Guest's Confession: In Two Parts: Part First

I.

“ ARRIVE half past eight. Sick. Meet me.”

The telegrammatic brevity of my stepbrother’s missive gave that melancholy turn to my thoughts which was the usual result of his communications. He was to have come on the Friday ; what had made him start off on Wednesday ? The terms on which we stood were a perpetual source of irritation. We were utterly unlike in temper and taste and opinions, and yet, having a number of common interests, we were obliged, after a fashion, to compromise with each other’s idiosyncrasies. In fact, the concessions were all on my side. He was altogether too much my superior in all that makes the man who counts in the world for me not to feel it, and it cost me less to let him take his way than to make a stand for my dignity. What I did through indolence and in some degree, I confess, through pusillanimity, I had a fancy to make it appear (by dint of much whistling, as it were, and easy thrusting of my hands into my pockets) that I did through a sort of generous condescension. Edgar cared little enough upon what recipe I compounded a salve for my vanity, so long as he held his own course ; and I am afraid I played the slumbering giant to altogether empty benches. There had been, indeed, a vague tacit understanding that he was to treat me, in form, as a man with a mind of his own, and there was occasionally something most incisively sarcastic in his observance of the treaty. What made matters the worse for me, and the better for him, was an absurd physical disparity; for Musgrave was like nothing so much as Falstaff’s description of Shallow, — a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. He was a miserable invalid, and was perpetually concerned with his stomach, his lungs, and his liver, and as he was both doctor and patient in one, they kept him very busy. His head was grotesquely large for his diminutive figure, his eye fixed and salient, and his complexion liable to flush with an air of indignation and suspicion. He practised a most resolute little strut on a most attenuated pair of little legs. For myself, I was tall, happily ; for I was broad enough, if I had been shorter, to have perhaps incurred that invidious monosyllabic epithet which haunted Lord Byron. As compared with Edgar, I was at least fairly good-looking ; a stoutish, blondish, indolent, amiable, rather gorgeous young fellow might have served as my personal formula. My patrimony, being double that of my stepbrother (for we were related by my mother), was largely lavished on the adornment of this fine person. I dressed in fact, as I recollect, with a sort of barbaric splendor, and I may very well have passed for one of the social pillars of a small watering-place.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

L—was in those days just struggling into fame, and but that it savored overmuch of the fresh paint lately lavished upon the various wooden barracks in which visitors were to be accommodated, it yielded a pleasant mixture of rurality and society. The vile taste and the sovereign virtue of the spring were fairly established, and Edgar was not the man to forego the chance of trying the waters and abusing them. Having heard that the hotel was crowded, he wished to secure a room at least a week beforehand ; the upshot of which was, that I came down on the 19th of July with the mission to retain and occupy his apartment till the 26th. I passed, with people in general, and with Edgar in particular, for so very idle a person that it seemed almost a duty to saddle me with some wholesome errand. Edgar had, first and always, his health to attend to, and then that neat little property and those everlasting accounts, which he was never weary of contemplating, verifying, and overhauling. I had made up my mind to make over his room to him, remain a day or two for civility’s sake and then leave him to his cups. Meanwhile, on the 24th, it occurred to me that I ought really to see something of the place. The weather had been too hot for going about, and, as yet, I had hardly left the piazza of the hotel. Towards afternoon the clouds gathered, the sun was obscured, and it seemed possible even for a large, lazy man to take a walk. I went along beside the river, under the trees, rejoicing much in the midsummer prettiness of all the land and in the sultry afternoon stillness. I was discomposed and irritated, and all for no better reason than that Edgar was coming. What was Edgar that his comings and goings should affect me ? Was I, after all, so excessively his younger brother ? I would turn over a new leaf ! I almost wished things would come to a crisis between us, and that in the glow of exasperation I might say or do something unpardonable. But there was small chance of my quarrelling with Edgar for vanity’s sake. Somehow, I didn’t believe in my own egotism, but I had an indefeasible respect for his. I was fatally good-natured, and I should continue to do his desire until I began to do that of some one else. If I might only fall in love and exchange my master for a mistress, for some charming goddess of unreason who would declare that Mr. Musgrave was simply intolerable and that was an end of it !

So, meditating vaguely, I arrived at the little Episcopal chapel, which stands on the margin of the village where the latter begins to melt away into the large river-side landscape. The door was slightly ajar : there came through it into the hot outer stillness the low sound of an organ, — the rehearsal, evidently, of the organist or of some gentle amateur. I was warm with walking, and this glimpse of the cool musical dimness within prompted me to enter and rest and listen. The body of the church was empty ; but a feeble glow of color was diffused through the little yellow and crimson windows upon the pews and the cushioned pulpit. The organ was erected in a small gallery facing the chancel, into which the ascent was by a short stairway directly from the church. The sound of my tread was apparently covered by the music, for the player continued without heeding me, hidden as she was behind a little blue silk curtain on the edge of the gallery. Yes, that gentle, tentative, unprofessional touch came from a feminine hand. Uncertain as it was, however, it wrought upon my musical sensibilities with a sort of provoking force. The air was familiar, and, before I knew it, I had begun to furnish the vocal accompaniment, — first gently, then boldly. Standing with my face to the organ, I awaited the effect of my venture. The only perceptible result was that, for a moment, the music faltered and the curtains were stirred. I saw nothing, but I had been seen, and, reassured apparently by my aspect, the organist resumed the chant. Slightly mystified, I felt urged to sing my best, the more so that, as I continued, the player seemed to borrow confidence and emulation from my voice. The notes rolled out bravely, and the little vault resounded. Suddenly there seemed to come to the musician, in the ardor of success, a full accession of vigor and skill. The last chords were struck with a kind of triumphant intensity, and their cadence was marked by a clear soprano voice. Just at the close, however, voice and music were swallowed up in the roll of a huge thunder-clap. At the same instant, the storm - drops began to strike the chapel-windows, and we were sheeted in a summer rain. The rain was a bore; but, at least, I should have a look at the organist, concerning whom my curiosity had suddenly grown great. The thunder-claps followed each other with such violence that it was vain to continue to play. I waited, in the confident belief that that charming voice — half a dozen notes had betrayed it—denoted a charming woman. After the lapse of some moments, which seemed to indicate a graceful and appealing hesitancy, a female figure appeared at the top of the little stairway and began to descend. I walked slowly down the aisle. The stormy darkness had rapidly increased, and at this moment, with a huge burst of thunder, following a blinding flash, a momentary midnight fell upon our refuge. When things had become visible again, I beheld the fair musician at the foot of the steps, gazing at me with all the frankness of agitation. The little chapel was rattling to its foundations.

“ Do you think there is any danger ?” asked my companion.

I made haste to assure her there was none. “The chapel has nothing in the nature of a spire, and even if it had, the fact of our being in a holy place ought to insure us against injury.”

She looked at me wonderingly, as if to see whether I was in jest. To satisfy her, I smiled as graciously as I might. Whereupon, gathering confidence, “ I think we have each of us,” she said, “ so little right to be here that we can hardly claim the benefit of sanctuary.”

“ Are you too an interloper ? ” I asked.

She hesitated a moment. “ I’m not an Episcopalian,” she replied ; “ I ’m a good Unitarian.”

“ Well, I’m a poor Episcopalian. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.” There came another long, many-sheeted flash and an immediate wild reverberation. My companion, as she stood before me, was vividly illumined from head to foot. It was as if some fierce natural power had designed to interpose her image on my soul forever, in this merciless electric glare. As I saw her then, I have never ceased to see her since. I have called her fair, but the word needs explanation. Singularly pleasing as she was, it was with a charm that was all her own. Not the charm of beauty, but of a certain intense expressiveness, which seems to have given beauty the go-by in the very interest of grace. Slender, meagre, without redundancy of outline or brilliancy of color, she was a person you might never have noticed, but would certainly never forget What there was was so charming, what there might be so interesting ! There was none of the idleness of conscious beauty in her clear gray eyes ; they seemed charged with the impatience of a restless mind. Her glance and smile, her step and gesture, were as light and distinct as a whispered secret. She was nervous, curious, zealous, slightly imperious, and delicately elegant withal ; without which, possibly, she might have seemed a trifle too positive. There is a certain sweet unreason in a picturesque toilet. She was dressed in a modish adjustment of muslins and lace, which denoted the woman who may have fancied that even less beauty might yet please. While I drew my conclusions, — they were eminently flattering, — my companion was buttoning her gloves and looking anxiously at the dripping windows. Wishing, as far as I might, to beguile her impatience, I proceeded to apologize for the liberty I had taken in singing to her music. “My best excuse,” I said, “is your admirable playing, and my own most sensitive ear !”

“You might have frightened me away,” she answered. “ But you sang too well for that, better than I played. In fact, I was afraid to stop, I thought you might be one of the — the hierarchy.”

“ A bishop ! ”

“ A bishop, — a dean, — a deacon, — or something of that sort.”

“ The sexton, perhaps.”

“ Before the sexton I should have succumbed. I take it his business would have been to eject me as a meddlesome heretic. I came in for no better reason than that the church door was ajar.”

“ As a church door ought always to be.”

She looked at me a moment. “ No; see what comes of it.”

“ No great harm, it seems to me.”

“O, that’s very well for us ! But a church should n’t be made a place of convenience.”

I wished, in the interest of our growing intimacy, to make a point. “ If it is not a place of convenience,” I ventured to propound, deprecating offence with a smile, “ what is it ? ”

It was an observation I afterwards made, that in cases when many women drop their eyes and look prettily silly or prudishly alarmed, this young lady’s lucid glance would become more unaffectedly direct and searching. “ Indeed,” she answered, “you are but an indifferent Episcopalian ! I came in because the door was open, because I was warm with my walk, and because, I confess, I have an especial fondness for going into churches on week-days. One does it in Europe, you know ; and it reminds me of Europe.”

I cast a glance over the naked tabernacle, with the counterfeit graining scarcely dry on its beams and planks, and a strong aroma of turpentine and putty representing the odor of sanctity. She followed my glance ; our eyes met, and we laughed. From this moment we talked with a freedom tempered less by the sanctity of the spot than by a certain luxury of deference with which I felt prompted to anticipate possible mistrust. The rain continued to descend with such steady good-will that it seemed needful to accept our situation frankly and conjure away the spirit of awkwardness. We spoke of L—, of the people there, of the hot weather, of music. She had as yet seen little of the place, having been confined to her apartments by domestic reasons. I wondered what her domestic reasons were. She had come forth at last to call upon a friend at one of the boarding-houses which adorned this suburb of the village. Her friend being out, but likely soon to return, she had sought entertainment in a stroll along the road, and so had wandered into the chapel. Our interview lasted half an hour. As it drew to a close, I fancied there had grown up between us some delicate bond, begotten of our mutual urbanity. I might have been indiscreet ; as it was, I took my pleasure in tracing the gradual evanescence of my companion’s sense of peril. As the moments elapsed, she sat down on the bench with an air of perfect equanimity, and looked patiently at the trickling windows. The still small voice of some familiar spirit of the Lord, haunting the dedicated vault, seemed to have audibly blessed our meeting. At last the rain abated and suddenly stopped, and through a great rift in the clouds there leaped a giant sunbeam and smote the trickling windows. Through little gaudy lozenges the chapel was flooded with prismatic light. “The storm is over,” said my companion. She spoke without rising, as if she had been cheated of the sense of haste. Was it calculated civility, or was it momentary self-oblivion ? Whatever it was, it lasted but a moment. We were on our feet and moving toward the door. As we stood in the porch, honest gallantry demanded its rights.

“ I never knew before,” I said, “ the possible blessings of a summer rain.”

She proceeded a few steps before she answered. Then glancing at the shining sky, already blue and free, “In ten minutes,” she said, “there will be no trace of it! ”

“ Does that mean,” I frankly demanded, “ that we are not to meet again as friends ? ”

“ Are we to meet again at all ? ”

“ I count upon it.”

“ Certainly, then, not as enemies ! ” As she walked away, I imprecated those restrictions of modern civilization which forbade me to stand and gaze at her.

Who was she? What was she? — questions the more intense as, in the absence of any further evidence than my rapid personal impression, they were so provokingly vain. They occupied me, however, during the couple of hours which were to elapse before my step-brother’s arrival. When his train became due, I went through the form, as usual, of feeling desperately like treating myself to the luxury of neglecting his summons and leaving him to shift for himself; as if I had not the most distinct prevision of the inevitable event, — of my being at the station half an hour too early, of my calling his hack and making his bargain and taking charge of his precious little handbag, full of medicine-Bottles, and his ridiculous bundle of umbrellas and canes. Somehow, this evening, I felt unwontedly loath and indocile ; but I contented myself with this bold flight of the imagination.

It is hard to describe fairly my poor step-brother’s peculiar turn of mind, to give an adequate impression of his want of social charm, to put it mildly, without accusing him of wilful malevolence. He was simply the most consistent and incorruptible of egotists. He was perpetually affirming and defining and insuring himself, insisting upon a personal right or righting a personal wrong. And above all, he was a man of conscience. He asked no odds, and he gave none. He made honesty something unlovely, but he was rigidly honest. He demanded simply his dues, and he collected them to the last farthing. These things gave him a portentous solemnity. He smiled perhaps once a month, and made a joke once in six. There are jokes of his making which, to this day, give me a shiver when I think of them. But I soon perceived, as he descended from the train, that there would be no joke that evening. Something had happened. His face was hard and sombre, and his eye bright and fierce. “A carriage,” he said, giving me his hand stiffly. And when we were seated and driving away, “ First of all,” he demanded, “are there any mosquitoes ? A single mosquito would finish me. And is my room habitable, on the shady side, away from the stairs, with a view, with a hair-mattress ? ” I assured him that mosquitoes were unknown, and that his room was the best, and his mattress the softest in the house. Was he tired ? how had he been ?

“ Don’t ask me. I’m in an extremely critical state. Tired ? Tired is a word for well people ! When I ’m tired I shall go to bed and die. Thank God, so long as I have any work to do, I can hold up my head ! I haven’t slept in a week. It’s singular, but I’m never so well disposed for my duties as when I have n’t slept ! But be so good, for the present, as to ask me noquestions. I shall immediately take a bath and drink some arrow-root ; I have brought a package in my bag, I suppose I can get them to make it. I ’ll speak about it at the office. No, I think, on the whole, I ’ll make it in my room ; I have a little machine for boiling water. I think I shall drink half a glass of the spring to-night, just to make a beginning.”

All this was said with as profound a gravity as if he were dictating his will. But I saw that he was at a sort of whiteheat exasperation, and I knew that in time I should learn where the shoe pinched. Meanwhile, I attempted to say something cheerful and frivolous, and offered some information as to who was at the hotel and who was expected ; “No one you know or care about, I think.”

“ Very likely not. I’m in no mood for gossip.”

“ You seem nervous,” I ventured to say.

“Nervous? Call it frantic! I’m not blessed with your apathetic temperament, nor with your elegant indifference to money-matters. Do you know what’s the matter with me ? I ’ve lost twenty thousand dollars.”

I, of course, demanded particulars ; but, for the present, I had to content myself with the naked fact. “ It’s a mighty serious matter,” said Edgar. “ I can’t talk of it further till I have bathed and changed my linen. The thermometer has been at ninety-one in my rooms in town. I ’ve had this pretty piece of news to keep me cool.”

I left him to his bath, his toilet, and his arrow-root and strolled about pondering the mystery of his disaster. Truly, if Edgar had lost money, shrewdness was out of tune. Destiny must have got up early to outwit my step-brother. And yet his misfortune gave him a sort of unwonted grace, and I believe I wondered for five minutes whether there was a chance of his being relaxed and softened by it. I had, indeed, a momentary vision of lending him money, and taking a handsome revenge as a good-natured creditor. But Edgar would never borrow. He would either recover his money or grimly do without it. On going back to his room I found him dressed and refreshed, screwing a little portable kettle upon his gas-burner.

“You can never get them to bring you water that really boils,” he said. “ They don’t know what it means. You ’re altogether wrong about the mosquitoes ; I’m sure I heard one, and by the sound, he’s a monster. But I have a net folded up in my trunk, and a hook and ring which I mean to drive into the ceiling.”

“ I’ll put up your net. Meanwhile, tell me about your twenty thousand dollars.”

He was silent awhile, but at last he spoke in a voice forcibly attuned to composure. “ You ’re immensely tickled, I suppose, to find me losing money ! That comes of worrying too much and handling my funds too often. Yes, I have worried too much.” He paused, and then, suddenly, he broke out into a kind of fury. “ I hate waste, I hate shiftlessness, I hate nasty mismanagement ! I hate to see money bring in less than it may. My imagination loves a good investment. I respect my property, I respect other people’s. But your own honesty is all you ’ll find in this world, and it will go no farther than you ’re there to carry it. You’ve always thought me hard and suspicious and grasping. No, you never said so ; should I have cared if you had ? With your means, it’s all very well to be a fine gentleman, to skip the items and glance at the total. But, being poor and sick, I have to be close. I was n’t close enough. What do you think of my having been cheated ? — cheated under my very nose ? I hope I’m genteel enough now ! ”

“ I should like to see the man ! ” I cried.

“ You shall see him. All the world shall see him. I ’ve been looking into the matter. It has been beautifully done. If I were to be a rascal, I should like to be just such a one.”

“ Who is your rascal ? ”

“ His name is John Guest.”

I had heard the name, but had never seen the man.

“No, you don’t know him,” Edgar went on. “ No one knows him but I. But I know him well. He had things in his hands for a week, while I was debating a transfer of my New Jersey property. In a week this is how he mixed matters.”

“ Perhaps, if you had given him time,” I suggested, “ he meant to get them straight again.”

“O, I shall give him time. I mean he shall get ’em straight, or I shall twist him so crooked his best friend won’t know him.”

“ Did you never suspect his honesty ? ”

“ Do you suspect mine ?”

“ But you have legal redress ? ”

“It’s no thanks to him. He had fixed things to a charm, he had done his best to cut me off and cover his escape. But I’ve got him, and he shall disgorge ! ”

I hardly know why it was ; but the implacable firmness of my brother’s position produced in my mind a sort of fantastic reaction in favor of Mr. John Guest. I felt a sudden gush of the most inconsequent pity. “Poor man!” I exclaimed. But to repair my weakness, I plunged into a series of sympathetic questions and listened attentively to Edgar’s statement of his wrongs. As he set forth the case, I found myself taking a whimsical interest in Mr. Guest’s own side of it, wondering whether he suspected suspicion, whether he dreaded conviction, whether he had an easy conscience, and how he was getting through the hot weather. I asked Edgar how lately he had discovered his loss and whether he had since communicated with the criminal.

“ Three days ago, three nights ago, rather ; for I have n’t slept a wink since. I have spoken of the matter to no one ; for the present I need no one’s help, I can help myself. I have n’t seen the man more than three or four times ; our dealings have generally been by letter. The last person you’d suspect. He’s as great a dandy as you yourself, and in better taste, too. I was told ten days ago, at his office, that he had gone out of town. I suppose I’m paying for his champagne at Newport.”

II.

On my proposing, half an hour later, to relieve him of my society and allow him to prepare for rest, Edgar declared that our talk had put an end to sleep and that he must take a turn in the open air. On descending to the piazza, we found it in the deserted condition into which it usually lapsed about ten o’clock ; either from a wholesome desire on the part of our fellow-lodgers to keep classic country hours, or from the soporific influences of excessive leisure. Here and there the warm darkness was relieved by the red tip of a cigar in suggestive proximity to a light corsage. I observed, as we strolled along, a lady of striking appearance, seated in the zone of light projected from a window, in conversation with a gentleman. “ Really, I’m afraid you ’ll take cold,” I heard her say as we passed. “ Let me tie my handkerchief round your neck.” And she gave it a playful twist. She was a pretty woman, of middle age, with great freshness of toilet and complexion, and a picturesque abundance of blond hair, upon which was coquettishly poised a fantastic little hat, decorated with an immense pink rose. Her companion, was a seemingly affable man, with a bald head, a white waistcoat, and a rather florid air of distinction. When we passed them a second time, they had risen and the lady was preparing to enter the house. Her companion went with her to the door ; she left him with a great deal of coquettish by-play, and he turned back to the piazza. At this moment his glance fell upon my step-brother. He started, I thought, and then, replacing his hat with an odd, nervous decision, came towards him with a smile. “ Mr. Musgrave ! ” he said.

Edgar stopped short, and for a moment seemed to lack words to reply. At last he uttered a deep, harsh note : " Mr. Guest ! ”

In an instant I felt that I was in the presence of a “situation.” Edgar’s words had the sound of the “click” upon the limb of the entrapped fox. A scene was imminent ; the actors were only awaiting their cues. Mr. Guest made a half-offer of his hand, but, perceiving no response in Edgar’s, he gracefully dipped it into his pocket. “ You must have just come ! ” he murmured.

“A couple of hours ago.”

Mr. Guest glanced at me, as if to include me in the operation of his urbanity, and his glance stirred in my soul an impulse of that kindness which we feel for a man about to be executed. It’s no more than human to wish to shake hands with him. “ Introduce me, Edgar,” I said.

“ My step-brother,” said Edgar, curtly. “ This is Mr. Guest, of whom we have been talking.”

I put out my hand; he took it with cordiality. “ Really,” he declared, “this is a most unexpected — a — circumstance.”

“ Altogether so to me,” said Edgar.

“You’ve come for the waters, I suppose,” our friend went on. “ I’m sorry your health continues — a — unsatisfactory.”

Edgar, I perceived, was in a state of extreme nervous exacerbation, the result partly of mere surprise and partly of keen disappointment. His plans had been checked. He had determined to do thus and so, and he must now extemporize a policy. Well, as poor, pompous Mr. Guest wished it, so he should have it! “I shall never be strong,” said Edgar.

“ Well, well,” responded Mr. Guest, “a man of your parts may make a little strength serve a great purpose.”

My step-brother was silent a moment, relishing secretly, I think, the beautiful pertinence of this observation. “ I suppose I can defend my rights,” he rejoined.

“Exactly ! What more does a man need?” and he appealed to me with an insinuating smile. His smile was singularly frank and agreeable, and his glance full of a sort of conciliating gallantry. I noted in his face, however, by the gaslight, a haggard, jaded look which lent force to what he went on to say. “ I have been feeling lately as if I hadn’t even strength for that. The hot weather, an overdose of this abominable water, one thing and another, the inevitable premonitions of — a — mortality, have quite pulled me down. Since my arrival here, ten days ago, I have really been quite — a — the invalid. I’ve actually been in bed. A most unprecedented occurrence ! ”

“ I hope you ’re better,” I ventured to say.

“ Yes, I think I’m myself again, — thanks to capital nursing. I think I’m myself again ! ” He repeated his words mechanically, with a sort of exaggerated gayety, and began to wipe his forehead with his handkerchief. Edgar was watching him narrowly, with an eye whose keenness it was impossible to veil ; and I think Edgar’s eye partly caused his disquiet. “The last thing I did, by the way, before my indisposition, was to write you ten lines, Mr. Musgrave, on — a little matter of business.”

“ I got your letter,” said Edgar, grimly.

Mr. Guest was silent a moment. “ And I hope my arrangements have met your approval ?”

“ We shall talk of that,” said Edgar.

At this point, I confess, my interest in the situation had become painful. I felt sick. I’m not a man of readymade resolution, as my story will abundantly prove. I am discountenanced and bullied by disagreeable things. Poor Mr. Guest was so infallibly booked for exposure that I instinctively retreated. Taking advantage of his allusion to business, I turned away and walked to the other end of the piazza. This genial gentleman, then, was embodied fraud ! this sayer of civil things was a doer of monstrously shabby ones ! that irreproachable white waistcoat carried so sadly spotted a conscience ! Whom had he involved in his dishonor ? Had he a wife, children, friends ? Who was that so prosperously pretty woman, with her flattering solicitude for his health ? I stood for some time reflecting how guilt is not the vulgar bugaboo we fancy it,— that it has organs, senses, affections, passions, for all the world like those of innocence. Indeed, from ray cursory observation of my friend, I had rarely seen innocence so handsomely featured. Where, then, was the line which severed rectitude from error ? Was manhood a baser thing than I had fancied, or was sin a thing less base ? As I mused thus, my disgust ebbed away, and the return of the wave brought an immense curiosity to see what it had come to betwixt guilt and justice. Had Edgar launched his thunder ? I retraced my steps and rejoined my companions. Edgar’s thunder was apparently still in the clouds ; but there had been a premonitory flash of lightning. Guest stood before him, paler than before, staring defiantly, and stammering out some fierce denial. " I don’t understand you,” he said. “ If you mean what you seem to mean, you mean rank insult.”

“ I mean the truth,” said Edgar. “It ’s a pity the truth should be insulting.”

Guest glared a moment, like a man intently taking thought for self-defence. But he was piteously unmasked. His genial smile had taken flight and left mere vulgar confusion. “This is between ourselves, sir,” he cried, angrily turning to me.

“ A thousand pardons,” I said, and passed along. I began to be doubtful as to the issue of the quarrel. Edgar had right on his side, but, under the circumstances, he might not have force. Guest was altogether the stouter, bigger, weightier person. I turned and observed them from a distance. Edgar’s thunderbolt had fallen and his victim stood stunned. He was leaning against the balustrade of the piazza, with his chin on his breast and his eyes sullenly fixed on his adversary, demoralized and convicted. His hat had dropped upon the floor. Edgar seemed to have made a proposal; with a passionate gesture he repeated it. Guest slowly stooped and picked up his hat, and Edgar led the way toward the house. A series of small sittingrooms opened by long windows upon the piazza. These were for the most part lighted and empty. Edgar selected one of them, and, stopping before the window, beckoned to me to come to him. Guest, as I advanced, bestowed upon me a scowl of concentrated protest. I felt, for my own part, as if I were horribly indelicate. Between Edgar and him it was a question of morals, but between him and myself it was, of course, but one of manners. “ Be so good as to walk in,” said Edgar, turning to me with a smile of unprecedented suavity. I might have resisted his dictation ; I could n’t his petition.

“ In God’s name, what do you mean to do ? ” demanded Guest.

“ My duty ! ” said Edgar. “ Go in.”

We passed into the room. The door of the corridor was open ; Guest closed it with a passionate kick. Edgar shut the long window and dropped the curtain. In the same fury of mortification, Guest turned out one of the two burners of the chandelier. There was still light enough, however, for me to see him more distinctly than on the piazza. He was tallish and stoutish, and yet sleek and jaunty. His fine blue eye was a trifle weak, perhaps, and his handsome grizzled beard was something too foppishly trimmed ; but, on the whole, he was a most comely man. He was dressed with the punctilious elegance of a man who loved luxury and appreciated his own good points. A little moss-rosebud figured in the lappet of his dark-blue coat. His whole person seemed redolent of what are called the “feelings of a gentleman.” Confronted and contrasted with him under the lamp, my step-brother seemed wofully mean and grotesque ; though for a conflict of forces that lay beneath the surface, he was visibly the better equipped of the two. He seemed to tremble and quiver with inexorable purpose. I felt that he would heed no admonitory word of mine, that I could not in the least hope to blunt the edge of his resentment, and that I must on the instant decide either to stand by him or leave him. But while I stood thus ungraciously gazing at poor Guest, the instant passed. Curiosity and a mingled sympathy with each — to say nothing of a touch of that relish for a fight inherent in the truly masculine bosom — sealed my lips and arrested my steps. And yet my heart paid this graceful culprit the compliment of beating very violently on his behalf.

“ I wish you to repeat before my brother,” said Edgar, “the three succinct denials to which you have just treated me.”

Guest looked at the ceiling with a trembling lip. Then dropping upon the sofa, he began to inspect his handsome finger-nails mechanically, in the manner of one who hears in some horrible hush of all nature the nearing footsteps of doom. “ Come, repeat them ! ” cried Edgar. “ It’s really delicious. You never wrote to Stevens that you had my assent in writing to the sale of the bonds. You never showed Stevens my telegram from Boston, and assured him that my ‘ Do as you think best ‘ was a permission to raise money on them. If it ’s not forgery sir, it ’s next door to it, and a very flimsy partition between.”

Guest leaned back on the sofa, with his hands grasping his knees. “ You might have let things stand a week or so,” he said, with unnatural mildness. “ You might have had common patience. Good God, there’s a gentlemanly way of doing things ! A man does n’t begin to roar for a pinch. I would have got things square again.”

“ O, it would have been a pity to spoil them ! It was such a pretty piece of knavery ! Give the deVil his due ! ”

“ I would have rearranged matters,” Guest went on. “ It was just a temporary convenience. I supposed I was dealing with a man of common courtesy. But what are you to say to a gentleman who says, ‘ Sir, I trust you,’and then looks through the keyhole ? ”

“ Upon my word, when I hear you scuttling through the window,” cried Edgar, “I think it’s time I should break down the door. For God’s sake, don’t nauseate me with any more lies ! You know as well as you sit there, that you had neither chance nor means nor desire to redeem your fraud. You 'd cut the bridge behind you ! You thought you 'd been knowing enough to eat your cake and have it, to lose your virtue and keep your reputation, to sink half my property through a trap-door and then stand whistling and looking t' other way while I scratched my head and wondered what the devil was in it ! Sit down there and write me your note for twenty thousand dollars at twenty days.”

Guest was silent a moment. “ Propose something reasonable,” he said, with the same tragic gentleness.

“ I shall let the law reason about it.”

Guest gave a little start and fixed his eyes on the ground. “ The law would n’t help you,” he answered, without looking up.

“ Indeed ! do you think it would help you ? Stoddard and Hale will help me. I spoke to them this morning.”

Guest sprang to his feet. “ Good heavens ! I hope you mentioned no names.”

“ Only one ! ” said Edgar.

Guest wiped his forehead and actually tried to smile. “That was your own, of course ! Well, sir, I hope they advised you to — a — temper justice with mercy.”

“ They are not parsons, Mr. Guest ; they are lawyers. They accept the case.”

Guest dropped on the sofa, buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears. “ O my soul ! ” he cried. His soul, poor man ! was a rough term for name and fame and comfort and all that made his universe. It was a pitiful sight.

“ Look here, Edgar,” I said. “ Don’t press things too hard. I’m not a parson either — ”

“ No, you’ve not that excuse for your sentimentality ! ” Edgar broke out. “ Here it is, of course ! Here come folly and fear and ignorance maundering against the primary laws of life ! Is rascality alone of all things in the world to be handled without gloves ? Did n’t he press me hard ? He’s danced his dance,— let him pay the piper ! Am I a child, a woman, a fool, to stand and haggle with a swindler ? Am I to go to the wall to make room for impudent fraud ? Not while I have eyes to know black from white ! I ’m a decent man. I’m this or I’m nothing. For twenty years I’ve done my best for order and thrift and honesty. I’ve never yielded an inch to the detestable sharp practice that meets one nowadays at every turn. I’ve hated fraud as I hate all bad economy ; I’ve no more patience with it than a bull with a red rag. Fraud is fraud; it’s waste, it’s wantonness, it’s chaos ; and I shall never give it the go-by. When I catch it, I shall hold it fast, and call all honest men to see how vile and drivelling a thing it is ! ”

Guest sat rigidly fixed, with his eyes on the carpet. “Do you expect to get your money ?” he finally demanded.

“ My money be hanged ! I expect to let people know how they may be served if they intrust their affairs to you ! A man’s property, sir, is a man’s person. It’s as if you had given me a blow in the chest ! ”

Guest came towards him and took him by the button-hole. “Now see here,” he said, with the same desperate calmness. “ You call yourself a practical man. Don’t go on like one of those d—d long-haired reformers. You ’re off the track. Don’t attempt too much. Don’t make me confoundedly uncomfortable out of pure fantasticality. Come, sir, you ’re a man of the world.” And he patted him gently on the shoulder. “ Give me a chance. I confess to not having been quite square. There ! My very dear sir, let me get on my legs again.”

“ O, you confess ! ” cried Edgar. “ That’s a vast comfort. You ’ll never do it again! Not if I know it. But other people, eh? Suppose I had been a decent widow with six children, and not a penny but that! You’d confess again, I suppose. Would your confession butter their bread ! Let your confession be public ! ”

“ My confession is public ! ” and Guest, with averted eyes, jerked his head towards me.

“O, my step-brother! Why, he’s the most private creature in the world. Cheat him and he ’ll thank you ! David, I retain you as a witness that Mr. Guest has confessed.”

“Nothing will serve you then? You mean to prosecute ? ”

“ I mean to prosecute.”

The poor man’s face flushed crimson, and the great sweat-drops trickled from his temples. “ O you blundering brute ! ” he cried. “ Do you know what you mean when you say that ? Do we live in a civilized world ?”

“ Not altogether,” said Edgar. “ But I shall help it along.”

“ Have you lived among decent people ? Have you known women whom it was an honor to please ? Have you cared for name and fame and love ? Have you had a dear daughter ? ”

“ If I had a dear daughter,” cried Edgar, flinching the least bit at this outbreak, “ I trust my dear daughter would have kept me honest ! Not the sin, then, but the detection unfits a man for ladies’ society ! — Did you kiss your daughter the day you juggled away my bonds ? ”

“ If it will avail with you, I did n’t. Consider her feelings. My fault has been that I have been too tender a father, — that I have loved the poor girl better than my own literal integrity. I became embarrassed because I had n’t the heart to tell her that she must spend less money. As if to the wisest, sweetest girl in the world a whisper would n’t have sufficed ! As if five minutes of her divine advice would n’t have set me straight again ! But the stress of my embarrassment was such — ”

“ Embarrassment ! ” Edgar broke in. “That may mean anything. In the case of an honest man it may be a motive for leniency ; in that of a knave it ’s a ground for increased suspicion.”

Guest, I felt, was a good-natured sinner. Just as he lacked rectitude of purpose, he lacked rigidity of temper, and he found in the mysteries of his own heart no clew to my step-brother’s monstrous implacability. Looking at him from head to foot with a certain dignity,— a reminiscence of his former pomposity, — “ I do you the honor, sir,” he said, “ to believe you are insane.”

“ Stuff and nonsense ! you believe nothing of the sort,” cried Edgar.

I saw that Guest’s opposition was acting upon him as a lively irritant. “Isn’t it possible,” I asked, “to adopt some compromise ? You ’re not as forgiving a man under the circumstances as I should be.”

“In these things,” retorted Edgar, without ceremony, “a forgiving man is a fool.”

“Well, take a fool’s suggestion. You can perhaps get satisfaction without taking your victim into court. — Let Mr. Guest write his confession.”

Guest had not directly looked at me since we entered the room. At these words he slowly turned and gave me a sombre stare by which the brilliancy of my suggestion seemed somewhat obscured. But my interference was kindly meant, and his reception of it seemed rather ungrateful. At best, however, I could be but a thorn in his side. I had done nothing to earn my sport. Edgar hereupon flourished his hand as if to indicate the superfluity of my advice. “ All in good time, if you please. If I’m insane, there’s a method in my madness ! ” He paused, and his eyes glittered with an intensity which might indeed, for the moment, have seemed to be that of a disordered brain. I wondered what was coming. “ Do me the favor to get down on your knees.” Guest jerked himself up as if he had received a galvanic shock. “Yes, I know what I say, — on your knees. Did you never say your prayers ? You can’t get out of a tight place without being squeezed. I won’t take less. I sha’ n’t feel like an honest man till I’ve seen you there at my feet.”

There was in the contrast between the inflated self-complacency of Edgar’s face as he made this speech, and the blank horror of the other’s as he received it, something so poignantly grotesque that it acted upon my nerves like a mistimed joke, and I burst into irrepressible laughter. Guest walked away to the window with some muttered imprecation, pushed aside the curtain, and stood looking out. Then, with a sudden turn, he marched back and stood before my brother. He was drenched with perspiration. “ A moment,” said Edgar. “ You ’re very hot. Take off your coat.” Guest, to my amazement, took it off and flung it upon the floor. “ Your shirt-sleeves will serve as a kind of sackcloth and ashes. Fold your hands, so. Now, beg my pardon.”

It was a revolting sight, — this man of ripe maturity and massive comeliness on his two knees, his pale face bent upon his breast, his body trembling with the effort to keep his shameful balance ; and above him Edgar, with his hands behind his back, solemn and ugly as a miniature idol, with his glittering eyes fixed in a sort of rapture on the opposite wall. I walked away to the window. There was a perfect stillness, broken only by Guest’s hard breathing. I have no notion how long it lasted ; when I turned back into the room he was still speechless and fixed, as if he were ashamed to rise. Edgar pointed to a blotting-book and inkstand which stood on a small table against the wall. “ See if there is pen and paper ! ” I obeyed and made a clatter at the table, to cover our companion’s retreat. When I had laid out a sheet of paper he was on his feet again. “ Sit down and write,” Edgar went on. Guest picked up his coat and busied himself mechanically with brushing off the particles of dust. Then he put it on and sat down at the table.

“ I dictate,” Edgar began. “ I hereby, at the command of Edgar Musgrave, Esq., whom I have grossly wronged, declare myself a swindler.” At these words, Guest laid down the pen and sank back in his chair, emitting long groans, like a man with a violent toothache. But he had taken that first step which costs, and after a moment’s rest he started afresh. “ I have on my bended knees, in the presence of Mr. Musgrave and his step-brother, expressed my contrition ; in consideration of which Mr. Musgrave forfeits his incontestable right to publish his injury in a court of justice. Furthermore, I solemnly declare myself his debtor in the sum of twenty thousand dollars ; which, on his remission of the interest, and under pain of exposure in a contrary event, I pledge myself to repay at the earliest possible moment. I thank Mr. Musgrave for his generosity.”

Edgar spoke very slowly, and the scratching of Guest’s pen kept pace with his words. “ Now sign and date,” he said ; and the other, with a great heroic dash, consummated this amazing document. He then pushed it away, and rose and bestowed upon us a look which I long remembered. An outraged human soul was abroad in the world, with which henceforth I felt I should have somehow to reckon.

Edgar possessed himself of the paper and read it coolly to the end, without blushing. Happy Edgar! Guest watched him fold it and put it into his great morocco pocket-book. “ I suppose,” said Guest, “ that this is the end of your generosity.”

“ I have nothing further to remark,” said Edgar.

“ Have you, by chance, anything to remark, Mr. Step-brother ?” Guest demanded, turning to me, with a fierceness which showed how my presence galled him.

I had been, to my own sense, so abjectly passive during the whole scene that, to reinstate myself as a responsible creature, I attempted to utter an original sentiment. “ I pity you,” I said.

But I had not been happy in my choice. “Faugh, you great hulking brute !” Guest roared, for an answer.

The scene at this point might have passed into another phase, had it not been interrupted by the opening of the door from the corridor. “A lady !” announced a servant, flinging it back.

The lady revealed herself as the friend with whom Guest had been in conversation on the piazza. She was apparently, of his nature, not a person to mind the trifle of her friend’s being accompanied by two unknown gentlemen, and she advanced, shawled as if for departure, and smiling reproachfully. “ Ah, you ungrateful creature,” she cried, “ you 've lost my rosebud ! ”

Guest came up smiling, as they say. “ Your own hands fastened it ! — Where is my daughter ? ”

“ She’s coming. We ’ve been looking for you, high and low. What on earth have you been doing here ? Business ? You 've no business with business. You came here to rest. Excuse me, gentlemen ! My carriage has been waiting this ten minutes. Give me your arm.”

It seemed to me time we should disembarrass the poor man of our presence. I opened the window and stepped out upon the piazza. Just as Edgar had followed me, a young lady hastily entered the room.

“ My dearest father ! ” she exclaimed.

Looking at her unseen from without, I recognized with amazement my charming friend of the Episcopal chapel, the woman to whom — I felt it now with a sort of convulsion — I had dedicated a sentiment.

III.

My discovery gave me that night much to think of, and I thought of it more than I slept. My foremost feeling was one of blank dismay as if Misfortune, whom I had been used to regard as a good-natured sort of goddess, who came on with an easy stride, letting off signals of warning to those who stood in her path, should have blinded her lantern and muffled her steps in order to steal a march on poor me, — of all men in the world! It seemed a hideous practical joke. “ If I had known, — if I had only known ! ” I kept restlessly repeating. But towards morning, “ Say I had known,” I asked myself, “ could I have acted otherwise ? I might have protested by my absence ; but would I not thus have surrendered poor Guest to the vengeance of a very Shylock ? Had not that suggestion of mine divested the current of Edgar’s wrath and saved his adversary from the last dishonor ? Without it, Edgar would have held his course and demanded his pound of flesh ! ” Say what I would, however, I stood confronted with this acutely uncomfortable fact, that by lending a hand at that revolting interview, I had struck a roundabout blow at the woman to whom I owed a signally sweet impression. Well, my blow would never reach her, and I would devise some kindness that should ! So I consoled myself, and in the midst of my regret I found a still further compensation in the thought that chance, rough-handed though it had been, had forged between us a stouter bond than any I had ventured to dream of as I walked sentimental a few hours before. Her father’s being a rascal threw her image into more eloquent relief. If she suspected it, she had all the interest of sorrow ; if not, she wore the tender grace of danger.

The result of my meditations was that I determined to defer indefinitely my departure from L—. Edgar informed me, in the course of the following day, that Guest had gone by the early train to New York, and that his daughter had left the hotel (where my not having met her before was apparently the result of her constant attendance on her father during his illness) and taken up her residence with the lady in whose company we had seen her. Mrs. Beck, Edgar had learned this lady’s name to be ; and I fancied it was upon her that Miss Guest had made her morning call. To begin with, therefore, I knew where to look for her. “ That ’s the charming girl,” I said to Edgar, “ whom you might have plunged into disgrace.”

“ How do you know she’s charming ? ” he asked.

“ I judge by her face.”

“ Humph ! Judge her father by his face and he’s charming.”

I was on the point of assuring my step-brother that no such thing could be said of him ; but in fact he had suddenly assumed a singularly fresh and jovial air. “ I don’t know what it is,” he said, “ but I feel like a trump ; I have n’t stood so firm on my legs in a twelvemonth. I wonder whether the waters have already begun to act. Really, I’m elated. Suppose, in the afternoon of my life, I were to turn out a sound man. It winds me up, sir. I shall take another glass before dinner.”

To do Miss Guest a kindness, I reflected, I must see her again. How to compass an interview and irradiate my benevolence, it was not easy to determine. Sooner or later, of course, the chances of watering-place life would serve me. Meanwhile, I felt most agreeably that here was something more finely romantic than that feverish dream of my youth, treating Edgar some fine day to the snub direct. Assuredly, I was not in love ; I had cherished a youthful passion, and I knew the signs and symptoms ; but I was in a state of mind that really gave something of the same zest to consciousness. For a couple of days I watched and waited for my friend in those few public resorts in which the little world of L— used most to congregate, — the drive, the walk, the post-office, and the vicinage of the spring. At last, as she was nowhere visible, I betook myself to the little Episcopal chapel, and strolled along the road, past a scattered cluster of decent boarding-houses, in one of which I imagined her hidden. But most of them had a shady strip of garden stretching toward the river, and thitherward, of course, rather than upon the public road, their inmates were likely to turn their faces. A happy accident at last came to my aid. After three or four days at the hotel, Edgar began to complain that the music in the evening kept him awake and to wonder whether he might find tolerable private lodgings. He was more and more interested in the waters. I offered, with alacrity, to make inquiries for him, and as a first step, I returned to the little colony of riverside boarding-houses. I began with one I had made especial note of, — the smallest, neatest, and most secluded. I he mistress of the establishment was at a neighbor’s, and I was requested to await her return. I stepped out of the long parlor window, and began hopefully to explore the garden. My hopes were brightly rewarded. In a shady summer-house, on a sort of rustic embankment, overlooking the stream, I encountered Miss Guest and her coquettish duenna. She looked at me for a moment with a dubious air, as if to satisfy herself that she was distinctly expected to recognize me, and then, as I stood proclaiming my hopes in an appealing smile, she bade me a frank good-morning. We talked, I lingered, and at last, when the proper moment came for my going my way again, I sat down and paid a call in form.

“ I see you know my name,” Miss Guest said, with the peculiar — the almost boyish — directness which seemed to be her most striking feature ; “ I can't imagine how you learned it, but if you ’ll be so good as to tell me your own, I ’ll introduce you to Mrs. Beck. You must learn that she ’s my deputed chaperon, my she-dragon, and that I ’m not to know you unless she knows you first and approves.”

Mrs. Beck poised a gold eye-glass upon her pretty retroussé nose, — not sorry, I think, to hold it there a moment with a plump white hand and acquit herself of one of her most effective manœuvres, — and glanced at me with mock severity. “ He’s a harmlesslooking young man, my dear,” she declared, “and I don’t think your father would object.” And with this odd sanction I became intimate with Miss Guest, — intimate as, by the soft operation of summer and rural juxtaposition, an American youth is free to become with an American maid. I had told my friends, of course, the purpose of my visit, and learned, with complete satisfaction, that there was no chance for Mr. Musgrave, as they occupied the only three comfortable rooms in the house, — two as bedrooms, the third as a common parlor. Heaven forbid that I should introduce Edgar dans cette galère. I inquired elsewhere, but saw nothing I could recommend, and, on making my report to him, found him quite out of conceit of his project. A lady had just been telling him horrors of the local dietary and making him feel that he was vastly well off with the heavy bread and cold gravy of the hotel. It was then too, I think, he first mentioned the symptoms of that relapse which subsequently occurred. He would run no risks.

I had prepared Miss Guest, I fancy, to regard another visit as a matter of course. I paid several in rapid succession ; for, under the circumstances, it would have been a pity to be shy. Her father, she told me, expected to be occupied for three or four weeks in New York, so that for the present t was at ease on that score. If I was to please, I must go bravely to work. So I burned my ships behind me, and blundered into gallantry with an ardor over which, in my absence, the two ladies must have mingled their smiles. I don’t suppose I passed for an especially knowing fellow ; but I kept my friends from wearying of each other (for such other chance acquaintances as the place afforded they seemed to have little inclination), and by my services as a retailer of the local gossip, a reader of light literature, an explorer and suggester of drives and strolls, and, more particularly, as an oarsman in certain happy rowing-parties on the placid river whose slow, safe current made such a pretty affectation of Mrs. Beck’s little shrieks and shudders, I very fairly earned my welcome. That detestable scene at the hotel used to seem a sort of horrid fable as I sat in the sacred rural stillness, in that peaceful streamside nook, learning what a divinely honest girl she was, this daughter of the man whose dishonesty I had so complacently attested. I wasted many an hour in wondering on what terms she stood with her father’s rankling secret, with his poor pompous peccability in general, if not with Edgar’s particular grievance. I used to fancy that certain momentary snatches of revery in the midst of our gayety, and even more, certain effusions of wilful and excessive gayety at our duller moments, portended some vague torment in her filial heart. She would quit her place and wander apart for a while, leaving me to gossip it out with Mrs. Beck, as if she were oppressed by the constant need of seeming interested in us. But she would come back with a face that told so few tales that I always ended by keeping my compassion in the case for myself, and being reminded afresh, by my lively indisposition to be thus grossly lumped, as it were, with the duenna, of how much I was interested in the damsel. In truth, the romance of the matter apart, Miss Guest was a lovely girl. I had read her dimly in the little chapel, but I had read her aright. Felicity in freedom, that was her great charm. I have never known a woman so simply and sincerely original, so finely framed to enlist the imagination and hold expectation in suspense, and yet leave the judgment in such blissful quietude. She had a genius for frankness ; this was her only coquetry and her only cleverness, and a woman could not have acquitted herself more naturally of the trying and ungracious rôle of being expected to be startling. It was the pure personal accent of Miss Guest’s walk and conversation that gave them this charm; everything she did and said was gilded by a ray of conviction ; and to a respectful admirer who had not penetrated to the sources of spiritual motive in her being, this sweet, natural, various emphasis of conduct was ineffably provoking. Her creed, as I guessed it, might have been resumed in the simple notion that a man should do his best ; and nature had treated her, I fancied, to some brighter vision of uttermost manhood than illumined most honest fellows’ consciences. Frank as she was, I imagined she had a remote reserve of holiest contempt. She made me feel deplorably ignorant and idle and unambitious, a foolish, boyish spendthrift of time and strength and means ; and I speedily came to believe that to win her perfect favor was a matter of something more than undoing a stupid wrong, — doing, namely, some very pretty piece of right. And she was poor Mr. Guest’s daughter, withal ! Truly, fate was a master of irony.

I ought in justice to say that I had Mrs. Beck more particularly to thank for my welcome, and for the easy terms on which I had become an habitué of the little summer-house by the river. How could I know how much or how little the younger lady meant by her smiles and hand-shakes, by laughing at my jokes and consenting to be rowed about in my boat ? Mrs. Beck made no secret of her relish for the society of a decently agreeable man, or of her deeming some such pastime the indispensable spice of life ; and in Mr. Guest’s absence, I was graciously admitted to competition. The precise nature of their mutual sentiments — Mr. Guest’s and hers— I was slightly puzzled to divine, and in so far as my conjectures seemed plausible, I confess they served as but a scanty offset to my knowledge of the gentleman’s foibles. This lady was, to my sense, a very artificial charmer, and I think that a goodly portion of my admiration for Miss Guest rested upon a little private theory that for her father’s sake she thus heroically accepted a companion whom she must have relished but little. Mrs. Beck’s great point was her “preservation.” It was rather too great a point for my taste, and partook too much of the nature of a physiological curiosity. Her age really mattered little, for with as many years as you pleased one way or the other, she was still a triumph of juvenility. Plump, rosy, dimpled, frizzled, with rings on her fingers and rosettes on her toes, she used to seem to me a sort of fantastic vagary or humorous experiment of time. Or, she might have been fancied a strayed shepherdess from some rococo Arcadia, which had melted into tradition during some profane excursion of her own, so that she found herself saddled in our prosy modern world with this absurdly perpetual prime. All this was true, at least of her pretty face and figure ; but there was another Mrs. Beck, visible chiefly to the moral eye, who seemed to me excessively wrinkled and faded and world-wise, and whom I used to fancy I could hear shaking about in this enamelled envelope, like a dried nut in its shell. Mrs. Beck’s morality was not Arcadian ; or if it was, it was that of a shepherdess with a keen eye to the state of the wool and the mutton market, and a lively perception of the possible advantages of judicious partnership. She had no design, I suppose, of proposing to me a consolidation of our sentimental and pecuniary interests, but she performed her duties of duenna with such conscientious precision that she shared my society most impartially with Miss Guest. I never had the good fortune of finding myself alone with this young lady. She might have managed it, I fancied, if she had wished, and the little care she took about it was a sign of that indifference which stirs the susceptible heart to effort. “It’s really detestable,” I at last ventured to seize the chance to declare, “ that you and I should never be alone.”

Miss Guest looked at me with an air of surprise. “ Your remark is startling,” she said, “unless you have some excellent reason for demanding this interesting seclusion.”

My reason was not ready just yet, but it speedily ripened. A happy incident combined at once to bring it to maturity and to operate a diversion for Mrs. Beck. One morning there appeared a certain Mr. Crawford out of the West, a worthy bachelor who introduced himself to Mrs. Beck and claimed cousinship. I was present at the moment, and I could not but admire the skill with which the lady gauged her aspiring kinsman before saying yea or nay to his claims. I think the large diamond in his shirt-front decided her ; what he may have lacked in elegant culture was supplied by this massive ornament. Better and brighter than his diamond, however, was his frank Western bonhomie, his simple friendliness, and a certain half-boyish modesty which made him give a humorous twist to any expression of the finer sentiments. He was a tall, lean gentleman, on the right side of forty, yellow-haired, with a somewhat arid complexion, an irrepressible tendency to cock back his hat and chew his toothpick, and a spasmodic liability, spasmodically repressed when in a sedentary posture, to a centrifugal movement of the heels. He had a clear blue eye, in which simplicity and shrewdness contended and mingled in so lively a fashion that his glance was the oddest dramatic twinkle. He was a genial sceptic. If he disbelieved much that he saw, he believed everything he fancied, and for a man who had seen much of the rougher and baser side of life, he was able to fancy some very gracious things of men, to say nothing of women. He took his place as a very convenient fourth in our little party, and without obtruding his eccentricities, or being too often reminded of a story, like many cooler humorists, he treated us to a hundred anecdotes of his adventurous ascent of the ladder of fortune. The upshot of his history was that he was now owner of a silver mine in Arizona, and that he proposed in his own words to “ lay off and choose.” Of the nature of his choice he modestly waived specification ; it of course had reference to the sex of which Mrs. Beck was an ornament. He lounged about meanwhile with his hands in his pockets, watching the flies buzz with that air of ecstatically suspended resolve proper to a man who has sunk a shaft deep into the very stuff that dreams are made of. But in spite of shyness he exhaled an atmosphere of regretful celibacy which might have relaxed the conjugal piety of a more tenderly mourning widow than Mrs. Beck. His bachelor days were evidently numbered, and unless I was vastly mistaken, it lay in this lady’s discretion to determine the residuary figure. The two were just nearly enough akin to save a deal of time in Courtship.

Crawford had never beheld so finished a piece of ladyhood, and it pleased and puzzled him and quickened his honest grin very much as a remarkably neat mechanical toy might have done. Plain people who have lived close to frank nature often think more of a fine crisp muslin rose than of a group of dewy petals of garden growth. Before ten days were past, he had begun to fumble tenderly with the stem of this unfading flower. Mr. Crawford’s petits soins had something too much of the ring of the small change of the Arizona silver-mine, consisting largely as they did of rather rudimentary nosegays compounded by amateur florists from the local front-yards, of huge bundles of “New York candy” from the village store, and of an infinite variety of birch-bark and bead-work trinkets. He was no simpleton, and it occurred to me, indeed, that if these offerings were not the tokens and pledges of a sentiment, they were the offset and substitute of a sentiment ; but if they were profuse for that, they were scanty for this. Mrs. Beck, for her part, seemed minded to spin the thread of decision excessively fine. A silver-mine was all very well, but a lover fresh from the diggings was to be put on probation. Crawford lodged at the hotel, and our comings and goings were often made together. He indulged in many a dry compliment to his cousin, and, indeed, declared that she was a magnificent little woman. It was with surprise, therefore, that I learned that his admiration was divided. “ I’ve never seen one just like her,” he said ; “one so out and out a woman, — smiles and tears and everything else ! But Clara comes out with her notions, and a man may know what to expect. I guess I can afford a wife with a notion or so ! Short of the moon, I can give her what she wants.” And I seemed to hear his hands producing in his pockets that Arizonian tinkle which served with him as the prelude to renewed utterance. He went on, “ And tells me I must n’t make love to my grandmother. That’s a very pretty way of confessing to thirty-five. She ‘s a bit of coquette, is Clara ! ” I handled the honest fellow’s illusions as tenderly as I could, and at last he eyed me askance with a knowing air. “You praise my cousin,” he said, “because you think I want you to. On the contrary, I want you to say something against her. If there is anything, I want to know it.” I declared I knew nothing in the world ; whereupon Crawford, after a silence, heaved an impatient sigh.

“ Really,” said I, laughing, “ one would think you were disappointed.”

“ I wanted to draw you out,” he cried ; “ but you ’re too confoundedly polite. I suppose Mrs. Beck’s to be my fate ; it’s borne in on me. I’m being roped in fast. But I only want a little backing to hang off awhile. Look here,” he added suddenly, “let’s be frank ! ” and he stopped and laid his hand on my arm. “That other young lady is n’t so pretty as Mrs. Beck, but it seems to me I’d kind of trust her further. You did n’t know I'd noticed her. Well, I've taken her in little by little, just as she gives herself out. Jerusalem ! there’s a woman. But you know it, sir, if I’m not mistaken ; and that’s where the shoe pinches. First come, first served. I want to act on the square. Before I settle down to Mrs. Beck, I want to know distinctly whether you put in a claim to Miss Guest.”

The question was unexpected and found me but half prepared. “ A claim?” I said. “Well, yes, call it a claim ! ”

“ Any way,” he rejoined, “ I’ve no chance. She’d never look at me. But I want to have her put out of my own head, so that I can concentrate on Mrs. B. If you ’re not in love with her, my boy, let me tell you you ought to be ! If you are, I ’ve nothing to do but to wish you success. If you ’re not, upon my word, I don’t know but what I would go in ! She could but refuse me. Modesty is all very well ; but after all, it’s the handsomest thing you can do by a woman to offer yourself. As a compliment alone, it would serve. And really, a compliment with a round million is n’t so bad as gallantry goes hereabouts. You ’re young and smart and good-looking, and Mrs. Beck tells me you ’re rich. If you succeed, you ’ll have more than your share of good things. But Fortune has her favorites, and they’re not always such nice young men. If you ’re in love, well and good ! If you ’re not, — by Jove, I am ! ”

This admonition was peremptory. My companion’s face in the clear starlight betrayed his sagacious sincerity. I felt a sudden satisfaction in being summoned to take my stand. I performed a rapid operation in sentimental arithmetic, combined my factors, and established my total. It exceeded expectation. “ Your frankness does you honor,” I said, “ and I’m sorry I can’t make a kinder return. But — I’m madly in love ! ”

H. James Jr.