Ships in the Air: A Pratt Portrait

‘MARK my words,’ said Emerson Swain, ‘if Hazeldean thinks there’s anything those French army experts don’t know about ballooning, he’s simply got a bee in his bonnet, and the sooner he finds it out, the better.’

The Swains were passing the college recess with Hattie’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Pratt. Young Ben and his wife, Alicia, having dropped in for a Sunday call, the moment seemed propitious for a candid consideration of the one perplexing member of the family, and it was felt that the last speaker had contributed materially to the discussion. Such an utterance from such a source certainly merited attention, for Emerson, having served three years in the Civil War, where he had acquired a game leg and the title of Colonel (he had promptly dropped the latter, but had kept what he could of the other), was the family authority on matters military.

‘That’s pretty much the way Hazeldean himself goes on about those siege balloons,’was young Ben’s dispassionate comment; ‘he says they’re no better than great blundering bumblebees’

‘My little brother got stung by a bee one day,’Alicia remarked; ‘quite a lump came on his forehead.'

Alicia’s conversation resembled nothing so much as the piano-playing of a person who does n’t. know when he is getting his bass wrong, if only the tune tinkles. Perhaps that was why one could already trace hints of the crow’sfeet which time would soon begin engraving at the corners of her husband’s humorous blue eyes.

‘It’s all my fault,’Hazeldean’s mother declared, in a tone of mingled remorse and apprehension; ‘if it had n’t been for that dream I ’m forever dreaming, of flying downstairs and circulating round under the ceiling, Hazeldean might never have got flying-machines on the brain.’

‘Yes, Martha,’her husband chuckled, ‘we all know you’re a high-flyer. It’s only a wonder your children have turned out as well as they have. Eh, Emmy?’

Emerson Swain grinned, as he always did when his father-in-law called him ‘Emmy,’and thanked heaven that he had married into such a pleasant family. If Ben teased you, you might be fairly certain that, he liked you. His wife, for instance, he loved with all his heart, which in his case was saying a good deal; hearts being, as his mother, Old Lady Pratt, was fond of asserting, Ben’s ‘strong suit.’ But he could never let her foibles alone; and of all the teasable phases of Martha’s character, none was more perennially diverting than this particular vagary of her dreams. The vision of his wife’s substantial person, always scrupulously attired, and of inviolable decorum, floating nonchalantly over the heads of her fellow creatures, never lost its charm for Ben. Hattie, meanwhile, who was sitting on the old satin ottoman, balancing a preternaturally solemn baby on her knee, was still intent upon her husband’s confident, pronouncement.

‘ I don’t see what’s to prevent Hazeldean setting up a whole swarm of bees in his bonnet,’she observed, ‘now that Uncle Edward has left, him all that money.'

’But that’s just the mischief of it, Hattie,’ her husband demurred. ‘I consider that he has come into his fortune at a most inopportune moment, — precisely when he was experiencing a recrudescence of his unfortunate hallucination.'

Hattie cocked her head knowingly and, addressing the solemn baby, remarked, ‘Those are lovely long words, aren’t they, toddlekins? But if we take to croaking they’ll think we’re jealous.'

At which juncture Hazeldean himself strolled into the room and, with a casual nod to his brother and Alicia, dropped down on the ottoman, shoulder to shoulder with Hattie.

‘ Did I interrupt?' he inquired, glancing from one to the other of the little assemblage, which appeared about as unconscious as a rocking-chair whose occupant has precipitately left the room.

‘Not at all,’ chirped Hattie. ‘We were merely discussing the FrancoPrussian War.’

’Hm! I see. So that’s why you all looked as if you had eaten the canary.’

‘Minnie Dodge says it’s cruel to keep a canary,’ Alicia threw in. ‘She says birds were made to fly about.’

‘A fact which few persons would appear to have observed,’ was Hazeldean’s thoughtful rejoinder. Having delivered himself of which, he relapsed against the pudgy cushions, and endeavored to insert a finger into the tight little fist of his small nephew.

Hazeldean Pratt would have been a striking figure in any company, but nowhere did his personality stand out more sharply by contrast than in his own comfortable family circle. Lolling there on the ottoman, to be sure, his superior height was lost upon the observer, while his strongly idealistic brow and searching eyes, bent now upon the youngest scion of the stock, were less in evidence than usual. And yet, the stooping shoulders, the fixed gaze at that irresponsive morsel of humanity, the complete absorption in an enterprise of no moment, all bespoke a temperament of alien intensity. Hattie herself, for all her liveliness of disposition, was a restful personality by comparison.

As their mother glanced across the room at the little group on the ottoman which, despite the fashions of the early seventies, had about it a curious touch of elder art, she inquired, ‘Have you seen grandmother to-day, Hazeldean? It’s her birthday, you know.’

‘No; I’m on my way there, now.’

‘Hope it don’t make you dizzy to go so fast,’ his father remarked, placidly shifting to starboard the bit of slipperyelm which he called his ‘lubricator.’

Upon which Hazeldean, desisting from his unavailing blandishments, straightened himself and, lifting his long length from the seat, observed, ‘You know we’re all traveling along at the rate of nineteen miles a second.’ Then, as he crossed the threshold into the entry-way, and picked up his hat, ‘Funny, is n’t it ?’ he called back, ‘that we never seem to gel there!’

‘Get where?’ asked Alicia.

But the closing of the heavy front door was the only answer vouchsafed her very pertinent inquiry.

For Hazeldean was already sauntering down the path in the deepening twilight, pondering the thing he had said. He glanced up at the first star of evening, burning still and serene to mortal eye as if it were not rushing through space at a fabulous rate of speed. Hazeldean loved the stars in their courses; they were the mighty prototype of all flying things.

‘If I had said five hundred and ninety-six million miles a year,’ he reflected, as he passed through the gate, and bent his steps in the direction of Green Street, ‘it would n’t have conveyed any idea to their minds. But we can most of us count up to twenty.’ Then, with a quick turn of thought,— ‘And up to twenty, I reckoned that I could fetch it myself.’

From boyhood up, this offshoot of an eminently common-sense family bad pursued the will-o’-the-wisp of a flying-machine; not a good, honest, puffy balloon, mind you, that should have the law of gravity, or, more properly speaking, the law of levity, in its favor, but something in the nature of an automaton, designed to rise in the air, and propel itself hither and yon in open defiance of those well-established laws. Such a notion was, of course, too apocryphal to be taken seriously, unless when the youngster had chanced to break a collar-bone or damage his Sunday breeches in the cause; and by the time he was fairly out of his teens, his easy-going people were only too glad to believe that; he bad given over such child’s-play for good and all.

He had now been for several years connected with a patent-solicitor’s office, where his natural bent for invention was proving a not inconsiderable asset. And here he had been witness of so many futile efforts in one or another field of mechanics, he had seen so many fiascos, incurred too by men of greater originality than himself, that his disillusionment touching his own ability had been complete. He was as firmly persuaded as ever that the day of the flying-machine was not far off, but equally convinced that he was not the man to work out the problem. And thus rid of a serious handicap, he bade fair to become a useful average member of society.

In fact, the young visionary was probably never in a more normal frame of mind than on the evening, a year or more ago, when he first met Miss Hester Burdick, the new grammarschool teacher, at his grandmother’s house. Certainly he could have given no better evidence of good sense than was to be discerned in the promptness with which he fell in love with that admirable young woman, who, for her part, had already shown herself equally discriminating by falling in love with Hazeldean’s grandmother. The young school-teacher was boarding next door with her cousins, ‘the Doctor Baxters,’ and she and Old Lady Pratt had struck up a great intimacy.

As Hazeldean strode along in the starlight, with quickening step, his mind reverted to that first sight of Hester, holding a skein of worsted for Aunt Betsy, who was smiling, with a pleased sense of companionship. The girl’s eyes rested upon the clear-cut features of her hostess, where one could almost read the thought that had just found terse expression. Old Lady Pratt had looked up brightly as her grandson entered, saying, —

‘Come in, Hazeldean. I want to make you acquainted with Miss Hester Burdick. She’s a nice girl, and likes old ladies.’

From which moment Hazeldean found himself in the highly unconventional position of being the declared rival of his own grandmother.

An unsuccessful rival, alas, for within the year he had twice suffered rejection. The last time had been a few days after his accession to fortune, when, if ever, his suit would have seemed likely to prosper.

A curious thing about that fortune, by the way. No one but Hazeldean’s mother could conceive why, if one nephew was to be singled out for favor, it should not have been Edward, the youngest, who had been avowedly named for his uncle. But Martha, happy in the advantage of having been born a Hazeldean, understood that it was the family name that her brother, having only daughters of his own, had rejoiced to see perpetuated. She knew that his ideas, like hers, were generic rather than specific.

‘Queer, ain’t it?’ Old Lady Pratt had remarked to Ben, apropos of his brother-in-law’s will, ‘the satisfaction some folks appear to git out of a family pride they can’t p’int to any particular reason for? Now the Hazeldeans come of good stock enough, like the rest of us, but I ain’t never hearn tell of any on ’em settin’ the river afire; hev you?'

‘ P’raps it’s the brilliant matches they make,’ Ben ventured. ‘There’s Edward, married money, and Martha, — well, she drew me! Ain’t that enough to make any family feel kind o’ perky?'

Thanks then to a family pride denied a legitimate basis, Hazeldean found himself possessor of a fortune denied a legitimate use. For, since Hester would n’t have him and his fortune, of what possible good was either?

It was just as he had arrived at this deadening conclusion that a thing happened which infused a very explicit meaning into life. If he could not be off with the new love, he could at least be on with the old; a reversal of the usual order which struck him as original, if not altogether consolatory.

He had been the first to put in an appearance at the office one morning, now some three weeks since, when a man entered who introduced himself as Hiram Lane. He looked about forty, and was soberly, not to say shabbily, clad. As he took his seat and proceeded to untie a roll of papers, Hazeldean was struck with a certain controlled alertness of countenance and gesture. He experienced an instant conviction that here was a man not in the same class with the average client. When the stranger spoke, his low, incisive voice, his diction, spare but trenchant, lent authority to his words. The total impression was one of balance and significance.

‘My name is Hiram Lane,’he stated. ‘ I wish to patent a certain contrivance, a link in the sequence that will eventually lead to aviation as distinguished from ballooning.’

There was no apology in Lane’s attitude, no defiance. He was sure of himself and indifferent to criticism. And something of his quiet confidence subdued the rising tumult of Hazeldean’s brain, and enabled him to reply with answering composure, ‘It is something I have always believed in.'

‘Good,’ said Hiram Lane. ‘Then let’s get to work.’

For an hour the two men busied themselves with drawings and blueprints, with technical terms and scientific computations. Hazeldean’s chief entered, saw that he was in good vein, and refrained from interfering. Other clerks arrived and got to work, other clients came and went, and Hazeldean and Hiram Lane were still at it.

At last the latter glanced at the office-clock, sprang to his feet, and rolled up his papers, with the same curt energy that characterized all his processes, mental or otherwise.

‘Time’s up,’he declared. ‘Shall you be here at the same hour to-morrow?’

‘Yes,’said Hazeldean, with like brevity, which betrayed nothing of the tumult that was rising again. And, an instant later, his client’s heels went ringing dowm the corridor.

Lane came again next morning, and after that at irregular intervals, always leaving at the same hour. He was evidently not master of his own time. Hazeldean was conscious of no curiosity about him, personally. There were so many people whose business and social status was all there was to them, that he had not the slightest wish to label and catalogue a shining exception like this. He only thanked his stars that the man had crossed his path.

And it came about that as day by day his faith in Hiram Lane’s enterprise grew, Hazeldean’s faith in himself grew also. He had not; been an addle-pated visionary, after all, he told himself to-night; his idea had been sound. That he had lacked the skill, the originality, to put it into execution, that was a mere detail, which in no way affected the issue at stake. And besides, there were other ways of furthering a good cause than by actual leadership. We could n’t all be captains, we could n’t all be fighting men, even. But—and suddenly his mind was crossed by the familiar phrase, ‘sinews of war.’ He halted, there in the path, as if his name had been called. Sinews of war! Money! That money which he had despised, because Hester would none of it, — the money that had come to him by a caprice of fortune. Why, he was an able-bodied man, a competent bread-winner! He was as capable as his brothers of earning his own living. What should he want of a fortune? And with a firm step, he started off again, headed now for his goal, in more senses than one.

The stars were gathering fast. How quietly, almost imperceptibly, they appeared,—as quietly as a thought does. And yet, so constant were they in that flight of theirs, that by them and by them alone the mariner was safe to steer his course. Well, here was a thought to steer by, and what a thought! Was ever such a use found for money? Some folks bought stocks and bonds with theirs, and vegetated on the income. How stupid to do a thing like that with it!

Again he glanced skyward, where the constellations were already standing out in their ancient order. There was the moon, too, not yet at the full, just sailing clear of the housetops. And here was his grandmother’s gate. He wished he had not timed his visit when Hester was almost sure to be there. She was tantalizing, distracting. He could n’t keep his wits about him when she was by; he was too busy feeling things. Uncomfortable things, too. In some moods the very sight of her, the sound of her voice, was like a stab. What had a man with a good, working thought in his head to do with feelings, anyway? No, he did n’t want to see Hester to-night.

And yet, when presently he stood on the threshold of the little sitting-room, and she was not there, a worse stab caught him than the sight of her could have dealt. Perhaps Old Lady Pratt suspected his discomfiture, though he got out his birthday congratulations very creditably; for, —

‘Hester’s been and gone,’ she remarked, as he took Aunt Betsy’s hand, which felt like a pad of dough after his grandmother’s claw-like grip.

‘Has she?’ he echoed vaguely.

‘Yes; she has. You’re too late.’

He knew better than to protest that he had come to see his grandmother. In face of those sharp eyes, indeed, he could not even in his own mind keep up the little fiction. So he let his case go by default.

‘Do you calc’late to go through life jest too late?’ she persisted, with considerable animus.

‘Too late or — too early,’ he amended, trying, not very successfully, to force his mind back from Hester to that other matter which required a long future to its unfolding.

He had seated himself and, picking up an unwieldy photograph album, he chanced upon a recent libel on his grandmother, wherein her keen physiognomy had been so ruthlessly denuded of the smallest modicum of character that he felt himself for once almost a match for her. Her actual voice, however, dispelled that pleasing illusion.

‘Have you given her up?’ she inquired.

‘She has given me up.’

‘What makes you let her?’

‘I’ve asked her twice,’ he smouldered. ‘If I keep on nagging her, she’ll get to hate me.’

‘Well,’ was the crisp rejoinder, ‘ I ain’t so sure but that’d be a step in the right direction.’ And, shrewdly studying the young man’s countenance, she fell to wishing that there were more of the stout fibre of resistance in his composition, against which a robust hate might brace itself.

Old Lady Pratt desired this match ardently. She felt sure it would be the making of her grandson, and equally sure that all the girl needed was to be waked up about him. Hester had certainly begun by liking him; indeed, no one could be quite indifferent to Hazeldean at first blush. He was too individual for that, though his natural advantages were, to his grandmother’s thinking, disastrously nullified in the general scheme of him. Even as his good looks were too frequently lost in a slack bearing and a tendency to stare at nothing, so his undeniable intelligence had hitherto missed fire. His ideas were rarely driven home. Morally too he lacked a healthy assertiveness. He could attract, but failed to hold, and Old Lady Pratt had watched, and understood, the flickering out of Hester’s interest. A girl of her calibre might well demand something more definite to tie to than a pleasant disposition and a glancing intelligence.

That intelligence, however, had not missed the point of the old lady’s remark.

‘Yes,’ Hazeldean pondered, ‘’t were something to be level to her hate.’

‘Hm! That’s poetry, I suppose,’ she scoffed, while her knitting-needles clicked and glinted a brisk protest; for Old Lady Pratt, like many of her contemporaries, kept her Sabbath from sundown to sundown. ‘Now, what you need to cultivate is prose.’

‘There’s plenty of it lying round loose,’ he returned dully.

‘So there’s plenty of earth lyin’ round loose,’ was the quick retort; ‘but’t ain’t goin’ to do you any good unless you git your own plot ’n’ till it. What are you aimin’ to do with all that money o’ yours?’ she inquired abruptly.

The question so suddenly propounded was a challenge, and he rose to it, clean quit of his preoccupation. His thought was there, that thought that he was to steer by. The glance that met his grandmother’s inquiry was not the familiar one ef facile enthusiasm. It was definite, — aggressive. As his interlocutor put it to herself, there was backbone in his eye. And backbone, in any locality, was Old Lady Pratt’s fetish.

‘I’m thinking of turning it into sinews of war,’ he replied, with quiet emphasis.

Yes; he looked self-sufficient, and for the first time in his grandmother’s recollection. Supposing he did do something rash with his money, so he came out a man! Old Lady Pratt was no despiser of property; quite the contrary, in fact. But it was not her fetish. And so, in deference to the thing that was her fetish, namely, character, expressed in terms of backbone, she said, very deliberately, —

‘Well, Hazeldean, the money’s yours, ’n’ it’ll do you good to live up to that. You kin tell ’em I said so, if you’re a mind to,’ she added, with a twinkle.

When, a few minutes later, Ilazeldean passed out into Green Street, which lay before him, a network of shifting shadows, there was Hester Burdick, still abroad, a little Scotchplaid shawl thrown over her head, her face upturned in the moonlight. He stood an instant, watching her approach. What was that his grandmother had said about making the girl hate him? It might be a step in the right direction? Well, so it would be, — in the direction of getting rid, once for all, of that foolish, senseless hankering, that kept him mooning round, wherever and whenever she might be looked for. He had not paid her an honest call in a month now. But he had been scheming to meet her, and telling himself that he hoped she would not be there. Well, there should be no more of that. He would confront her now, squarely and fairly, and fairly and squarely he would ask her again, and make an end of this miserable shilly-shallying.

He met her, just as she reached the Baxter gate.

‘I’ve been taking a roundabout way home from your grandmother’s,’ she volunteered; ‘it was such a lovely evening.’

‘Yes; it’s a great evening!’ and, placing his hand on the gate, he held it firmly closed.

‘But I’m just going in,’ said Hester, waiting for him to make way for her.

‘So was I. But I find I like it better outside.’

‘As you please. But I’m afraid you’ll have to let me pass.’

‘I’ve been letting you pass for ages,’ he averred doggedly. ‘This is a hold-up.’

‘Really!’ with an instinct to run for cover. ‘Then why not come inside?’

‘Not I. There are folks in there.

But I’ll come as far as the piazza, if you’ll play fair.’

‘But I’m not playing.’

‘Nor I!'

She perceived that he was not to be put off.

‘Very well; then come,’ she said resignedly; ‘it’s silly to stand out here talking riddles.’

He knew that he could trust her, and he opened the gate. As they approached the steps he laid a detaining hand on her sleeve.

‘Hester!’

‘Ah, don’t!’ she protested, hurrying up the steps. He was not in the habit of calling her by her Christian name, but that was not what she minded.

They were standing on the piazza now, in a sort of cat’s-cradle of trellised moonlight.

‘Hester!’ he implored.

She stiffened.

‘It’s no good, you know. I thought you understood that.’

He pulled himself up.

‘I did, in a way; but I wanted to make sure.’

She flushed a bit.

‘I’ll make an affidavit if you wish,’ she proffered, not without a touch of pique.

‘No; I’m willing to take your word for it.’

He loved her and craved her, inappeasably; yet, in the very moment of denial, he was conscious of a curious satisfaction. Steel had struck steel between them for the first time; the mere clash of it was tonic.

‘Did you stop me expressly to say that?’ she asked, distantly. For, in truth, his manner was anything but flattering.

He did not answer at once. He was thinking how well she looked with that little square of shawl over her head. For all her haughty air (she had never found it worth while to be haughty with him before), that little shawl made her look so human, so lovable! The kind of head-gear it was that was worn by the wives of laboring men, — those plain women that, just love a man without thinking, because they can’t help it, and don’t want to. He thought that if he could snatch that little shawl from her head, and button it in under his coat, he might make that do.

Perhaps he looked predatory, for, with a half-distrustful air, she edged toward the door.

‘I really must go in,’ she said.

At that, he threw off his preoccupation.

‘Then it’s quite settled?’ he asked; and he forced himself to ask the question quietly.

‘Quite. I’m glad you find it such a relief.’

The shawl had slid to her shoulders, but she did not notice,

‘It is— an immense relief’; and he eyed the shawl, that was slipping, slipping, down her shoulders. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do and ' — with a swift movement he caught the shawl as it fell — ‘and now I have a free hand. Good-night.’

With a bound, he was at the foot of the steps, while she stood above him in the clear moonlight,reaching out an imperious hand.

‘Give me my shawl!’ she commanded.

But from somewhere off there in the dark came the preposterous answer, ‘I consider it mine!' And he was gone.

‘Well, I never!’ she gasped, as, with tingling nerves and heightened color, she turned and went into the house.

Hester Burdick had been loved before; she had once, in an elemental moment, and to her undying chagrin, been kissed. But never before had she been robbed. It was detestable — she was sure of that — but it was a sensation. It waked her up. Ah, wise Old Lady Pratt!

And Hazeldean strode along homeward, the little shawl buttoned tight under his coat, literally hugging himself over his ill-gotten booty.

Yet, arrived at last in his own room, which was squared off with patches of moonlight, he pulled out the little shawl and regarded it critically. After all, it was nothing but a shawl! He was afraid he should n’t be able to make it ‘do,’ after all. With a rueful grimace, he tossed it upon his desk, which stood by one of the moonlit windows, and turned to light the gas. The match-box had been misplaced. Glancing about in search of it, his eye fell upon that bit of Scotch-plaid, which lay in a round heap, a small break in its contour suggesting that it had once framed a face.

With a choking sensation of fierce pain, he dropped into the chair by the desk and, gathering the soft folds in his hands, buried his face in them. So he remained for several minutes, motionless. Put when, at sound of the supper-bell, he raised his head, his features were set in firm lines, and the moon, at gaze, found nothing there to gratify its romantic predilections.

Those firm lines were already beginning to feel very much at home in Hazeldean’s mobile countenance when, the following Saturday, he made his offer to Hiram Lane. He had thought t he matter out very soberly, and the proposition was couched in terms of business commonplace. If the young capitalist had never before experienced quite the sense of exultation that stirred his blood as he made the offer, neither had he ever been quite so completely master of himself.

‘You know what you are about,’ Lane had demurred. ‘You know the chances of failure?’

‘Yes.’

‘That it must be a matter of years at best? That you and I may not live to see the end?’

‘Yes; I know.’

They were in Lane’s lodging, a great barn of a room in a cheap suburb, cluttered badly with grotesque contraptions of wire and cane, of canvas and oiled silk. A very fair apology for a chemist’s laboratory, ranged on rough shelves in one corner, lent an air of scientific reality to the establishment, further emphasized by various workmanlike drawings and tabulations spread out upon a deal table. Rut in all the room was no faintest suggestion of creat ure comfort.

Lane was seated on a high stool, nursing his knee, and eying his pet model, — a crude, but extremely ingenious affair, no more resembling the modern ‘flyer,’ to be sure, than the formless embryo resembles the plant in full flower. And yet — the germ was there, and both men knew it.

‘It’s a one-sided sort of partnership,’ Lane observed. ‘You’ll never see your money again; you may never see any results at all. But—the fact, is, you’re the only chap I’ve ever run across, who had the gumption to catch on, and — I think you’re entitled to lend a hand.’

True fanatic that he was, the man honestly believed himself to be conferring a favor; wherein Hazeldean, in the magnanimity of his soul, fully concurred.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll call it a partnership, and some day—’

‘Some day, well show ’em the way to Mars!’

With that, Lane jumped down off his stool, wrung Hazeldean’s hand, severely but briefly, and then began, with technical exactitude, elucidating the advantageof a slight readjustment of the new model which he was contemplating. Neither of them dwelt further upon the financial aspects of the case, until just as Hazeldean was leaving, when he said, ’It’s understood then that you draw upon the First National, as required, to that amount.’

‘Yes,’ Lane agreed; adding, with a strong note of feeling, ’and I draw upon you, personally, for something that no money can buy.’

A close hand-grip sealed the bond, and Hazeldean, walking home over the long bridge, carried with him the sensation of that hand-grip, and felt that here too was something that no money could buy.

He was walking, shoulders squared, head well set back, as he had recently contracted the habit of doing. The keen autumn air, the metallic blue of the sky, the incoming tide, brimming the river-banks, all conspired to heighten that sense of vigor and wellbeing that follows upon decisive action.

Presently his attention was arrested by a flock of gulls, flecking the cold, dark bosom of the stream. They were in restless motion, and he watched them with kindling interest. Yes, they were rising, see! and circling in the sunshine, now in light, now in shadow, as they wheeled and turned. What more natural than that flight? What more glorious? They rose higher, and turned upstream. As they flew directly over his head, his eye, following them, was caught by a figure on the other side of the bridge. It was Hester Burdick, out for her favorite walk. He lifted his hat, and she inclined her head, coldly. They had not met since the robbery. The sight, of her, walking there in the common daylight, the chill of her indifferent salutation, brought him back from his flight of fancy with a dull reaction. What business had he with that shawl of hers? How could a grown man have been guilty of such tomfoolery! The thing must be returned, of course. ‘Now I have a free hand,’ he had said. Well, here was the test. Only—he would not brave it yet; not until Lane had taken the preliminary steps toward cutting loose from other work, and beginning operations on a larger scale, thereby clinching the contract, and putting the terms of it beyond discussion.

And during that interval Hazeldean’s sense of personal efficiency expanded and took distinct shape. It found expression most of all in the handling of his daily work. He felt the vital necessity of vindicating his action before the bar of his own judgment at least, and this could be done in but one way: by approving himself independent of those artificial props which he had so cavalierly rejected. In the process, he found himself acquiring a sense of mastery, not only of business detail, but of his own powers, his own grip on life. He spent less time than heretofore with Lane; he did not greatly concern himself with the inventor’s doings. All such matters were delegated once for all to the acknowledged expert. His own job was to establish himself in his own line.

And at last, when he felt that he had the situation well in hand, he took the little shawl back to its owner, speculating as he did so upon the chances of her consenting to see him.

She had no choice as to that, for she opened the door herself. At sight of him her countenance changed, and she did not invite him to enter.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ he inquired. The question sounded more a demand than an entreaty.

‘ My cousins are playing cards in the parlor,’ she temporized.

‘But there’s the dining-room.’

He was struck with admiration of his own hardihood.

‘I am correcting compositions in there,’ she objected.

But she stepped aside, and gave him grudging admittance. The parlor door stood open, and they could see the players, studying their hands in deep absorption.

’I pass,’ quoth a voice with a grievance.

‘ Order it up,’Dr. Baxter announced. And the game went on.

They seated themselves on opposite sides of the dining-table, which was covered with a red-checked cloth on which were spread her papers and a blue pencil. The light from the chandelier, touching her hair to bronze, left the features somewhat in shadow, head and shoulders silhouetted against a background of turkey-red curtains. The chiaroscuro of the total effect was subtly disquieting, so at variance did it seem with the girl’s singularly open, straightforward nature. Happily, however, his errand was a definite one; he need have no traffic with moods and tenses.

‘I have brought you back your shawl,’ he announced, without preamble, drawing from his pocket a small parcel, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. He had not smoked a pipe in his own room for a week past, lest the odor should contaminate those sacred folds. A needless sacrifice, by the way, since, truth to tell, Hester rather particularly liked tobacco-smoke.

‘You are quite sure you are through with it?’ she inquired, with a pardonable indulgence in satire.

‘Not exactly that, but things have changed since I—annexed it. I should n’t feel justified in keeping it any longer.’

‘Indeed!’

‘No; I have n’t the right even to think of you any more. I’ve burned my bridges.’

‘And you can’t swim?’

The little fling sounded just a trifle forced.

‘Not that particular stream. But’ — with a sudden flash — ‘I may come flying across, one of these days.’

‘So, you’ve gone back to that, have you?’

No, Hester was not herself tonight. Her speech, like her face, was in chiaroscuro.

‘In a sense, yes. But not on my own account.’

‘Riddles again!’

And, upon that, she fell to tracing blue arabesques on a stray half-sheet.

‘Not. at all. It’s plain as a pikestaff. A man I know has the brains, and the originality, and the persistence, and the self-abnegation, every quality, in fact, except capital.’

‘Ah!’ She glanced up quickly, while the careful arabesques went askew. ‘And you?’

‘I am going to supply that.’

Since it was a kind of general obloquy that he was inviting, he might as well face the music here and now.

‘Your uncle’s legacy?’ she inquired, in a tone that was studiously noncommittal.

‘Yes.’

‘All of it?’

‘As much of it as he may need.’

‘And you call that burning your bridges?'

‘Most assuredly.’

‘What bridges?’

‘The bridges that don’t lead anywhere. The bridges that ought to lead to’ — he looked her full in the face — ‘ to you! ’

‘Ah!’ she breathed again. ‘Won’t you tell me a little more about the man you’ve burned your bridges for?’

‘I have n’t burned them for a man; I’ve burned them for an idea.’

‘Tell me about the idea.'

And Hazeldean told her, simply and concisely, without exaggeration, about the great idea to which he had pledged a fortune. He talked so well that she could comprehend the gist of his argument, and he perceived the clearness of her comprehension.

‘It may be many years,’ he admitted. ‘ We may none of us live to see it. But some day, some day, the thing will be done, and — every little helps.’

‘Does any one know, any one but me?’

‘ Nobody, yet. But of course I shall be obliged to tell my folks. It will be pretty rough on them, I’m afraid.’

‘Rough on them? They could n’t be so narrow!’ She had pushed back her chair. Her face was plainly visible now; her speech wholly spontaneous. ‘They must see, they must feel —’ But here she put sudden compulsion on herself, and fell silent.

‘Hester!’ he cried, leaning forward across the table. ‘You can see it that way? You can feel with me about it? And yet — ’ He sprang to his feet with an impatient movement.

‘And yet?’ she echoed, unfoldingthe shawl from its tissue wrappings, and absently resting her cheek against it.

He was not standing the test, and he knew it. With a sense of wrenching himself free, he said abruptly, ‘I’ll go now, and leave you to correct compositions in peace to the end of the chapter, on one condition. That you come out on the piazza, and give me absolution, just where it happened. I’ll go, honor bright, if you’ll do that.’

‘Well, if you offer such an inducement,’ she jested, tossing the little shawl over her head, in token perhaps of amnesty, as together they passed out into the chill evening air.

There was only starlight to-night; only the stars in their courses looked down upon that provocative little shawl. He almost wished she had n’t thrown it over her head; that little shawl that made her look so human, so lovable, so like those plain women who loved a man without thinking, because they could n’t help themselves.

‘It’s a big good-by for me,’ he was saying, with a stricture at his throat that really hurt.

‘ On account of the burned bridges? ’ she queried, under her breath.

‘Yes,’ he said, firmly and finally; ‘on account of the burned bridges.’ And he took her hand in parting.

‘I’m glad you’ve burned them,’she observed, striving hard for the purely conversational tone. ‘I always hated that money of yours.’

‘Hated it?’

‘Yes, and the things you said about it, and about — us. They sounded such castles in the air.’

The shawl had fallen back from her head, and her face showed clear and frank in the starlight. There was a dawning sweetness in it, too, a sweetness that Hazeldean had divined from the very first, though never until that hour had his eyes beheld it. But he kept himself steadily to the issue in hand.

‘And ships in the air?’ he urged. ‘You would rather hear talk of them ?'

‘Yes; only — it’s not the talk, either. It’s what you’ve done. It’s so — real! ’

He had both her hands now, and his eyes held hers.

‘Hester!’ It was as if he were conjuring her to a confession of faith; ‘Hester! You do believe, you really do believe — in it all?’

And she answered quietly, almost solemnly, yet with that in her voice which was a confession of more, far more, than faith, —

‘Yes, I do believe that we shall live to see your ships in the air come true, —you and I!'