ABOUT noon that day Sarah and Dear Mother arrived. They were in a highly satisfied, triumphant mood. They had found relief from their hay fever. Dear Mother had met the Ruggles family face to face in a hotel lobby—the first hotel they had gone to—and routed them. She had told the manager of the hotel that he was harboring atheists, and that either the atheists must go or she must. The manager explained that in the laws governing the expulsion of guests from hotels there was no mention of atheism and that therefore much as he would always hope to oblige Mrs. Eaton, there was nothing that he could do.
Mrs. Eaton and her daughter had therefore driven a dozen miles to a different hotel, and it was the luckiest thing in the world that they had done so. The hotel containing the Ruggles had caught fire—probably a divine hint of what the future held in store for them—and though the fire had been promptly subdued, there had been a panic and several guests had been hurt.
But the good luck was not so much in escaping this calamity. At the Jefferson—the hotel to which they had moved—they had met a Mr. Chumleigh, not a young man, my dear, but a lawyer and well-to-do, who had taken a great fancy to Sarah. They had taken many of the easier mountain walks together, played cribbage, and discovered that they had much in common. Both were sufferers in winter from chilblains and in summer from hay fever. Dear Mother was inclined to believe that the dear people had reached an understanding. It had been pretty to see how Mr. Chumleigh, by no means a callow youth, my dear, had jumped to do Sarah's bidding.
But she would not talk about Mr. Chumleigh too much or praise him too much. She, or rather Sarah, had invited him for the following week-end and they would be better able to judge for themselves.
In spite of Dear Mother's assertion that she would not talk about Mr. Chumleigh too much or praise him too much, she was not able to prevent herself from doing a good deal of both. And by the time he had arrived to spend the week-end, she had pictured him for the benefit of Mr. Eaton, James and Edward, somewhat as follows:
He was straight as an Indian and very broad-shouldered. In spite of the fact that he was no longer a callow youth, there wasn't a gray hair on his head. He had the alert, springy walk of a young man. His head was really the extraordinary thing about him. She had never seen a more intellectual forehead. And as for his dress, fastidiousness and taste could go no further.
Well, Mr. Chumleigh arrived bag and baggage, and Edward, who watched the arrival from the bedroom window—the bedroom that had been Mark's when he was preparing for the church—perceived at once that Dear Mother had spoken nothing but the truth. But she hadn't spoken the whole truth.
It was true that Mr. Chumleigh was straight as an Indian, but then he couldn't have been more than five feet high. His shoulders did have the appearance of being extraordinarily broad, but then they were as square as the end of a matchbox and his head seemed to be placed directly upon them without the interposition of any neck at all. A dapper straw hat being removed disclosed the fact that whereas Mr. Chumleigh did not seem to have any gray hair, this was because such hair as had remained upon his head had been dyed a dead black. If height, breadth and the bulge of a Canada melon denoted intellect, then you might truthfully have said that he had an intellectual forehead. He wore a bushy little pair of curly black side whiskers, and the shaven areas of his face were a strong purple. His nose was lumpy and his smile disclosed a brilliant set of teeth, many of which were obviously too good to be true. The springy, youthful walk turned out to be a dipping motion, achieved by rising high on his toes at the end of each step. And as for his clothes—well, if it was true that fastidiousness and taste could go no further, it seemed to Edward that they had gone much too far. But Edward was prejudiced. He had always hated spats.
But Sarah and Mrs. Eaton were as proud of their little caterpillar as if it had been a real man, and on close acquaintance he turned out to be an unhappy, vulgar, kindly soul who would make Sarah an excellent husband if only she would take the trouble to make him an excellent wife. He called her either "My Lady" or "Princess," and it was amusing to observe the airs which she gave herself.
There was one thing about Mr. Chumleigh which Edward could not understand. Why had Mr. Chumleigh fallen in love with sister Sarah? The truth was that Mr. Chumleigh had had so little to do with women in the course of his life that he glorified them as a special and noble race apart. His mother had died when he was a little boy. His youth had been spent in a desperate struggle to complete his education and to advance his fortunes. Such love affairs as he had experienced had been entirely in his imagination. The face of some lovely female seen on a street-car would haunt him for days. He would imagine their meeting; the mutual attraction; the courtship; the presents which he gave her, and how she received them. His feeling for her was always that of a slave for a superior being. He was a Sir Walter to fling his best coat across the mud puddle for her to step on. In these marriages which take place solely in the imagination the little man had been a regular Turk. But it is doubtful if he had ever held a real live woman's hand. If any of a thousand women had encouraged Mr. Chumleigh he would have straightway fallen in love and been that woman's slave for life.
How a man so timid should have scraped acquaintance with a young woman so carefully brought up and hedged about by a watchful mother eye may seem mysterious. But one must remember that for a long time Sarah had been worrying about men, and had firmly determined to capture one before her years were too many and it should be too late.
Yet from the many men stopping at the Jefferson Hotel she had not especially singled out Mr. Chumleigh. Any man would have done, for she felt a perfect competence to take any man and make what she pleased of him. So what does Sarah do? She takes a long mountain drive with Dear Mother, and when they have returned to the hotel, and are crossing the veranda on their way to the big front door, she drops a glove.
She does not appear to notice that she has dropped it. It lies limp and abandoned upon the veranda floor while Sarah makes a great show of mothering her Dear Mother and watching over each precious footstep. But her ears are astrain for the sound of masculine steps. Isn't there a single "gentleman" upon the hotel veranda? She doesn't propose to lose that glove, but at the thought that she may have to turn back and pick it up herself, she rages.
Then suddenly there is a welcome sound of footsteps. One shoe has a faint squeak. But Sarah does not bat an eyelid. She has opened the big front door and is mothering Dear Mother through. The footsteps are pursuing them. Halfway to the desk, a voice is heard in their immediate rear.
"I beg your pardon, madam."
Mrs. Eaton and her daughter turn superbly. It is to Mrs. Eaton that Mr. Chumleigh has addressed himself and it is to that noble female that he is offering the glove. He holds it tenderly extended as if it were a wounded bird.
"I beg your pardon, madam," he repeats, "but I think you let this glove fall."
Has Dear Mother a latent sense of comedy? She lifts her two hands, shows that there is a glove upon each, smiles benignly and says, "Perhaps it is my daughter's."
There is presently no doubt that it is. Sarah looks to see if she has lost a glove, finds that she has and exclaims: "How very courteous of you and how very stupid of me. Thank you."
It is almost impossible for Sarah to take the glove from Mr. Chumleigh's hand without touching the hand itself. Sarah does not attempt the impossible. The ball of her soft forefinger touches the side of Mr. Chumleigh's thumb ever so slightly. Meanwhile and during a mere moment of time her really fine eyes have searched into the depths of his.
She seems to him all that a woman should seem—gracious, beautiful, condescending. "I am very happy," he says, "to have been the means of rendering you this very slight service."
"The service," says Sarah, "is not so slight as you might think. I have a particular sentiment about these particular gloves." Mr. Chumleigh's heart sinks. He scents a romance in which he is not involved. But Sarah puts him out of his misery and at one and the same time shows him the kind of tender, loving daughter she is. "My darling father," she says, "gave them to me."
It was thus that Mr. Chumleigh swallowed Sarah's bait. In a day or so she gave her line a tug and felt confident that she had hooked him.
In the excitement of Dear Mother and Sister Sarah over Mr. Chumleigh, Edward's career was temporarily lost sight of by everybody except himself. He lived for John's return. It might be any day now. And when the morning paper was delivered, as sometimes happened, he tried to be the first at it in order to see if there were any word of John's ship, the Aurora, in the shipping news.
When at last the Aurora docked in Brooklyn and soon after a telegram came from John to say that he could not come home for another two days, Edward's patience snapped like an over-tightened string. Couldn't he go to Brooklyn to meet John and bring him home? No member of the family had ever so much as set foot on the deck of John's ship. It would be such an interesting experience. And it would cost only the fare to New York and two rides at five cents apiece on the Third Avenue elevated.
But Dear Mother's hay fever had returned and so had Sarah's. The novelty and excitement of Sarah's engagement to Mr. Chumleigh had worn off a little, and the notion of even a small sum of money being spent on an unnecessary trip to Brooklyn was vetoed.
"It is going to take the most careful management to give your dear sister a pretty wedding," said Dear Mother, "and we must all of us put a check upon our extravagances."
"But there'd be no harm in my going if it didn't cost anything, would there?" asked Edward. And Dear Mother, feeling that she was on safe ground and committing herself to nothing, said that there would be none. She even said that it was sweet of Edward to be so eager to greet his brother, and that she was sorry that the trip could not be afforded.
"Well, then," said Edward joyously, for he felt that Dear Mother had gone too far to withdraw, "I'll go and it won't cost anything. And John won't mind paying my way back."
"You'll go and it won't cost anything!" exclaimed Dear Mother. "How will you go?"
"I'll walk."
Here Sarah, whose nose was running unpleasantly, sniffed in with a disagreeable, "Silly, you don't know the way."
Edward's adventure hung in the balance. He realized that he must be cunning as the serpent or receive an immediate and peremptory order to stay at home. So he said: "It isn't altogether John and the Aurora that I want to see. I've never seen Brooklyn. It's the city of churches. From the Bridge you can see all the steeples—hundreds and hundreds of them."
The miserable hypocrite spoke in a voice that had a touch of awe in it, and Mrs. Eaton very promptly gave her consent to the expedition.
"The walk won't hurt the boy," she said, "and it will be an inspiration to him to visit such a wonderful center of religion."
Edward did not wait to have this permission recalled. He kissed his Dear Mother, dashed into the hall for his hat and left by the back door. In so doing he paused in the pantry to make a modest little package of bread crusts and chocolate.
Ten minutes later he was walking the ties between Bartow and Baychester. Half of the distance was a low trestle over salt water, and you had to watch your step. But it wouldn't have mattered much to Edward if he had slipped and fallen through, for like all the young people brought up around Pelham Bay, he could swim like an eel.
It was noon when he reached the Harlem River and crossed by the old Third Avenue bridge. It was a hot noon too, and it was pleasant to find how very much Third Avenue was cooled by the shadows of the elevated railroad.
A block is a block, and there were some hundred and thirty numbered blocks ahead of him, something over six miles of hard pavement. Beyond that the streets had names, he knew that much, but he could only guess how many such streets there were, and how many long hard miles separated him from the famous Brooklyn Bridge.
When at last he came to the Brooklyn Bridge it was after three o'clock and he had been walking steadily since breakfast. He was tired now and a little lame. But when he had walked well out on the Bridge, and saw the river and the ships below him, and the dizzy wires above, and all the spires of Brooklyn beyond, and to the right the great hazy stretch of New York's harbor, and felt the cool breeze mousing in under his sweaty jacket, he experienced a superb happiness and refreshment. Then there were no such things as fatigue in the world, or meanness, or swollen feet. It was glorious to be alive. Many times between Manhattan and Brooklyn he stopped and looked, and in his mind's eye superbly drew and painted the superb things that he saw.
And all the superb things that he saw, except the water and sky, were the works of men. Not women.
The Aurora was a tall, full-rigged ship, and the hand of coincidence brought Edward over her side at just the moment that his brother John was about to go ashore. John had changed to a shore suit and was carrying a heavy valise. An ancient hack drawn by an ancient horse was waiting for him on the dock. It was obvious that John was a little disconcerted by Edward's unexpected arrival. And Edward perceived this at once.
"I oughtn't to have come, ought I?" he blurted out.
"It's all right," said John. "Don't worry. You come along with me."
"I will wait here till you come back," said Edward.
"I'm not coming back—not for a week. I'm going to Flushing for two days and then home."
Edward wondered why his brother should have to go to Flushing for two days. But he did not express his wonder.
"I was crazy to see you, John," he said. "And so I came. Mother thought it was an extravagant idea, so I walked. She wouldn't have let me come if it hadn't been that there's so many churches in Brooklyn. She thought that the sight of them might do me good."
"You walked?" asked John. They had reached the ancient hack and John held the door open while Edward climbed in. It rocked to his weight like a rowboat. John followed Edward into the hack. The driver cracked his whip. There was a great swaying and creaking and they were off.
"You walked?" repeated John. "All the way from Bartow?"
"I haven't told mother that I'm not going into the church, and I wanted to know if you still felt that you could help me to learn painting. Father'll help in every way he can."
"I'll help," said John. "I said I would. But I can't help as much as I'd like to. When I made you that promise, Eddie, I had nobody to think about but you and me. Nobody. Well, right after that I got married and—well, old man, my wife's got a baby. That's why I'm going to Flushing—to see them."
It wasn't easy for John to talk about his marriage—not even to Edward. No explanations were possible.
"Do you remember old Jackson, who kept the harness shop in Westchester?" he asked. "I married his daughter. She and her mother were kind of down on their luck—the old man was dead—and I was kind of down on my luck. It's nice for a sailor to think that when he gets back to shore he's got some place to go. It all happened in a hurry. I meant to write mother about it, but I didn't. I'll tell her."
"I never tell mother anything," said Edward, "unless I'm pretty sure she'll like it."
John sighed. Then he said: "Flushing's a dear old place. You'll have fun knocking about for a couple of days. Have you eaten?"
Edward nodded. He was trying to recall just what some knowing boys had once said to him about the Jackson girl and his brother James. When had John ever found the opportunity to fall in love with her and court her? It was all rather mysterious. John married and a father! Himself an uncle!
"How's everybody?" asked John.
"You knew father has some trouble with his heart?"
"I didn't know. Serious?"
"He says not. But it hurts him sometimes. It's as if somebody had knocked his wind out. I saw him have one attack. He never says much. But I think we ought to know just what's the matter with him."
"We will," said John. "How is he otherwise?"
"I'm so used to seeing him that he doesn't seem to change much. But I guess you'll think he seems old and tired. It's been a bad year for mother's and Sarah's hay fever. They went to the White Mountains for it. Sarah came back with a funny little bald-headed man in tow. Name's Chumleigh, alawyer. They are going to be married. Mother's all for it."
"Ruth and Bruce?"
"Ruth cuts a lot of ice in high sassiety," said Edward, "and Bruce is her husband. He does all the things he doesn't like to do and isn't interested in, or if he doesn't Ruth will have a terrible backache. He's a mess."
Edward wondered if John was going to ask about James. But John didn't, so after a silence Edward said, "James is the same old James."
"I'm not interested in James," said John. "He's a bad egg."
"He can twist mother round his little finger," said Edward. "She's always giving him money, and he saves it until he's got enough to go on a big spree. He was sick the other night. If mother'd been home I'd have let her find out."
"Oh," said John, "he'd have told her some lie and she'd have believed him."
The house in which John's wife lived with her mother and her baby was an odd little white house covered with long h-and-split shingles. There were some fine old lilac trees in the front yard, and above and beyond the roof, though growing on a near-by property, could be seen the top of the cedar of Lebanon which has made Flushing famous among botanists. Edward thought that the house and the lilacs and the cedar made a charming composition.
John, his face serious and troubled, moved up to the front door without stopping to see anything, and knocked.
His wife opened the door. She looked embarrassed and untidy. Edward noticed that John did not at once clasp her in his arms and kiss her. Instead they shook hands—John firmly and Mrs. John limply.
"This," said John, "is Edward—my kid brother."
Mrs. John gave Edward a limp hand. "Won't you come in?" she said. "Mommer's out back minding baby."
"You got my telegram?" John asked.
"It didn't say when you'd come; but I've been expecting you all day."
They went into the house, John lugging his big valise. The house was not so charming inside as out. The furniture was cheap and new, and the wall-paper old and dirty. It was obvious that Mrs. John was not a good housekeeper. Edward felt shocked and disillusioned. This was not the kind of wife for brother John. She was common and she didn't look clean.
They sat down in three chairs and made conversation. There were so many awkward silences that Edward could not keep track of them. His sister-in-law was dull and colorless and ill at ease. John tried to behave like the head of a house.
One gathered mostly that the cost of living was steadily mounting, that the doctor had advised Mrs. John to stop nursing her baby and that it was hard to get milk that agreed with him.
"I wouldn't want to live in Flushing at all," said Mrs. John, "if it wasn't for mommer. She was raised here. But I was raised in Westchester."
John, remembering how anxious she had been to get away from Westchester, was troubled. "But I wouldn't want to live in Westchester," said he.
"You wouldn't have to, only between voyages. I wouldn't think a sailor would care much where his family lived. He ain't hardly ever with them."
At this point there was a knocking on the front door. Mrs. John went so quickly and alertly to answer it that it almost seemed as if she had been expecting it. As she left the sitting room she closed the door. John looked at Edward in a helpless kind of way and then lowered his eyes.
Mrs. John's voice could be heard, and a man's voice. The man might have been the milkman, or a book agent. The only thing that could have led one to believe him something else was the fact that when one first heard his voice it was loud and confident, but that immediately after Mrs. John had spoken it was greatly lowered.
Presently Mrs. John returned. She had a queer look in her eyes. They looked at once pleased and defiant.
More conversation; more awkward silences. Edward was miserably uncomfortable. Then mommer called from "out back" that she wanted to come in. And everybody went to help the blind woman get baby's carriage up the back steps. Baby was asleep. There were two dirty white veils over his face.
Edward dramatized the situation. A father who had never seen his child . . . Mrs. John lifted the veils. And both John and Edward, looking into the carriage at the sleeping child, were immeasurably shocked. Edward was shocked into speech.
"He doesn't look one bit like either of you," he said. "He looks exactly like his Uncle James."
Edward seemed to be busy looking at the child. Mrs. John took the opportunity to give John a questioning stare. John took the opportunity to frown at Mrs. John and shake his head.
But Edward, looking up suddenly, saw not only the questioning stare but the frown and the shaken head. It was just as if they had confessed everything to him . . . So that was it . . . He remembered what' the boys had said about James and the Jackson girl.
To leave behind them Mrs. John and her mother and the baby who so resembled James was a great relief to both John and Edward. As their train neared Bartow, Edward, who had been worrying, said, "Where shall we say we've been?"
"If we don't say anything," said John, "mother will think that you've been on the Aurora with me. But I think I'll have to tell father about my marriage. If anything happened to me, my wife would have to come to him for help, and it would be better if he were prepared."
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"I don't want to tell father—if that's what you mean, Eddie."
"If you are going to tell him, I think you ought to tell him everything. I think you ought to tell him why you married her." Edward was pain fully embarrassed. "I think," he went on, "that I know why you married her. And it was dandy of you."
"It wasn't," said John. "I had to. The baby was our own flesh and blood. If there'd been an open scandal it would have just about finished father. But I can't tell father why I married her. It would sound too much like whining. Eddie, this business has made me feel very close to you, and I'm grateful to you for standing by me. I'll do the same for you to the limit of my ability."
But Edward did not see how John with his small pay and a wife and a baby and a mother-in-law on his hands was going to be able to give him the help that he had promised. And he said so.
There was no hack at the station and they took turns lugging John's big valise.
"About me going to Paris to study," said Edward. "I've been thinking it over. And I don't see how you can spare the money."
"We'll have to figure close," said John simply, "but you're going to have your chance. And maybe you can help yourself out a little. Some of those sketches you made for us last night were funny as the dickens. Why don't you make up a bundle of them and send them to Puck or Judge or the Age? Perhaps it would be better to take a lot of drawings under your arm and go to see the editor yourself . . . Do it tomorrow."
"It's an idea," said Edward. "I don't feel very confident. But I can try."
They reached the rectory presently. And although John was warmly enough welcomed by his mother and Sarah, their manner toward him was patronizing and condescending. Mr. Eaton, however, was unaffectedly glad. James, it developed, though just returned from a "visit to Newport," had accepted some other invitation and departed hurriedly. He had left word, however, that he would return in time to see John. John smiled grimly. He did not think that James would be back in time to see him. And he was right.
When he was at home John made a point of doing everything that Dear Mother asked him to do without question. To have crossed her will in the matter of his career had been enough. The afternoon of his arrival she had the carriage out to make a round of her private charities, and she insisted on John's accompanying her.
Dear Mother and John having driven off toward Westchester, Edward lost no time in starting out at a trot in the opposite direction. He felt sure that by now the Ruggleses must have returned from their holiday in the White Mountains, and he ran all the way to their house in New Rochelle. He was very damp and red when he reached the gate in the wall.
Mr. Ruggles himself opened the gate, and Edward had a distant glimpse of Alice and her mother, dressed in white, with broad sun hats, busy among the flowers.
"Well, well, Edward!" exclaimed Mr. Ruggles. "I am glad that you have come in person. I've stood up for you; now make your peace in your own way."
Edward's jaw dropped. "What have I done?"
Mr. Ruggles merely turned and called to Alice. "Alice, come here a moment. Come here and tell this young man what it is that he has done."
Alice came, but she came very slowly. She came as one who takes no interest whatever in any young man. Edward, his face quite abject with mortification and worry, went forward to meet her. He held out both hands to her, but her own were full of flowers.
"Oh, Alice!" exclaimed Edward. "What have I done?"
His distress was so obvious, and obviously so sincere, that Alice softened to him. "You might have written," she said.
"I did. I wrote many times. And you—you might have written to me."
Alice was frankly puzzled and taken aback and distressed. She dropped the flowers to the ground, made a swift step forward and caught both Edward's hands in hers. "You know that I wrote to you," she said. "Don't you know that I did?"
"And don't you know I wrote to you?"
Here Mr. Ruggles, smiling in his kindly, cynical way, joined them. "Tampering with the U. S. mails," he said, "is a prison offense. Now who, I wonder, has been tampering? I can assure you, Edward, that it isn't any of the Ruggles family."
"I wrote to you twice," said Alice.
"I wrote to you five times," said Edward. "I would have written six times but I couldn't lay my hands on a sixth stamp. As a matter of fact I did write six times, but I only mailed five."
"Did you mail those letters yourself?" asked Mr. Ruggles. "Or did you lay them on the hall table?"
At this moment Mrs. Ruggles joined them and they told her about the letters. She merely smiled.
Both she and her husband as well as Alice and Edward knew who had taken the letters. But Edward found it difficult to name his own mother as the criminal, and the Ruggles family did not do so.
"Next time anybody goes away," said Alice, "we'll be more careful . . . And I thought you didn't like me any more."
"And I thought you didn't like me any more," said Edward.
Then they both laughed at the absurdity of any such supposition. And then they stood and looked at each other until Edward became suddenly self-conscious.
"John's home," he said. "I met him in Brooklyn and we came home together. He's fine. There's worse things than being a sailor."
"That's true too," said Mr. Ruggles. "But speaking of sailors, how's art?"
"John says I ought to send some drawings to the comic magazines and see what happens."
"Don't send them," said Mr. Ruggles, "take them. We met one of the editors of the Age in the mountains and we told him all about the talent which we think you have, and he said, 'Put a roll of the boy's drawings under his arm and send him to see us.'"
"I told you that in one of my letters," said Alice.
"Oh, but that's wonderful!" Edward said. "Did he really say for me to come and see him?"
"He really did," said Mr. Ruggles. "We are all witnesses. But we want to warn you not to be disappointed if he can't use the pretty pictures. If he likes anything, he'll like the comic pictures of insects and bugs and caterpillars . . . You know, my boy, it would really be a fearfully good joke if you could start right in and earn your own living. A man who earns his own living honestly can tell anybody else in the world to go to blazes."
There was a short silence. "Wouldn't it be wonderful!" exclaimed Edward.
"Let's go into the house," said Mr. Ruggles, "and compel Mrs. Ruggles to make a pitcher of lemonade and furnish cookies. We'll have a good talk."
Edward and Alice lingered behind to pick up the flowers which Alice had dropped. It was wonderful being together again. "When are you going to tell your mother about the divinity school?" Alice asked.
"I don't know. I was planning to run away. But now I think I'd better wait until I've seen the editor. I hate to run away. Perhaps if mother knew that I could actually earn money by drawing pictures, she'd be more reasonable . . . What did you say in your letters?"
"Nothing. What did you say in yours?"
"The same."
Then they both laughed, and each carrying about half of the flowers followed Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles into the house.
On his way home from the Ruggles' Edward planned just exactly what he should say to Dear Mother about the letters, about the ministry and about the career of art which he intended to pursue. John might have run away, and so might Mark, but Edward wasn't going to do any such thing. He was going to have it out with Dear Mother and let her know what he thought about people who diverted and perhaps read other people's letters and caused misunderstandings among friends. Why shouldn't he defy her? Why be afraid? She couldn't hurt him in any way—neither physically nor mentally.
And when he reached the rectory he was a militant youth inflamed by the justice of his cause. But when he marched boldly into the library and found Dear Mother alone and knew that the hour of his opportunity to play the man had struck, his spirit weakened. He was not able to say any of the things that he had planned—not a single one of them.
"Where have you been, Edward?" she asked. "Not to New Rochelle, I feel sure, after all that I have told you about that dreadful Ruggles family."
She eyed him from under bent brows. Her shelf of upper teeth seemed to stick out at him more than ever. He wondered why he should be so dreadfully afraid of her, and only knew that he was. And he loved her, too. That was the queer thing. Why should he love her? She was a tyrant, she was unjust, she was untruthful in the cause of truth, crooked in the cause of straight dealing, a spy and a bigot, a snob and an egomaniac. She was without any lovely or lovable quality of either the body or the spirit. And yet he loved her. That perhaps is why he turned coward and evaded the issue. If he had treated her as indeed she soundly deserved, her power over him would have crumbled into dust.
"I believe that I asked you where you have been," said Dear Mother, "and if I did ask you, why then I am waiting for an answer—am I not?"
"I followed the beach all the way to the City Island bridge," said Edward glibly. "It was very interesting—all the marine life in the pools. Then I found how late it was getting to be and I came home by the road. I ran nearly all the way."
He wasn't in the least ashamed of lying to her. Every other possible way of keeping the peace with her had been tried by the various members of the family. James, who was the family's most successful and accomplished liar, got along better with her than anybody else.
"You look very messy," said Dear Mother. "I think you had better have a bath and change before dinner."
When he had bathed Edward carried his clothes into John's room to dress. Opportunities for private conversations were rare in the Eaton household and he wished very much to tell his brother what Mr. Ruggles had said about the editor.
John's was the most interesting room in the house. It had an old stone fireplace with an iron crane, and above the mantel hung a pair of Revolutionary sabers which John when he was a small boy had bought—immediately after Christmas, when he was in funds—from the blacksmith in City Island. John had spent several weeks of his boyhood in working upon these relics with emery powder and oil. Of late years Edward had occasionally taken them down and given them a cleaning.
When Edward entered the room with his armload of clothes, John had taken down one of the sabers and was making cuts and passes at the air.
"You've been cleaning these old boys?" he asked. "I'm obliged to you. They're the only things that I ever really wanted when I was a boy that I finally got. You could put up an awful scrap with this thing if you knew how."
"I guess," said Edward as he exchanged his dressing gown for an undershirt, "that you could put up an awful fight with it if you were mad and didn't know how."
"The best way to fight a man," said John, "is to hit him first and to hit him in the pit of the stomach. But you want to be sure that you put everything you've got into that first blow." He replaced the sabers. Then he turned to Edward with a mischievous smile. "Was she home?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Mother told me a long song and dance about you and some fair Alice whom you have been forbidden to see. Mother added that she and her infidel family were just back from the White Mountains. And that she hoped and trusted that you would not go near them."
"Being forbidden to do something isn't promising not to, is it?" said Edward. "They were home all right . . . Their house seems more like home to me than this house does. There isn't a finer man in the world than Mr. Ruggles or a kinder one. Mother hates him because he doesn't believe that the whale swallowed Jonah."
"You know, Eddie," said John, "you're getting old enough to take things pretty seriously. Are you in love?"
To the shy and modest Edward there was something terribly rough and brutal about this sudden direct question. He had always loved Alice. Everybody knew that. As for being in love with her, that was a new idea. He had never thought about it in just that way. Their relationship had been a warm and happy drifting, an inarticulate strengthening of bonds. His first instinct was to laugh—as normally as possible—and to be surprised and say, "What! Me? Me in love?" And laugh some more. But that seemed disloyal to Alice. So he said:
"We've always been pretty close, John. But we're just kids. I didn't know anybody took us seriously until I found that mother was hooking my letters to her and hers to me."
"It wouldn't make you unhappy to go to Paris for a few years and leave her?"
Edward considered this and then said: "No—not unhappy. We'd find out mighty quick just how we did feel about each other. And if we found that we did want to be married—why, I'd be learning how to take care of her, wouldn't I? . . . Say, John—Mr. Ruggles knows one of the editors of the Age and told him about me, and he says for me to bring him a lot of my drawings and paintings, all kinds, so's he can judge if I'm any good at all. I thought I'd sneak off after breakfast tomorrow and go see him. And I wish you'd give me the fare if you can spare it. I'd ask you to lend it to me if there was any chance of my paying it back."
"Gee, that's exciting!" said John. "You can have anything I've got. Let's go over all your stuff after dinner and see what you'd better show him."
The offices of the Age were in a tall narrow building on the north side of Union Square. It took all of Edward's courage to enter that building; he walked up and down in front of the door eleven times before he finally went in. He then: ascended seven floors in an elevator and stood for a long time reading the words
The Age
Editorial Offices
in gold letters on a glass door. His heart was beating much too fast, and he felt sure that he was going to stammer and make a fool of himself.
At last he pushed open the glass door and found himself confronted by a very small boy with a very much freckled face.
"Can I see Mr. Townley?"
"Don't know," said the small boy. "Got an appointment?"
"Not exactly. He said for me to bring him some drawings."
"Humph! What's your name?"
"Eaton."
"Sit down."
The small boy pointed to a chair. Edward sat down with the big package of drawings on his knees. The small boy went away and came back. "You'll have to wait a few minutes," he said.
Edward waited for three-quarters of an hour. He became very miserable and despondent. Then all of a sudden a little round face with tortoise-rim spectacles appeared and a kind, brisk voice said:
"You Eaton? Sorry you've had to wait. Come with me. I'm Townley."
Mr. Townley's office looked out over Union Square. It was a cozy little place with some deep chairs and almost all the drawings in the world either tacked on the wall or heaped on the desks and tables. There were also photographs of celebrated people on which they had written their celebrated names.
"Our mutual friend Ruggles," said Townley, "is a whale of a good art critic. We don't always agree, but I have so much confidence in him that I've looked forward to seeing your work with real excitement."
Up to this point Edward had not been able to say anything. And he was not now able, though he made a choking sound which resembled an effort at articulate speech. He fumbled nervously at the knotted string which held the drawings.
"Here," said Townley, "let me." He cut the string.
Then he sat down and in a silence which seemed to Edward peculiarly awful began to look at the drawings. When he had looked at the first six and laid them aside, he turned to Edward and said: "I don't know what it would be wise for me to say, Eaton. So I think I'll just try to be frank and honest, even if frankness and honesty aren't good for you . . . Of all the men who have brought their work to me, old men and young men, you have far and away the biggest talent."
Edward felt as if the breath had been knocked right out of him. He tried to speak and only got out one word: "Me?"
It sounded very thin and silly and inappropriate, and he blushed to the eyes. But little Mr. Townley put back his head and laughed until he had to take off his glasses and wipe them. Then Edward got to laughing, and then all at once he felt very happy to be where he was, and as much at ease with Mr. Townley as he would have been with Mr. Ruggles.
"I'm going to look at them all," said Mr. Townley. "I hope there'll be something that we can use right off. Obviously you drew these things for the love of it and not with a view to the peculiar needs of a publication like the Age."
Twenty minutes passed, and Mr. Townley started to go through the drawings again. But this time he went quickly and sorted the comic pictures of insect and caterpillar life into one pile. There were eight of these, and Mr. Townley said that he would like to use them in the Age.
"I will use one every week," he said, "as long as you care to draw them, and probably when you have studied our requirements a little you will do other things that we can use. But my dear boy, I hope you won't get into a comic weekly rut. Mr. Ruggles has told me that you are very serious about art, that you wish to go to Paris and study. I think that with hard work you will become one of the very, very best—but not without the hard work. And just because you find that you can make a living by drawing caterpillars, don't for Heayen's sake pull up short and stop drawing pictures of the things that seem beautiful to you."
Edward touched one of the caterpillar drawings with a timid forefinger. "Can I make a living doing those?" he asked.
"We will pay you ten dollars apiece for them," said Mr. Townley, "if that is satisfactory, and if the pictures catch on and people like them, as I think they will, we will pay you more."
"And I'm to do one every week?" Mr. Townley nodded. "Gee!" said Edward. "That's a lot of money." And his face broke into a happy smile.
"It would keep you in Paris if you went there to study. When I was a student in Paris there were plenty of young men who got along on very much less."
Edward was pretty nearly dazed with happiness.
"Whenever you come to town," said Mr. Townley, "I hope you'll look me up. Anything that I can do to help you, I'll do gladly. Before you go abroad we had better have a long talk. I know the ropes pretty well, and I can give you some useful letters. And now I wish you'd do me a favor. This little head—is it Mary?" Edward nodded. "I wish you would write your name on it and make me a present of it. It is so full of feeling and the color is so sweet and cool. I'd like to have it." In one corner of the picture Edward wrote his name. "Thank you. I'll treasure that. I believe in my heart that some day these early sketches of yours will sell for large sums of money."
Those particular ones never did so far as anybody knows. Edward went home in such a daze that he left the drawings in the elevated train, and what became of them thereafter is sheer guesswork, To Edward the loss meant absolutely nothing. He had a check for eighty dollars in his pocket, and the future looked to him as if it were entirely composed of roses.
That night he told his father and John. Dear Mother and Sarah had set aside this particular evening for a conference in which every item of Sarah's trousseau, every detail of her wedding day, and most likely the future activities and deportment of her husband, were to be decided. The ladies therefore having retired, the gentlemen had the library to themselves.
"Tell us what happened, Eddie," said Mr. Eaton the moment they had gone.
"He was dandy to me," said Edward eagerly. "He bought eight of the bug pictures and said he would buy one every week as long as I like to draw 'em. I bet I don't miss a week between now and the time I'm eighty."
"He bought them, you say?" asked John.
"Ten dollars apiece," said Edward. "Eight of 'em. Eight times ten. I can do that in my head. It's eighty." Then he showed them the check which Mr. Townley had given him and continued excitedly: "He made me promise to send him one of 'em every week, and he promised that every four weeks he'd deposit forty dollars in the bank; so that even if I were way off somewhere—even if I were in France—I'd know I had the money. And he said if I did go to France he'd give me letters to artists and people who would help me—so if I did go to France I wouldn't have to ask anyone to help me about money. He said I could live like a Prince in the Latin Quarter on two hundred francs a month. A dollar, he said, was about five francs."
"Well," said Mr. Eaton, "are you going to France, or are we going to wake up some fine morning and find that you have gone?"
"If I said that I was going," said Edward, "and mother—you or mother—didn't want me to—you could stop me, couldn't you?—me not being of age?"
"Yes," nodded Mr. Eaton, "we could stop you."
"But," cried Edward, his face twinkling all over with lines of mischief, "if you woke up some fine morning and found that I'd gone, you wouldn't be able to drag me back, would you?"
"No," said Mr. Eaton.
"Then," said Edward, "I'd better not tell anybody whether I'm going or not."
But later that night he had a moment alone with John, and it was arranged between them that Edward should join him on the Aurora a few hours before she was to sail.
Edward could not go to sleep for a long time. It seemed so queer to him that he should have had such a wonderful and in all ways honorable boost to his fortune, and that he dared not tell his mother. He felt a little as if he would like to cry.
Between Edward and his great adventuring into the world there were not now many hours. Some of them, and they were the happiest, he spent with Alice. But even if these hours were the happiest they weren't perfectly happy. They weren't perfectly happy because Alice managed to make Edward feel as if it was very selfish of him to go away and leave her. She was just the least little bit cool about his haste to convert himself into a famous artist. He might, she seemed to think, have put off his going for a year or two.
Were all women alike, Edward wondered? Wasn't there even one in the whole world who could let her man pursue his destiny in his own way, without interfering with him and jeopardizing his chances?
But in his grief at telling her good-bye Edward forgot that she wasn't perfect and only considered how much he loved her, and how much it was hurting him to go away from her. She went with him to the gate in the wall, and then, just when Edward was trying to nerve himself up to the point of kissing her and was failing, she said suddenly, "Aren't you going to kiss me?"
And that made it easy, and as he leaned for the kiss he heard his own voice murmuring "My darling" and felt terribly grown-up. It was a boy and girl kiss to start with, but right in the middle of it Alice suddenly clung to him very tightly and closely and changed it into a different kind of a kiss, and then just as suddenly she pushed him away from her and turned and fled.
Edward passed through the little gate and closed it behind him. His hat was still in his hand. He stood and looked at the gate and for the hundredth time read the words on it:
"They say. What say they? Let them say!"
Some of Edward's remaining hours were devoted to the composition of the following letter:
Dearest Mother:
John is going to take me to France in his ship, and I am going to study hard to be an artist. I can earn forty dollars a month right now by drawing pictures and that will be enough for me to live on. I know you will be angry and disappointed, and so I have to write this letter and leave it so that you'll get it when I am gone. If I saw you angry and disappointed I suppose I wouldn't go. But you ought not to want me to be a minister when I don't want to be one, and don't believe half the things they have to say, and when I love to draw and paint, and can't see any wrong in it.
I hope you will write and say you forgive me. It isn't easy for a boy even when he's far far away to have to think that his own mother is down on him. And I don't think it's right for a boy when he can earn his own living to stay at home and make just that much extra expense for his father and mother.
I am sitting at the little writing desk in my own room, right here at home, but writing this letter to you makes me feel homesick. So if I'm homesick right here at home, think how it will be when I get to Paris and don't know anybody or the language or anything. I don't like to go away from you and father. It hurts all over. But if I stayed home I'd have to go to the divinity school, and I couldn't stand that.
I don't seem to want to do very bad things, so I don't think you ought to worry about my being in Paris. A man who studied in Paris told me that all the talk about Paris being so wicked is—talk. He says it's just like any other big city, and that you can live the kind of life you want to, and that the good people are admired in Paris just like anywhere else, and bad people are despised.
So good-by, Dearest Mother, and try to forgive me. Edward.
This letter flung Mrs. Eaton into a terrible rage. Three times now her will and her unquestioned knowledge of what was best for her boys had been defied. To make matters worse, the two older boys had not come whining home and ac knowledging how mistaken they had been. They had prospered in their chosen lines. And now here was Edward running away from her and the church, and right on the top of that a letter from Mark to say that he was about to be married to the daughter of a neighboring farmer. It was bad enough to be marrying a farmer's daughter, though if George Washington had had a daughter she would have been one, but to make matters worse Mark had made no mention of the church to which his fiancée belonged. Obviously, therefore, she must be either a Roman Catholic or a creature who believed in nothing at all. The enclosed photograph showed her to be a little too plump but exquisitely pretty.
Mrs. Eaton proceeded to work herself into a series of devastating sick headaches, which caused more suffering to others than to herself, and her only comfort in the world was James. He saw his opportunity and toadied to her unmercifully and wormed his way deeper and deeper into her good graces and closer and closer to her pocketbook.
Meanwhile Edward was on the broad Atlantic, rolling over to France, and joyously and even gloriously drawing all the things which pertain to ships and the sea. He was neither seasick nor homesick. He thought a good deal about himself with the wholesome egotism of youth, and was for once in his life extraordinarily happy.