The Legacy (Boyce)

by Neith Boyce

THE LEGACY

BY NEITH BOYCE

THE train had been stalled in a drift for sixteen hours, while the snow-plow dug a path for it; and now with four huge engines pulling and one pushing, it labored up the steep slope to the top of the Divide. In the smoking-car a number of philosophers had passed the time of imprisonment in perfect good-humor. It became necessary to wear one's overcoat, but the larder had withstood so far the demands made upon it; there was plenty to eat, and almost everyone played cards. There was in fact but one marked exception; one man whom no one had even asked to take a hand at whist or poker. He stayed in the smoking-car to smoke, slowly and constantly, one good cigar after another. Now and then he exchanged a few words with one of his fellow-passengers, but they led nowhere; and he evidently preferred to sit silent in his chair, wrapped in his great coat, the dark fur collar of which made a frame for his striking head. He was a handsome man, of the type whose harsh lines and dark color are softened by the blanching touch of age. His crisp thick silvery hair, his heavy brows and black eyes, the clear-cut rigidity of his strong mouth, his straight stalwart shoulders, gave him a certain splendor of aspect. His loneliness, too, and silence, the immobility of his look, added to this rather grim distinction. He commanded notice, even though he might wish to avoid it. From the first day of the journey the negro porter had made him an object of special care; and the porter's attentions were the only ones welcomed by the solitary traveler. Evidently he liked comfort; and vaguely he liked its atmosphere about him now, in spite of his somber and unsocial mood.

The porter alone was informed of this gentleman's destination. To the surprise of the others he got off at a way-station nearly at the top of the Divide, a mere little clump of frame buildings half-buried in snow. His baggage too was taken off; but without any concern for this the tall man strode off the platform into the snow, and made his way to a low building a few rods distant, which was pointed out to him as the hotel, and which had its name, "Half-Way House," on a sign over the door. He was evidently expected; and the interest of the inhabitants, who were gathered on the platform or at the windows, was directed toward him rather than toward the belated train, which after a brief hall pulled out again into the darkness of the forest.

The stranger walked into the hotel and said to the man behind the bar:

"My name is Travis. You telegraphed to me from here."

"Yes, sir—yes, sir, one second," said the proprietor hastily. He finished pouring out the whisky for two customers who were staring at the newcomer, and then led the way into the parlor, an air-tight room across the narrow entry, where there was a hot coal-fire in a stove.

"I can have a room here for the night, I suppose—my baggage is coming over," said Mr. Travis.

"Yes, sir—wait one moment, I'll call my wife," said the hotel-keeper nervously. He seemed exceedingly relieved when he had delivered the newcomer into the hands of the small spare woman whom he called in from the kitchen, and could return to the bar. Mrs. Sprague assumed the charge he gave her with quiet dignity.

"You will want to go upstairs, Mr. Travis," she said. "Or perhaps you would rather see the lady first down here, for there's no fire up there."

"Let me go up, please," he said, rather huskily.

With his fur coat buttoned about him, his hat in his gloved hand, he followed the little woman up the flimsy creaking stairs into a narrow hallway with half a dozen pine doors on either side. One of these doors, at the end, she opened and closed silently after him.

He found himself in a small room, bitterly cold, lighted by a window of which the green shade was half-drawn down. As his heavy step sounded on the floor, a girl started up from the bed where she was lying, and a dark shawl that had covered her slid off on the floor, showing her light dress somewhat disordered. Travis barely noticed her. He came to the bedside and stood looking down on the body of his son.

A white coverlet hid all except the young face, thin from the ravages of mortal disease, but with a light color still touching the cheeks and lips. The long curving lashes, like a child's, gave a pathetic look to the handsome face, but there was no look of suffering. The face and the whole figure, slim and rigid under the coverlet, had the peace, the overpowering majesty, of death.

Richard Travis stood motionless, silent, for long moments. In a sense, as he stood there, he was himself taking leave of life. No one knew, not even George, this only child of his, had known, how much of life he had meant to his father. How much of hope, of ambition, of pride, had been bound up in him and perished first or last, Richard Travis had never said; for George had bitterly disappointed him. All along, from the beginning of his college days, George had been a disappointment of the most irritating kind. For it was plain—everyone said—that the boy had talents, unusual gifts, that he had his share of the family inheritance of brains; and he had wasted it all. In college—and since—he had been idle and dissipated, preferring to write poetry and talk philosophical jargon rather than use his energies to any purpose. He had shown not the slightest care for the family tradition, not the least ambition to distinguish himself. He would not even take care of his health, which was inherited from his mother, and weak. At a desperate pass finally he had been ordered to California to try the open-air cure. And now at twenty-six he was dead; and he had left a wife, a girl whom he had married out of some country village in the wilds, with perfect indifference to the opinion or wish of any one else. He had been married some six months; but it was apparently not till he felt he was dying that he had started homeward; and here on the way death had overtaken him.

In Richard Travis's mind the old, old grievance gnawed with its familiar pain; and a sharper, a more bitter sting of grief was added now. For now it was all over; now, at last, hope must be given up. And not till now had he realized how he had really hoped, all along, for George; how he had built the future on him, even though he knew he was building on sand. For George was all he had; the only person he had any love for, the only person who could serve his natural pride. He would have been glad of half a dozen sons: his instinct desired to see a family gathered about him in patriarchal fashion, and launching out robustly over the earth. But when his wife, after giving him one child, had faded into invalidism, he had acquiesced in this limitation. After all, one does not expect too much of women, in bodily or mental strength. Then she had faded out of life, and he had not married again, for he loved her—and there was George, then a brilliant boy of fourteen. George could carry on the family and make the name illustrious once more, as it had been in colonial times. His father hoped to see him in public life. His own life had been spent mainly in making a fortune. He had been born to poverty, and had resolutely lifted himself out of it. He was a man of business, very successful, and he had meant his money to help George's career. And George had not been willing to take the first step toward a career. George had been a complete failure.

As Richard Travis stood, his eyes still fixed on the face of his son, he was conscious that something checked the bitter and passionate current of his thought. Something laid a chill hand on his rebellious heart. The solemnity of that face, what he could not but feel to be its august look, strangely impressed him. That lofty, calm and noble expression—surely this was not George, but the son of his dreams. . . . Bewildered, he looked for the first time at the girl on the other side of the bed.

She stood with her hands clasped on her breast, her head bent and her large eyes looking up at him rather wildly. She was very young, slight and extremely pretty. Her brown hair, rolling in soft disorder back from a narrow forehead, her short oval face, sweetly curved lips and deep, dark eyes—all, in spite of her pallor, of her evident suffering, had the fresh and exquisite charm of youth.

Richard Travis barely saw her, but her presence there somehow hurt him. He turned away abruptly and went out of the room. In the hall Mrs. Sprague was awaiting him. She showed him his bedroom, and said that supper would be ready in half an hour.

"And I do hope, sir, that you can get that poor young thing to take some food and look after herself a little," she added. "There she stays in that ice-cold room, and I have been hardly able to get her out of it these three days, and she hardly eats a mouthful. And she isn't strong, you know—she can't go on so. It's pitiful to see her."

Mrs. Sprague's eyes were full of tears. Richard Travis said curtly:

"Yes, I want to talk to her. Will you ask her to come downstairs?"

He was conscious of the woman's look of surprise, and a change in her tone as she said:

"Yes, I'll ask her. And, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Travis, I really think she ought to see the doctor. There's one at the next station, but she wouldn't talk to him, or anybody, after her husband died."

"A doctor? Why, is she ill?" Travis asked rather impatiently.

"Why, she—the shock and grief and all—surely you know, Mr. Travis, she is going to have a child?"

"Oh! . . . Well, send for the doctor, by all means, if you think she needs attention. I shall be glad to see her as soon as she is able to come down. Thank you."

With this dismissal, Travis closed his door.

He was aware that his tone and manner had been cold and brusque, and that he had shown no more feeling than was in him, which was none at all. His feeling, all of it, was for the dead boy lying in that bleak room. Besides George, he had for years loved no living being; and now he cared for nobody, not even himself. His hopes had gone down in dust, and he felt that he should go on mechanically to finish out the years allotted to him, without any impulse of joy or will to carry him on.

This girl whom George had married was nothing to him. He could scarcely see her as George's wife. That title had always seemed to him a proud one, and he had pictured to himself some charming woman, of whom he could be proud, as bearing it. She was to have been a girl of family, of position and breeding, and George's marriage an affair of state and ceremony befitting its importance. And then he, Richard Travis, would have had a daughter, and she and her children would have comforted his age and made his stately house gay and warm. So he had often fancied.

But—George had married by the wayside, picking up his wife apparently on the impulse of a moment, without warning, even, to his father. He had written, simply, that he was married; that he had fallen very much in love, but that he would not have married so hastily except that Ysabel was very unhappy at home; that he was going to bring his wife East, and hoped his father would feel kindly toward her and would come to love her.

Richard Travis had had no intention of loving her. He did not like the spelling of her name, nor the fact that she had a streak of Spanish blood, nor anything else that he knew of her, which was little beside. He disliked her for marrying George. There was no tie between her and himself, and it was plain to him that she must go back to her own people. Of course he would see that she was handsomely provided for. The thought occurred to him that she might have married for this provision; she must have known that George could not live long. His face was set and not pleasant to see as he went down to await her in the parlor.

He had some little time to wait. Then Mrs. Sprague came down, and said, "Mrs. Travis will be here directly—and supper is ready when you want it."

A faint color rose to the old man's cheeks. Mrs. Travis! Yes, of course it was her name. She had a right to that name; and she had her legal rights, too, as George's wife. All her claims should be duly honored—generously honored—he resolved, and his jaw set grimly. If only she were not disposed to obtrude those claims, to put herself too much in his way!

She did not look very intrusive, as she came in and took the chair he set for her before the fire. She moved noiselessly, and she looked absurdly small and childish. Her blue dress had been put in order, her hair neatly rolled up. In her pale little face her eyes looked deeper and blacker than before. They were soft, liquid, foreign eyes, and beautiful even now, though they were red with crying. She waited for Travis to speak. He was rather at a loss for a moment—it was because he was trying to remember her name, and could not. He sat down near her and began, in a courteous and matter-of-fact tone—for he was afraid that she would cry again.

"Have you," he asked, "sent word to any one of your family? Is any one coming to you here?"

"No," she said faintly.

"You mean you haven't telegraphed—or anything?"

"No— I haven't."

"Is there some one who could come—one of your parents, perhaps?"

"I—don't think so. My mother—isn't well enough, and—and my stepfather—no, he couldn't come—"

"But have you any plan, then? Have you thought what you want to do, Ysabel?"

He had just recollected the name. She looked up at him with her wide eyes, as though startled.

"No—I haven't thought about it," she said. Then she added quickly, "I will go back—I will go by myself."

And then she looked away indifferently, as though there were no more to be said.

"I speak of it at once," said Travis, somewhat embarrassed, "because I shall start to-morrow for my home. It will be necessary. I take George's body home for burial."

She started at that, and her eyes widened, but she did not look at him, nor speak.

Richard Travis got up abruptly from his seat. He wished that she had been a more practical and businesslike person. She seemed so helpless—and she could not be left like this. It was her right at least to see her husband's body laid in the earth, if she so desired. Therefore he said:

"Will you—do you wish to come with me?"

Now she looked at him, and he saw fear, or dislike, in her eyes.

"No," she said.

"It shall be just as you wish."

"I will go back."

"I shall see," said Travis, "that you are made as comfortable as possible—now and for the future."

She rose, with her indifferent look, anxious only to get away.

"Will you come and have something to eat—supper, I believe they call it—with me?" Travis asked.

"No—thank you—I think I will go to my room," she said.

She made him a little bow, and went toward the door.

"Have you a warm room? Is there anything I can get for you? You will have something sent up, at least—you must eat something," Travis said, ill at ease in the midst of his own trouble because of her. Now that he saw she did not mean to trouble him, he felt some shame at his coldness toward her—and yet he could not pretend a warmth he did not feel.

"Yes, thank you. Mrs. Sprague is very good to me. I don't need anything," Ysabel said, looking down, and she slipped out of the room with her noiseless tread.

Travis drew a breath of relief. That interview had been as hard for her as for him, he saw. She had been afraid of breaking down. There were things he wanted to ask her. She had been with George when he died. But just now he could not ask those questions. He saw that she could not bear them. He must see her again, when perhaps she would be better able. But the time was short. To-morrow he would go his way, and she presumably would go hers; and after that he might not see her again. There were business arrangements to be made, too—but that might be done by letter. Yes, better so, for it was clearly impossible to talk business with her now. However, he did not resent this inconvenience that she was putting him to—he had a vague feeling that she had come out of the interview rather well, better than he expected—better, in fact, than he had.

He sat down to his meager meal alone, Mrs. Sprague waiting upon him. She kept complete silence, and Travis might have guessed, if he had been interested, her opinion of him. When he had finished, he lighted a cigar and walked to the window. The snow had stopped falling, but it lay thick, banked against the house, and made the clearing a white blur against the dark woods. The moon was up; the sky looked pale and frosty; a night of intense cold was setting in.

Mrs. Sprague took off the dishes, as quietly as possible. The house was quiet. The men in the bar talked in low tones. Overhead there were footsteps, and Travis knew that his son's body was being put into the coffin he had brought. He clinched his teeth on the cigar. Suddenly he turned, and asked abruptly:

"Mrs. Sprague, were you with him? Did he suffer, at the end?"

She answered quietly:

"When we knew he was dying I left them alone together. But before that, the last words I heard him speak, he said, 'I'm . . . so . . . tired!' Just that way, as though he was going to sleep. I don't think he suffered."

After a few moments Travis said:

"Will you take something up to Mrs. Travis? Is there anything I can order for her, anything I can get here, or anywhere, to make her more comfortable?"

"I'll do all I can," Mrs. Sprague answered. "I've made her some chicken soup and jelly, and tried to tempt her appetite a little. But it isn't food nor yet fire that she wants, Mr. Travis."

Then she went out of the room—his supper had been laid in the parlor—and left him to himself.

The air of the place seemed suffocating, the hot mass of coals in the stove throwing out an almost visible heat. The room seemed never to have been aired, and smelled of varnish and kerosene oil and stuffy draperies. The icy freshness of the night outside seemed more bearable. Travis put on bis hat and coat and went out. From the windows of the room upstairs lights gleamed faintly through the green shades. They would burn in that room all night. Probably the girl, Ysabel, would watch there, too, in foolish feminine fashion.

It was partly uneasiness about her that drove Richard Travis out of the house. It seemed impossible to let her go alone or, rather, to leave her here the next day—for his train to the East left before hers to the West—without settling something. If she had had a home to go back to, some one to take care of her on the journey, it would have been easier. He made up his mind that he must see her in the morning and find out just what the situation was in her home. All he knew was that it had been unhappy. She seemed quite resigned to going back. But just now, he saw, she did not care where she went, nor what became of her. She was crushed by her misfortune. Perhaps she had really cared very much for George. This somehow had not occurred to him before, and he felt more kindly toward her and more solicitous about her. After all, in any case her situation was a hard one.

He walked away from the house, ankle-deep in the dry snow, got on the railroad track and walked for some distance along it. Beyond the little clearing, with its few buildings, the woods came down close to the track—mainly scrub pines, low, and casting a dense shadow in the moonlight. The track ran straight ahead, rising slightly toward the sky-line, a streak of white cleaving the blackness of the trees. There was no wind; the cold was still and intense. Travis walked fast, partly because of the cold, partly because his thoughts were disturbed. The idea of Ysabel would intrude itself upon his settled grief.

He was a man who could not bear the idea of a just claim upon him resting unsatisfied. But, strong as was his sense of responsibility, his emotions were stronger. Both had rather a narrow range. He cared for, and felt responsible for, only those beings who were directly connected with himself, who were extensions of his powerful egotism. But a claim upon him for feeling which he could not satisfy was a torment to him. He was more than willing to open his purse to any just demand or appeal; to give his time, his personal help, when necessary. But he could not give his affection on demand. He could not pretend to Ysabel that he cared about her personally. He had begun with a prejudice against her, and prejudice died hard in him. Yet her forlorn situation made him extremely uncomfortable. It irritated him to be disturbed in this way. He wanted to be alone with his dead. Now that all interest was gone out of life for him, it was hard to have practical cares for an indifferent person thrust upon him. He could not feel that Ysabel was in any way connected with him. He could hardly realize her connection with George. George had written very little about her, and this with the curious constraint that had always marked his relations with his father. It was as though he counted in advance on his father's disapproval of anything he did. Thus Ysabel had not figured in the old man's mind at all, except as an embodied disappointment. He had wanted to get her out of his mind as speedily as possible. And now he was aware that this could not be done completely. He had no desire to think of her as a member of his family—but, after all, she was, she bore the name.

And to what end would she bear it? What would become of her, young and helpless as she was, left to herself? How would George feel this, if he could know?

This thought was a keen pain. Richard Travis had no belief in the soul's immortality. In his sad creed, as the body went back to dust, the spirit of man was lost in the void, and became, except for its earthly record, as though it had never been. Thus, he had said an eternal farewell to his wife, and now to his son. And yet he could not ignore any wish of theirs, any definite expression. It was partly because he felt that, once gone from him, they were gone forever, that he had so cared for their actual presence; partly for this reason, too, that he had desired family and descendants. This earthly immortality would have consoled him for the loss of the other.

Now, as another idea occurred to him, for the first time with any real force, he stopped short, staring before him into the darkness. She, George's wife, was to bear a child, who also would have the name, who would be of his family, his blood, and the only representative left of the direct line of the Travises when he himself was gone. Ysabel herself hardly counted, but this child was George's, was his. . . . It struck him with almost stunning force, and for the first moments the thought was all pain. It was not thus that his grandchild, the future of the family, should be born—of a mother as it were unrecognized, in mean circumstances, and with the probable handicap of its father's weak health. It would have been better that it should not be born, he thought. And then, in spite of reason, instinct surged up mighty within him and denied this, and he felt a strange glow kindling in his heart. George's child! George had not gone completely out of life, then, but he would live again in this child, which was his legacy! To Richard Travis the child seemed at once to belong to George, to himself, and to his dead wife. They were the three who would have loved it and rejoiced over it. . . . The child perhaps would have the eyes he loved—his wife's dark-blue eyes, that had looked at him from under George's brows, and that he had thought closed forever on this world.

Burning tears came to his own eyes, and he sobbed aloud. In the desolation of his sorrow he had not wept. He had hardened to meet the blow. But now a thousand tender memories stirred suddenly within him. He felt life wake again, with a poignant pain.

George had not told him of the child—not even this. . . . But he had been on his way home, he had wanted to tell him, perhaps, by word of mouth. And Richard Travis felt how this would have drawn them together, how it would have strengthened their natural bond. He would have forgiven George everything, his marriage and all, and they could have had a simple family happiness together, forgetting the rest. George's wife should have been made welcome, too, for George's sake, and still more for the child's. . . .

Well, and now? . . . He had already formed to himself the image of the grand-child—a child beautiful and gay as George had been. This belonged to him, it was already a part of him as his imagination seized upon it. Life and egotism were strong in his old fibers yet. His loneliness now frightened him. It was certain that he could not let go this consolation, this hope.

He had been standing still for some time; now he turned and walked back slowly to the clearing. His mind was rather confused, but one idea was clear, and his purpose became more definite as he approached the house. He went straight up to the room where he knew he should find Ysabel. She had fallen asleep in a chair. He did not want to wake her, but she woke of herself and looked up at him, with her great, frightened eyes. Then he asked her to come downstairs with him. He took her hand as she rose from the chair and put the shawl about her shoulders that she had dropped, and they went down together. It was getting late, the fire had burned down into a handful of red coals, and some feeling of the frosty night began to make itself felt in the room.

Travis went straight to his point, with the force of desire, of conviction, that usually got him his own way.

"Ysabel, sit down here and listen to me. I have something important that I want to say to you."

He put her into a chair near the fire and sat down himself, leaning over the table that stood between them. There was a lamp with a white shade on the table, and the harsh light showed Ysabel's delicate pallor and the strong lines of the old man's face. He looked at her keenly, yet with a new feeling for her. For the first time he saw that she was charming, that her whole small person was refined, her bearing gentle; and this made his way much easier.

"I want you, Ysabel," he said, "to go home with me. I want you to come to my house and live there. I am all alone. I will do all I can for you—all I can to make you comfortable."

The color came into the girl's face as he spoke, and she shrank back in her chair while he leaned eagerly toward her.

"No," she said faintly, "I think I'd better go home. I—I should be a burden to you—"

Her face was more definite than her words. Travis saw repugnance there, and bewilderment at his sudden change.

"You don't understand, Ysabel," he said. "I want you to come. You couldn't be a trouble to me. I've got a great empty house and a lot of servants that have nothing to do. I'm lonely there. And there's nobody in the whole world that I care about enough to have them with me."

"But," she said, after a pause, looking more distressed, "I don't see why you say this to me—why you ask me this, unless it is to be kind to me. But I don't want you to think I need it—I don't care about it. I would rather go back to my mother."

"Yes, I see, Ysabel, you feel that I'm just a stranger. But I am not! And it isn't as though you could be happy there at home. I know you were not happy there."

"No," said Ysabel, sadly, "but I don't care now so much. My mother always tries to be kind to me—and I don't mind the others now."

Her large eyes became fixed; she looked over the old man's head and seemed to forget him. He saw that she meant what she said, and her opposition made him more sure of what he wanted.

"Then, Ysabel," he urged, "will you come for me, for my sake? If it's indifferent to you, you ought to be willing to come, for I want it more than I can tell you!"

A painful color flushed all over the girl's face.

"But why?" she cried. "You didn't at first. Why do you want me now?"

"I don't know altogether why, but I do. I feel differently about it. I—I suppose it is because if you are with me—you and—and the child—it will seem as though I had not lost him altogether. Ysabel! didn't he send me any message—not even a word? Oh, my son, my son!"

Travis threw his arms out on the table and laid his head down, and sobs shook his whole body. It came upon him so suddenly that he could not resist. The tremendous strain and the constraint that he had laid upon himself demanded the relief of tears, almost unknown to him.

"And did you really love him, then?"

The girl's voice seemed to be speaking for herself alone, in surprise, wonder.

Travis made no sign of having heard. After a moment she said:

"He didn't send any message. He didn't—know, you see. He thought—he was getting better. And I thought so, too. We didn't believe it could come. So you see—there was no time."

She spoke quietly, dreamily, and her eyes looked as though they had wept all their tears away. She looked at the old man's gray head, and timidly touched one of his clenched hands.

Travis sat up and seized her hand in both his.

"Then you will come!" he said imperiously.

She looked, half shrinking, at his blurred eyes. His face, softened by emotion, was not the face that had chilled and repelled her. There was genuine pleading in it.

"There are some things of George's I have to give you," she said, catching her breath. "Some papers, and pictures, and other things that I thought he would want you to have. They are upstairs—" And she half rose, as though to fly.

"You haven't answered," Travis said quickly. "I suppose it's hard for you to decide so suddenly. But, listen, you'll come for a time, at least! Let us leave it that way. And I'll do my best for you. And, you know, Ysabel—the child. ... It will be best for the child, for his education and growing up. . . . And everything shall be done for him. He will need great care, and I will see to it that he has the best possible. ... If all is well he will be my heir, . . . he will have a brilliant future. And I will watch over him—you and I will, together."

He held her hand tight in both his, and the strength of his will, of his egotistic personality, shown in the intensity of his speech and manner, could not be resisted by the slight creature to whom he spoke. Yet she was not without a certain dignity of her own, which became her youth oddly and pathetically. There was a pause.

"George would like me to go with you, I think," she said at last, gravely. "And no one else cares for me. . . ."

"I will care for you, Ysabel!"

The words were a promise, such as Richard Travis had never broken. Already the desire to care for her was growing in him. And she made it easy: her youth, her gentleness, her helplessness, on the one hand; on the other, this odd natural dignity, which made it seem that she was the person conferring an obligation. And he felt that it was so.

"Ysabel, I shall be very grateful to you!" he said huskily. "And perhaps," he added, "you will care a little for me, by and by. No one else cares for me, either!"

For the first time she saw him smile—a pathetic, half-humorous smile, and she smiled faintly in return. And with that some sort of bond of sympathy formed itself, tenuous and tentative, over the distance between them. Travis expressed the feeling of it when he said, quickly:

"You are young, Ysabel, your trouble has come early—but you have almost all your life before you still. Yes, you don't believe it now, but it is so, I hope. You ought to be happy yet! So long as there is something to live for. . . . I thought a little while ago—a few hours ago—that there was nothing more for me. And now there is something—and you have given it to me, Ysabel! . . . If there is anything that I can ever do to make you happier, I will do it."

She rose, and he put the shawl about her and went with her to the door.

"Go to bed now, child," he said wearily. "We start at ten in the morning."

She looked up at him solemnly, like a child, half-puzzled, timid, yet with a strange confidence. She was like a child, obediently putting her hand in that of a stranger, to go a strange journey, and, childlike, she put up her face and kissed him.