttered. “ I will go tell her I was a fool.”

“ I don’t dare not tell her,” he added in a puzzled tone. “ Celia not like other girls. I could n’t lie to her.”

“ Well, I think it’s the best way,” assented his companion.

They went to the village together. The Beauvais family lived in a square old house, with a big elm and two old pines standing in the yard. Celia sat alone on the doorstep. She was a brown-haired woman, with soft gray eyes, a square chin and cheek, and a large, sweet mouth. She had not so much beauty as her young lover, but was pleasant to look upon. Rose stopped at the gate. Frank went up to Celia.

“ I been lonesome,” he faltered, and then told all his misery and his error. Rose looked over her shoulder at intervals to see how matters progressed, and when at last Frank sat down by her sister she whirled about and came demurely towards them. Celia’s eyes were moist. Frank’s cheeks were very red. He smiled like a child at Rose.

“ I feel good,” he said.

II.

On Memorial Day the French Canadians of Blackbird Hollow held a picnic in the pine grove that skirted the southern bank of the river and extended along the side of the pond. Curiosity led Valentine to the scene. The amusements were of the ordinary kind. There was a pig to be given to the person who guessed nearest to its exact weight. Some boys were shooting at a target. Dark-skinned young fellows exchanged laughing impertinences with dark-eyed girls. Men and women chatted. Children ran about. A crowd gathered round a platform where there were music and dancing. Everybody had a foreign color and air. Only the solemn pines and the brilliant blue sky looked American.

Valentine wandered about till he discovered Rose Beauvais, standing a little apart from those who were watching the dancers. One or two boys went up to her, and he saw her shake her head to them. After some irresolute moments he walked across under some hemlocks, and stood in front of her.

“ Why don’t you dance ? ” he asked.

“ I not know how.”

“ You could learn.”

“ I not want to learn. They say, ‘ Come, we show you.' I not want to be shown.”

He looked at her curiously, till a low, clear voice broke on his ear.

“ Jack! ”

He turned to receive Miss Jeffreys’ outstretched hand. She smiled at him from her father’s side: a tall, fair woman, whose blonde hair grew low on her forehead, so that she could push it back, and still have a soft, fluffy effect of gold under her broad hat. Valentine knew her well. Usually, when they met, they talked about music, for which each had a fancy, that each supposed to be a passion. Now she exclaimed at the beauty of the French Canadians. While she spoke Rose glided away.

“ See those two girls,” said Miss Jeffreys. " Don’t they make you think of plump pigeons ? ”

Joe’s brother was approaching, with a girl on his arm, dressed in blue. Behind him came another man, with a fair girl in a gray gown. The men were not quite at their ease, but the women held their heads calmly erect. Both wore big hats and showy gilt bracelets, and carried their gloved hands folded in front of their round, firm waists.

“ The blonde is the prettier,” said Miss Jeffreys. “ She looks like a very amiable heifer. But what a face the other has ! So serious and fine.”

Mr. Jeffreys spoke: “They are the daughters of Beauvais, one of our carpenters. That girl who was here when we came up is another. One is a bride, I believe. Did you notice her slippers? French Canadian brides always go around in slippers. There is Beauvais, now.”

He pointed to a heavily built man holding two little girls by the hand.

“Oh, I know the little girls!” cried Miss Jeffreys, going up to them. Pretty soon she returned, leading the children. " Now sing,” said the lady.

They looked shyly at each other, giggled, and then two sweet, childish voices rang out, singing a little patois song, beginning, —

The people near by stopped their talking to listen. Beauvais’s wife, a plump, matronly woman, carrying a small child, joined her husband. Valentine stared at Rose, who came to her mother’s side. He had begun to take in the fact that it was the girl in blue who was Frank’s bride.

“ I like the French people,” said Mr. Jeffreys, when the children had stopped singing, and the group had melted away. “ But all that the girls think of is to get hats with big feathers. Most of them are very dirty in their houses.”

“ Dirt is picturesque,” said his daughter.

“ A stale sentiment! ” retorted her father. “We can’t keep the tenements from being indecently full. They take boarders, and pretend they ’re all one family. But they are quick and intelligent, and save money, which they take back to Canada. They don’t come here to stay. Have you ever noticed how few old people there are among them ? They leave them in Canada, and go back to them. That Beauvais family, now, — I understand they are going home this summer.”

That evening Valentine wandered restlessly to the pond, and rowed across to the village. The sky, where the sunset flash lingered, was clearly reflected in the water. His boat glided between two expanses of color. No being but his own seemed to breathe with conscious life. The birds which sought their nests flew like automata from shore to shore. The young oaks on one side, the pines on the other, stood like crayon sketches against the sky. Nothing was real to him but his own existence.

He landed and made his way through the streets, lined with factory tenements.

Here was life enough,—laughter and speech, whispers and cries ; but as he moved among it all his own individuality grew only more awfully distinct. He could not fuse his soul with what he saw.

He came at last to the house where Beauvais lived. The yard was filled with happy loungers. Celia sat on the doorstep by her husband. Rose was in her accustomed place by the gate.

“ Good-evening,” he said ; but she only smiled, and he passed on.

Three evenings later he rowed again to the village shore, and as he approached the land, saw Rose’s little figure sitting on a stone, near the tree where he was wont to tie his boat. The sunset light showed the beautiful curves of her mouth and the soft glow in her eyes. He rested on his oars a moment. He wanted to make her come out on the water with him. He vaguely felt that if he could row her away from that accursed, tenement-lined shore, out among the grasses that grew in the shallows of the pond, he could then and there discover what manner of girl God had made her to be. He knew he must not take her. He knew it would he something very like a sin to ask this child to row with him. She might go with rude and common boys, and her sweet innocence be unblamed, but not with such as he.

When he got out of the boat he dallied a moment, stooping over her.

“ Why did you not tell me that it was your sister whom Joe’s brother was going to marry ? ” he demanded.

She raised her great eyes. “ You not know that?” she asked, and stood up, putting her hands behind her. Hers was the charm which belongs to all girls, of high or low degree, in whose personality plays an elusive element. Her manner evermore suggested that she might be different from what she seemed ; perhaps subtler, perhaps simpler, but with the odds in favor of the more attractive hypothesis of mystery. Withal, her smile was childlike, quick to come, and very sweet, and the man who saw it that night was young.

“ Why did you come here?” he asked at last. He was always asking her questions.

She hesitated, then said, “ I like to see the water.”

He smiled. “And did you think I might row up and bring you some candy ? Here I am, and here is the candy. You’d better give some of it to the bride.”

They turned together towards the village. “ This is my way,” he said, pointing to a path leading in a direction opposite to hers. She seemed to take this as dismissal, and ran away without a parting word. He opened his lips to call her back, but seeing that he was very near the rear of a big tenement house he closed them without uttering a sound.

III.

Frank and Celia kept up their wedding festivities for several days, and then resumed their ordinary labors in the Jeffreys mill and machine-shop. The bridegroom took up his abode with the Beauvais family, and they were all jolly together. They liked to play on various cheap musical instruments, and to dance, and they did not mind it at all if the feet of the dancers left dust on the floors. Nobody cared much about sleeping, either ; or if anybody wanted to sleep, he was able to do it, no matter how much mirth and noise disturbed the nights. Rose alone held herself a little apart. She had never been quite able to mingle her feelings freely with those of others.

“ I don’t like so many people about,” she said to herself. “ One says one thing, and another says another thing, and it makes a fuss. I don’t like it.”

Georgine lived as though laughter were a synonymous term for life. Celia had a deeper nature, but its serene poise was even more removed from Rose’s moodiness than from the blonde sister’s content. She loved her husband. She liked her home. She was pleased with her two new gowns, and especially delighted in some sheets and pillow-cases, which she had herself stitched very neatly.

One morning, a week after his marriage, Frank was ordered to go to one of the upper rooms in the mill, to do some repairing. On his way to the staircase, he saw that some casks had just been placed on the baggage lift. A man had once been employed to run this elevator, but a looseness of discipline combined with an effort at economy prevailed in the management, and he had been assigned other tasks which prevented his constant attendance to his first duty. As a consequence, anybody went up or down, who had freight in charge.

“ I ’ll take that stuff up,” said Frank to the young fellow who was preparing to mount.

“ All right,” returned the other, and passed on.

A moment later, there came some frightful creaking sounds, then a crash, and then a cry of horror as everybody in the room rushed forward. The lift had fallen, and Frank’s body lay in the wreck. They dragged him out.

“My God, who will tell his wife?” groaned the superintendent, Mr. Lucas, as he bent over the young man’s mangled figure.

No one knew who did tell her. She was in a distant building, but somehow she heard, and when Mr. Lucas went for her he met her running between the whizzing machines. He caught hold of her.

“ Be as quiet as you can,” he commanded. “ Frank is living still.”

She saw the blood that was splashed over his hands, and she threw them from her with a cry, and fled past him out into the breathless sunshine. Bearers had carried the man home.

Frank was lying on the bed. Valentine and an older surgeon were at work. The rooms were full of pale men and sobbing women. Mr. Lucas presently came in, and drew Celia away from the bedside.

“Do you understand me?” he said, holding her by the shoulders. She shook her head. Rose stepped forward.

“ I can understand. I can tell her what you say, Mr. Lucas.”

“ Then tell her,” Said he, “ that she can help Frank more than any one, if she will be quiet. She must not cry. She must ”— But here Mr. Lucas began himself to cry, and stopped. Rose repeated his words in rapid French. The man had never seen such a look as that with which Celia listened.

“ If she is excited,” he choked out, “ Frank will be excited. He will have fever. He will die. Do you make her understand ? ”

Rose translated again. Celia shuddered, then bowed her head, and went back to Frank’s side.

“ She ’ll do,” said Mr. Lucas, and walked into the pantry to wash his hands.

Frank’s skull was broken, and he had sustained other injuries. The mother brought old sheets, and Rose tore them in strips under Valentine’s direction. The doctors worked with grave faces. Mr. Lucas stood in the doorway, and kept out the crowd who would have pressed in.

The physicians finished their labor and went away. Mr. Lucas took charge of all necessary matters. Beauvais and Joe and two other men were detailed to act as nurses. Celia sat all the time by her husband. Her hair was bound in crimping-pins and covered with mill dust. She leaned forward, and held Frank’s hands. He moved more restlessly and moaned more painfully, if she relaxed her grasp. When she perceived this, there came into her face a dumb, steadfast patience. At night the family were provided with bedrooms in another part of the house, but Rose stole back in the darkness, and crouched on the floor by her sister. She was there at midnight, when Valentine came in. He did not speak to her, but he carried away a vivid remembrance of her wide, childish, pained eyes.

Celia was in the same place in the morning, when the doctors came again, but she had brushed her hair smooth. That one night had elevated the character of her face into something very pure and sweet. It flashed across Valentine that the typical Madonna was a peasant woman. Then he looked at Rose, and fancied that he saw the hint of a similar womanliness on her brow.

“ You must go and rest,” he said to Celia. She obeyed him, going with a slow motion to another room. It was her own bedroom, but they had moved the bed, with Frank on it, out into the sitting room, so that the little chamber was nearly empty. She lay down on a hard lounge, which stood against the wall. As soon as Valentine had gone she came back to her chair, and took Frank’s hands again in hers. Rose whispered to her, but she shook her head, and turned her eyes on her husband.

Miss Jeffreys came in, bringing some beef tea, and as Frank could not take it she coaxed Celia to drink. Her coaxing was done by gestures, as she could not speak the Canadian dialect; and indeed, she could not speak at all, when she looked at Celia, for crying.

“ I never saw any one like her,” she said to Valentine, when she met him a few hours later. " She realizes the ideal peasant woman of whom I have read, with her strong, sweet nature. I would rave if I were in her place. I should think she would curse us. It was such a horribly needless accident.”

Another time, when Miss Jeffreys rose to leave the house, which she visited every few hours, Celia followed her, dog-like and dumb, into the entry. She put her hand into the lady’s, and Miss Jeffreys, in an agony of sympathy, passed her arm around the girl’s waist. Then Celia dropped her brown head on the other’s shoulder, and cried. Miss Jeffreys hated herself, because she did feel as if it were strange that she should be there holding this Canadian workwoman in her arms, and yet, all the while, she thanked God that she had been able to make that silent heart turn to hers. But it was only a moment before Celia raised her head, like one who dares not wholly yield to an emotion, mastered a pitiful smile, and went back to Frank.

The third day brought a delusive gleam of hope. When Valentine came in the morning, Celia sat at the breakfast table, and smiled with quick gratitude. Rose was eating, too. The youngdoctor went hurriedly into the patient’s room. He did not like to see Rose putting a piece of pork into her mouth with a big knife. Celia followed him, and hung over her husband’s poor, disfigured face, once so handsome.

“ He knows her. He glad to see her,” said Rose, coming to the doorway.

Valentine glanced from the wife to the sister. All that there could be of womanly tenderness and girlish softness seemed expressed in their two faces. Were table manners more important than the best of human virtues? He went about his bandaging with an impatient gesture.

At noon Frank’s condition was not so good, and towards night it grew worse. Celia seemed unconscious of the change.

“ He wants me all the time,” she said quite happily to her mother, when Valentine was there. He had not the courage to undeceive her, and after giving his directions went out with an aching heart. He found Rose sitting on the doorstep, smiling in the level sunshine. He stopped.

“ You like being out of the mill, don’t you ? ”

“Oh,” she said, “ if Frank was not hurt! ”

Something stirred within him like a yearning pain. He was under no delusion as to the daily habits and thoughts of this girl. He knew the narrow scope of her ideas, — worse still, he knew the methods of her toilet; and yet his heart moved towards her, as she sat there with her sad, sweet eyes. It was a lovely June day, and one in which a young girl should delight.

“ I am going to row home,” he said, “ and I want to send a package back for Frank. Come with me.”

So Valentine’s desire fulfilled itself, and at last he had this girl of alien race and caste alone with him, gliding across the pond while cool, soft airs blew about. She sat in the stern, her hands lying in her lap. She wore a pretty gown, which Miss Jeffreys had given her that morning. It was a simple affair that had belonged to a school-girl sister of the lady’s, hut it was pink with a white gimp, and it made Rose look as if she were the same kind of damsel as Jack Valentine had been used, in college days, to row over still waters and between green pastures. Her happy eyes shone darkly. Primitive instincts surged within him. He was sorry, when they reached the landing place, that this dangerous half hour was over, and yet at the same instant felt thankful that he had been preserved from making a fool of himself.

As they climbed the steep path up the little hillside, he did not know whether to offer her assistance. He was not sure she would understand such attention, and while he doubted she ran lightly up, and he had no choice but to follow in awkward silence.

When they reached the house, Valentine brought from his office a little box, and gave it to Rose with a message for Celia. She was going home by the road, and he stood under the appletree, and watched her walk down the path and disappear behind some syringa bushes.

“ Civilization,” he muttered, “is a constraining power. “ I can imagine a state of existence in which I should run after her.”

An hour later he saddled his horse, and rode out to some hills overlooking the level country. His soul gazed before him into darkness, and he felt no certainty that folly or guilt did not lie hidden in its depths. It seemed preposterous that things should have come to such a pass with him. Great sweeps of youthful emotion rushed over him, and brought half glimpses of truths or fancies, such as he had not hitherto known. He became conscious that his soul was struggling in a crisis more awful than that relating alone to a personal passion for a young girl.

At last he checked his horse, and stared at the silent heavens. Then he said to himself that the feeling which assumed the guise of a tempting fiend was nevertheless an angel, showing him how near akin human beings are to each other in spite of all difference of rank or culture. He must not love this girl, but he would learn through her humbly to recognize the elemental tie which binds the race together; whose vital strength had made it possible for her soft beauty to sink into his soul, notwithstanding the infinite space between her lot in life and his.

He had to go that evening to see Frank, and he found the older surgeon in the bedroom. It was evident to everybody now that the poor fellow must die soon. Valentine went again to the house at midnight. Celia stood fanning her husband with one hand, and with the other trying to soothe and control his restless fingers. She looked wan and old. Georgine was helplessly crying, regarding Frank from the foot of the bed. Rose and one of the little girls knelt on the floor. The mother sat near a table where a lamp was burning, and read prayers aloud. The nurses passed in and out, and in the kitchen a number of people were gathered.

Valentine took his place near the doorway, and after a while a dark, handsome woman came to his side. She nodded towards Celia, and let a tear run down her cheek.

“ Ain’t s’e strong,” said she,“ to stand there so many hours ? I could n’t bear that, if it was my husband.”

Georgine came over to them and sobbed, misusing pronouns, after the manner of French Canadians little learned in English.

“ S’e will die soon. S’e wife will die, too.”

A mist swam across Valentine’s brain. He looked from Celia to Rose, and moved over to the open window and looked out. The stars shone, and in the street some one was passing with a lantern. The words that the mother was reading made their way into his consciousness. He turned back to the room, and sat down. He wanted to kneel with those who prayed. The mystery of death oppressed him. At that moment it did not seem like a solution of life.

At last the mother’s voice ceased. She closed her book, laid it on the table, and crossed to Celia’s side. The breathing of the dying man was audible in the hush. Rose got up from her knees, and came near Valentine. He touched the white sleeve of her pink gown.

“ You must make Celia go out of the room. This will kill her,” he whispered.

The girl shook her head. All the glitter was gone from her eyes.

“ No, s’e will stay. My fadther cannot make her go. S’e feel so much.”

As the dawn gleamed above the factory roofs Celia suddenly uttered a low moan, threw up her hands, and fell back. Her mother caught her, and with Valentine’s aid carried her into the little chamber. When Celia opened her eyes again, Frank was dead.

IV.

Valentine went out into the early morning. He turned the corner of the house to go behind it, through the grove, and found Rose crouched under the pines in the yard. She raised a white face to his. His nerves quivered. He heard his own voice, as if it were another’s, low and passionate. In a moment more he found himself hurrying through the woods. She remained behind, with her head dropped in her hands. He had kissed her on the lips.

He did not tell himself afterwards that a blameless sympathy had prompted that kiss. He denounced himself rather as that most unworthy creature, a man who makes love to a girl he will not marry. His self-disgust intensified his passion, and he took this experience seriously, because his moral nature mingled in its elements.

On the day of the funeral, before the family left the house, Celia sat patiently on the bed, which had been moved back into her little chamber. She was shrouded in crape. A roll of crape — furnished by Mr. Jeffreys — lay on the kitchen table, and Orselia, the handsome young woman who had stood in the doorway with Valentine the night that Frank died, cut long streamers and decorated the hats of the bearers. Carriages waited outside.

Joe, who was now called “Frank’s brother ” by the people, wrung Beauvais’s hand, and said in rapid French, " Ah, everything is fine, but it does not console me.”

Rose felt a little important, and held her head with some dignity. Georgine’s comeliness was obscured by weeping, but she was satisfied with the splendor of the occasion. This splendor was rather superficial. The kitchen needed to be swept, and the bed on which Celia sat had not been made that day. It was, however, easy to forget the slovenly setting of the poor little show when one looked at her silent face. Other people moved, and spoke in low but excited tones ; she was perfectly still.

At the last moment, Georgine found her little sister Laura sitting in the wet sink in the pantry, helping herself, with sticky fingers, to cold potatoes and bacon fat. Georgine bounced the child down on to the floor, swept off the slimy matter adherent to the back of her frock with a gesture that suggested discipline, and dragged her back to the kitchen.

The bearers lifted the coffin to carry it out, and the women began to wail, all but Celia, who shut her lips tightly. The crowd poured slowly and decorously into the open air. Beauvais led Celia to a carriage, then went back and locked the empty tenement behind him.

Valentine was at the church. Miss Jeffreys was there also, but he would not go near her, and took a seat on the side aisle. She glanced at him, with contracted brows, while he looked steadfastly towards the altar. The service proceeded, and occasionally a sob broke forth among the congregation. At last the priest came down the aisle, stood at the head of the coffin, and sprinkled the dead man’s face with holy water. A boy who was with the priest, and who swung the censer, had the face of a young angel, grave and sweet. The rite seemed very solemn to Valentine. To his imagination it symbolized the oneness of this life and that beyond the grave. It asserted that the spirit of man is subject to the same conditions here and hereafter. Valentine realized then that his own soul was essentially in eternity that hour no less than was the soul that had fled from the body in the coffin. As the beautiful boy waved the censer, and the incense faintly darkened the air, there was no longer any noise of crying in the church.

Miss Jeffreys passed Valentine in the porch, when the ceremonies were over. “ Did it not make you feel a great deal ? ” she asked. “ Are you not coming ? ” But he stood still, and let her go on.

He saw Rose, at last, who, for some reason, had not yet entered a carriage. He went near her, and she looked at him strangely. She was paler than ever, and her long black gown gave her a womanly air and added a moonlight effectiveness to her sadness and her beauty.

June was still lovely in the land, when Valentine, very early one morning, leaned out of his window, and heard the low sound of a human voice joining in that matin song with which every bird of earth and air was straining its throat. He went out-of-doors, and followed the voice till he came to a little clump of shrubbery not far from the house. There he found Rose sitting on the grass, behind a tall York rose-bush. She was singing softly, —

and pulling a flower to pieces. She did not move as he approached.

“ You are out early,” he said. She threw on the ground the white rose with which she had been playing. “ Not a factory bell has rung yet,” he persisted. “ Does your father wake you at this hour? ”

She stood up then, and spoke: “ I cannot sleep as I used. First I wake, then I dream. I see Frank. So I come out of the house, to the fields.”

He looked at her with a troubled gaze, from which she turned quickly. He put his hand on her shoulder. She covered her face and trembled. He remembered that he had kissed her, and took away his hand. The fear shot through his inconsistent soul that this girl might yet prove a greater burden to his conscience than to his heart. He stooped and picked up the rose she had thrown at his feet; then turned to the bush, and gathered some sprays heavily laden with white blossoms and pinktinged buds. When he looked again at Rose, she had raised her head and regarded him with wet eyes.

“ I go to the mill now,” she said, and at that moment the factory bells clashed through the misty, golden air. “ I go to the mill,” she repeated.

They faced each other, these two young creatures, who had nothing in common but their youth and a strange, inward yearning toward each other.

When the bells had ceased the noise that seemed to emphasize the difference between them, he put the roses in her hands, and said, “ Take them home. Give them to Celia.”

An angry flash gleamed in her eyes. He frowned back unconsciously. In a moment the savage look died out of her face. Her hands, laden with the roses, drooped with a pathetic gesture of obedience.

“ Yes,” she said. “ S’e will like them.”

Something tugged at his heart. He moved towards her, but her childish docility bore her from him. She turned, and drifted submissively away. He watched her in a sort of stupid amazement. When she was quite gone he flung himself at the foot of the York rose, and as the fatal mill bells rang again buried his face in the grass, and sobbed with self-disgust and pain. It seemed to him unmanly to love a girl and let her go like that; but whether the unmanliness lay in the love or in the letting go he could not tell.

V.

Valentine thankfully seized upon a pretext for going away on a visit, and was absent several weeks. When he returned to Blackbird Hollow, he learned that Mr. Jeffreys had paid over to Celia a considerable sum of money, and that the whole Beauvais family had departed to Canada. Hearing this, he reflected again upon the impotent part he had played in relation to Rose, and the reflection did not increase his satisfaction with life or with himself. Her removal from him had the effect upon his mind of releasing her image from vulgar associations, and relegating it to a visionary realm of sentiment. He thought of her as if she were a disembodied spirit, and ceased mentally to picture her earthly surroundings. She had gone from them to unknown regions. He did not struggle against this idealizing process. He flattered himself that through it his passion would fade into a tender memory, and was surprised to find fierce gusts of emotion occasionally sweep over him. He strove to believe that it was best that circumstances had arbitrarily closed the affair, since, had it been left to him further to determine events, she must have been the chief victim of any mistake of his. It was perhaps a little significant, however, that he took pains to ascertain the name of the Canadian town to which Beauvais had gone. He did not act on this information when obtained, but threw up his practice, and went with friends to the Adirondacks.

One night in early September, at about eleven o’clock, Valentine was driven rapidly up to the station at Mountain Junction. He jumped from the buckboard, lifted down his portmanteau, watched the driver turn his horses, then went into the waiting-room, and found no one there but the red-bearded night agent. Valentine was on his way to meet Miss Jeffreys and her father, and go with them deep into Maine. He stepped up to make some inquiries of the agent, and was told that his train was an hour late. He received the information with a whistle, deposited his valise on a settee, and walked to the door of the ladies’ waiting-room.

A girl sat near the farthest window. She was dressed in black, and her hair was knotted in the back of her neck. He could see the line of her averted cheek, and had a glimpse of her ear and throat. His heart leaped.

“ What a fool I am! ” he muttered, and advanced a step. She turned at the sound, and he saw that it was Rose Beauvais who looked at him, her pale, clear face, her dark eyes, gleaming as they had so often gleamed upon his fancy. It seemed another midnight dream.

“ Rose ! ” he said.

She did not speak, but kept her eyes fixed on him till the slow tears filled them.

He took her in his arms. “ What is it ? ” he murmured, trying to hold her, but she slipped from him, and sat down and cried again.

“I — silly,” she said at last, struggling for self-control, and looking like Celia, as she struggled.

“ How came you here ? ” he demanded, hanging over her, aching to caress her.

When she could speak, she told him. She had been visiting an aunt in the States, had not accompanied her family to Canada, was on her way alone to rejoin them. The train arrived at Mountain Junction at three o’clock in the previous afternoon. She had got out to change cars, had felt ill, had fainted in the waiting-room, and lost her train. There would not come another which she could take till seven in the morning. She had known of nothing to do but stay there. Some rough men had frightened her in the earlier part of the evening, but the station-master had spoken to them. Now, she had been alone for some hours. She spoke with tremulous little gasps.

“ I so lonesome,” she said, “ when you come in, it startle me, and I cry.”

He would have drawn her to him, but she crept back into the corner of the seat. Then it came over him with great force that the man who will not love must respect. He rose hastily, and went out on the platform. The agent followed, anxious for conversation. After a while Valentine looked again into the room. Rose sat quite still, leaning forward a little, as if listening to something, her hands, one of them gloved, lying in her lap. A single swinging lamp shed its yellow light on her. The young man stamped as he turned away, and strode up and down. The agent went back into his den and settled himself for a nap.

The interminable minutes trailed by, till the red-bearded man roused himself and the belated express train came along. Valentine quietly watched it arrive and depart. A tall, shambling man was the sole passenger who alighted. He was solemnly received by a man who had come in a wagon, and they drove away together.

“ That’s our minister,” the agent said. “ Been to bury his wife. I’m durned sorry for him. Was n’t this your train ? ”

“ Yes,” answered Valentine, " but I have decided to change my course.”

The man peered at him with natural suspicion.

“ Can you send a telegram for me ? ” asked he, irritated by this scrutiny. The agent nodded. Valentine went in and wrote. The dispatch was addressed to Miss Jeffreys, and contained these words: “ Delayed. Will write.”

He seemed to see Miss Jeffreys’ fair face as he listened to the clicking that carried his message. Then he went into the other room. It was empty, but in a moment Rose came in from outdoors, holding her hands tightly locked together. She started violently at sight of him. “ I thought you gone.” she said. “ I saw the train go by.”

He smiled down at her. “ I could not leave you to stay here alone. You might get frightened again. I shall take another train to-morrow.”

She clenched her hands harder than before, and her color came and went. He made her sit down.

“ What are you going to do in Canada ? ” he asked.

“ I go to my aunt in the convent,” she said. “ I go to school there.”

He leaned forward, surprised. “ But you will not be a nun ? ” he protested.

“Not now, not at first. But after a while, why not? My aunt say she happy. I not like things, going about, dancing. Oh, no. I want to be happy I will try her way. Why not ? ”

Why not, indeed ? Valentine could not say.

At last, he urged her to try to sleep. With gentle courtesy he arranged his overcoat and made her a pillow. She obeyed him with weary submissiveness. When she had laid down her head, he bent over and smiled in her trusting eyes They drooped and closed under his.

He left her, rejoiced to see that the scrawny custodian was again asleep in the other room, went out. and paced back and forth under the sky. Sometimes he returned to the door, to see if Rose was safe, but he dared not go near her. Pain and passion filled his soul. A nun ! That child, with those unfathomable eyes ! Up and down, up and down, he walked. When he had let his train go on without him, his only conscious intention had been to stay near and guard her through the night, but now all intention was whirled away in the trouble of his mind. All the elements of his life rushed in turmoil about his imagination. He ached in every pulse, and set his teeth, wrestling like an athlete with himself.

Sometimes the agent waked, prompt to do some duty. Thrice a train whizzed by. Valentine kept on his walk. He dared not stop. Some horror seemed waiting to clutch him if he stopped. He remembered that in old times a young man kept vigil for a night before he received his spurs. It occurred to him as a sort of mocking fantasy that this autumn night was his vigil. He stared at the stars, and called on God for help in his extremity. The hours dragged slow as torturing wheels might revolve. How long she slept, how peacefully !

The whole of wisdom and virtue is seldom gained in one struggle, however sore it be. Perhaps it did not augur very ill for Valentine’s future, if out of this vigil he brought only his honor.

In the early dawn Rose woke, and sat up, confusedly looking about her. There was bustle in the station now, and many people were moving here and there. She started gladly towards Valentine, when she saw him enter the door. He was very pale, but he smiled at sight of her, and led her out to get some breakfast at a very scantily furnished booth in another room.

When, a little later, the train which she was to take arrived, he entered it with her. He had not explained his purpose to her, nor had he defined it to himself. He acted almost without volition or conscious intelligence, like a person who had been drugged. All that he did seemed unreal to him, yet underneath the stupor of his mind he must have had some idea of the end towards which all his actions tended. Certain it is that after he had carried Rose to her home he took her away again, without the delay of a single hour more than was necessary for the ceremonies that made her his wife. This desperate deed accomplished, the dreamy torpor rolled slowly from his brain, and he felt that real life was closing in around him once more.

He had borne the contact with the Beauvais family as best he might. It did not affect him much in his peculiar mental condition, but something in Celia impressed him, as it had always impressed him, in a way that promised possible satisfaction in any relation to her, should there ever come some simple but vital need of help in his life and Rose’s. Of his own friends, he saw only his mother and sister, before sailing with his wife for Europe. Everybody else except Miss Jeffreys ignored his extraordinary marriage. She wrote him a kind, regretful letter. As nearly as he could, he told his mother the whole story.

“ Oh, Jack,” she groaned, “ that you should have risked all your life on such a chance ! ”

“ I suppose it is a chance,” he answered, " but it is one that has overwhelmed me.”

On the day her son was to sail, the mother saw Rose for a single hour. She went to the meeting with intolerable repugnance. The girl was daintily clad in a manner that heightened the delicacy of her appearance. There was something so pathetic in her strange beauty, in the puzzled look in her dark eyes, in the dumb devotion with which they met the tenderness in Valentine’s gaze, that the mother’s heart was softened and eased of some of its pain. She reflected that she had known many marriages in which the obstacles to happiness, if less obvious, had not been less real, than in this case, and some of them had not turned out badly ; but then, alas, this marriage was her own son’s, and that made it a more serious matter.

When they bade each other farewell, Valentine put his hand on his bride’s shoulder.

“ I shall not bring her back,” he said, “till I know my fate; but I am not afraid.”

Rose looked up, wondering what he meant; then suddenly took his hand off her shoulder and held it in her own. She turned to the other woman in her old calm, frank way, and said, taking great pains to pronounce correctly, —

“ He is very good to me. We are happy.”

“Oh, God keep you so!” cried the mother through quick tears.

Lillie Chace Wyman.