Felicia

XVI.

FELICIA walked rapidly, as if with definite purpose. By degrees she entered a region that gave evidence of more prosperity and comfort. Still going westward, she came at last into a fashionable neighborhood of showy dwellings, ambitious in architecture and finish, the abodes of the wealthy class of the city.

The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand. Snow was again falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were. Lights had sprung into many windows; the round dimpled faces of children looked out sometimes. In front of one of the large houses a florist’s wagon had drawn up to the curb, giving suggestions of impending festivity. Before a great stone church stood a number of carriages; and presently there was a stir among the expectant groups on the sidewalk, as a bridal party emerged from the arched doorway. And at the next corner was a procession returning from the cemetery: a hearse with sombre plumes, and vehicles containing blackrobed figures with chilled, grief-marked faces. The muffled drivers urged their tired horses. Darkness was gathering fast. The still, snow-covered city of the dead lay miles away in the dusk.

She had no sympathies, no reflections, no deductions, half acquiescent, half philosophical ; no “ bonheur, malheur, tout passe,” as a mental comment. In certain states of feeling one’s own grief dwarfs the universe, annihilates joy and sorrow, save as factors in one’s own fate.

She had reached that very desirable corner and the new big double house. She paused suddenly. The window shades had not been drawn, but the gas was lighted. She seemed to have stood thus in front of the building many times, and looked in at the glowing room, so vividly had she imagined the situation. It was all exactly as she had pictured it,—the chandeliers, the paintings, the upholstery. And here was John; just in from dinner, no doubt, for he threw himself into an easy-chair, and caught up the paper with his own inimitable, long, visible, post-prandial sigh. And here was Sophie, sinking into her rocking-chair, with the baby in her arms. The baby — no, another baby. Ah, changes of which she was never apprised came in their family life, from which she was excluded. The old baby, the superseded baby, her namesake, little Felicia, was walking sturdily across the floor in her dainty white dress, with her soft fair hair about her brow, holding out her dimpled hands toward — Oh, why had she come, —why had she come! Suddenly she saw her father, unchanged, save perhaps that his hair had a more silvery gleam. He stooped and took the child in his arms; he kissed the delicate cheek. Did he call her “ little daughter ” ? Did he say in his old, tender, peremptory tone, “ Felicia”? Did he never remember another Felicia, whose heart was breaking?

She got back to the hotel as best she could. She was so white, so rigid, with the effort at self-command that, as she met Kennett in the hall, near their room, he looked at her in alarm.

“ Has anything happened ? ” he exclaimed.

She entered the room, and he followed her. Then, as she closed the door, she confronted him with haggard eyes.

“ Can I endure it longer ? ” she cried, wildly. “ Can I live like this ? Live ! Am I living ? And yet I am not dead. I could not suffer so if I were dead.”

He saw it at last. She was suffering poignantly. He attempted to soothe her.

“ Don’t try to comfort me ! ” she said. “ Don’t tell me it does n’t matter. We must face it; we must meet it.”

“ Now be calm, Felicia,” he said, in that reasonable voice of his which could once control her, but which now, in some moods, irritated her beyond endurance. “ Tell me what you mean. I promise beforehand to do anything possible that you desire.”

She tried to control herself, to subdue her heavy panting and the strong trembling that had seized upon her, to steady her shaking fingers as they convulsively unfastened her wrap and removed her gloves. One of her rings was accidentally drawn off and fell upon the floor. As her husband bent to recover it she stopped him.

“ What does it matter ! ” she cried. “ It is only a bauble. But when our happiness, our priceless happiness, slips away from us, you make not the slightest effort to get it back. You never see it. You never stoop for it. You don’t even know it has gone. You never miss it.”

Her slim fingers tightened on his arm. Her agitation communicated itself to him. There was a responsive tremor in his voice.

“ Are you reproaching me?” he asked.

“No, no!” she exclaimed. “ I will not reproach you.”

Again she put a strong constraint upon herself. She removed her hands from his arms, and crossed the room. She laid aside her wrap and bonnet, and as she came back she stooped, picked up the ring, and placed it on her shaking finger. With marked deliberation of gesture she seated herself, and when she looked up he saw how much her forced calm was costing her ; her strength was spent.

“Don’t be angry,” she said, piteously.

“ I am only distressed,” he replied, gently.

“ I want to be reasonable,” she went on, more firmly, “and I will try not to distress you.”

“ What is it ? ” he asked, as he seated himself.

“ Hugh, it is the life we live. It is a terrible fate to be excluded from everything of value, from all the world, from all appropriate surroundings; cut off, exiled, interdicted, denied, yet tantalized with the sight of it, so close to it! Is there nothing — is there nothing we can do ? ”

He looked at her in silence.

“ It is such a false position,” she went on passionately, her meagre stock of calmness already giving way, “ that you, with your nature and your talents, should have for your best friend that — that — venomous man ! He is your equal in station, and yet he is not your equal any more than a drunken tramp ; and his wife is not my equal.”

“ I ought not to have asked you to go there,” he said. “Yet what does it matter to us ? Why do you care for Abbott’s manner ? He can be very disagreeable, but he has some good qualities. At any rate, he is nothing to us.”

“ Oh, facts are — facts ! He and his wife are our friends, our circle,—the only circle we have. Think of it! That is the only woman with whom I have exchanged a dozen words since — since Mrs. Morris was so kind and polite, last summer.”

She broke into a bitter laugh that ended with a gush of tears. She brushed them away hastily.

“And such a home! so ignoble, so grotesque! such rudeness, such unkindness, such loutish indifference! too stupid to be even unhappiness. It is not the poverty; it is the dreadful, dreadful tone; it is almost disreputable. And there are other homes so different. I see them through the windows as I go along the streets. Homes where husbands respect their wives, and children love their parents ; where I see serenity, and security, and tenderness, and veneration. Oh, Hugh, Hugh, I passed John’s, and — oh me — papa — papa ! ”

Her voice broke into cries; her figure was shaken by convulsive sobs; the tears trickled through her fingers. He could only look at her miserably, forlornly, helplessly.

By degrees the violence of her emotion expended itself, and she leaned back in her chair, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. He took her other hand, cold and nerveless, in his, but he said nothing.

“ I did not intend to tell you that,” she went on, after a long pause. “ I only wanted to tell you what I was thinking on my way back. I went over the whole ground. I reasoned it out calmly. I feel that we must get out of this false position, away from this odious association with unendurable people. If we would, we could take the place we ought to have in the world, — a solid, valuable place. We would not be rich, perhaps not more than comfortable ; but we could live, we could be very happy, and very — very ” —

He stared at her in such unfeigned amazement that she faltered. Was she seriously proposing that he should relinquish his career because Mr. Abbott was ill-natured, and lived shabbily, and had a commonplace family, and because she had given up, as she had expected to do, the associations of her girlhood ?

“ It seems to me that you are talking very wildly,” he said, with coldness.

“ Hear me out, Hugh ! ” she cried, placing her other hand on his with a firm grasp, and looking at him with earnest eyes. “You wouldn’t mind it after a little. You were satisfied last summer. We were very happy. We could be everything to each other ; could we not, Hugh ? Once we were. Oh, you know we were once! As it is, I do not share your life. I have none of my own. I merely exist, like a parasite, — a poor, useless, insignificant appendage. And you, — are you not worthy of a better riche than that which Mr. Abbott and Mr. Preston aspire to fill ? You could get into something intrinsically valuable. A man of your capacities can do anything.”

He marveled that she could be at once so quick and so dense.

“ Capacities count for nothing in any line,” he said. “ without special training. I have had training in only one direction.”

She looked at him vaguely. “Isn’t there something ? ” she asked.

“ If I should give up the stage,” he went on,—“the mere idea is preposterous, — how could we live ? Do you think it would be well for me to devote my life and talents to giving music lessons because you consider that more genteel ? ”

“ Are you going to be sarcastic to me — again ? ” she cried, with a sharp ring of pain in her voice.

His sense of irritation had been asserting itself over his dismayed surprise. Now it received a check. He resolved that, say what she might, he would speak no words that could rankle as those words which he once spoke in his wrath had rankled.

“My only opportunities lie in the line of music,” he continued. “ I might do something in the way of composing songs, but in my case that would be too precarious to be considered. A man could not rely for a living on lucky inspirations which would sell. They might not present themselves.”

Was this all ? Could life hold out to him, with his mind and his character, no other fate than such a meagre uncertainty as writing songs, or the ill-paid drudgery of music lessons, or the opportunity of singing in tights and with a painted face for the well-to-do, wellplaced people who held themselves immeasurably his superiors ?

She spoke suddenly, with a new firmness.

“ You can give up the stage,” she declared. " We can live perfectly well on my property that my mother’s father left me. You remember, when I finally decided to be married, my brother sent a lawyer with settlements for you to sign, and you signed them, and the income is to be put aside for me. Why can’t we live on that property ? Why need you do anything ? How can two people who love each other say about money, ‘ This is yours,’ or ‘ This is mine ’ ? Will you weigh my happiness against your pride ? ”

He made no reply, but his face expressed strong displeasure. She broke again into entreaties. Her loss of self-control was rare. With perfect health and strong will, she was intolerant of nerves, and tears, and weakness. The utter relinquishment of her wonted composure added to his difficulties.

“ It is not that I am a snob,” she persisted. “ I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I don’t value the opinion of rich and great people. I don’t care for their money or their approval. I don’t care for poverty ; that is not what I fear. I don’t want a fine house, and carriages, and horses, and carte blanche to spend as I choose. Once I thought I did, but I know myself better now. I did myself injustice. That is not what I value.”

He looked at her vaguely. “ Then what is it you value ? ” he asked.

“ My pride, — my sacred pride.”

He said nothing.

“ It is stabbed every day, — every hour. My portion in life is humiliation. It is not because the people who have a valuable position think ours an unendurable position; it is because I myself think it unendurable. And so I want to give up this life which offers nothing that is truly of worth, — nothing but the praise of your singing from a foolish public which does not know anything about singing. I want to go to the plantation, and live there unostentatiously, and quietly, and suitably. Promise me, Hugh. We could have a home. It would not be fine, but it would be our own home.” She glanced at her little belongings, that so vainly simulated that altar before which every woman’s heart prostrates itself, sooner or later. " We could live for each other there. We should not need to have these odious misunderstandings as part of our lives. Promise me, Hugh.”

There was a long pause while she sat clasping his hands, her eloquent eyes on his face.

“ The thing is impossible,” he said at last, “ even if I were to consent, which nothing would induce me to do.”

“ Why is it impossible ? ”

Again he hesitated. “ I prefer not to tell you.”

“ But I insist, — I insist.”

“ I hope you will not force this upon me,” he said, rising and walking in indecision about the room.

“I do force it. I will know.”

“ Why, Felicia, you evidently don’t understand that the income of that property would not support us in even the plainest style. The property is at present utterly unsalable. Much of the land is heavily wooded ; much of it has been denuded of trees, and is covered with cypress stumps, and besides is cut up by bayous and is under water nearly half the year, — it is unfit for cultivation. The rents of the small portion that has been cleared are not enough, I should judge, after the taxes are paid, to do more than compass your dressmaker’s bills. The property may have a future, when railroads are built and the country is developed, but at present it is unavailable from many points of view. I would not live as you propose if it were possible; as it is not possible, you had better dismiss the idea from consideration.”

She looked at him blankly.

“ I never was there, but I thought it was a fine plantation. I thought we might go there and live quietly, — as happily as we did last summer.”

“ There is no house on the place except a few negro cabins; and if there were a house, we should die of malaria. Neither of us is acclimated to the swamp. And there is practically no income.”

A long pause ensued.

“ But I have always been called an heiress,” she said, piteously.

“ You have been called an heiress more on account of your expectations from your father than because of what you actually possess,” he replied.

She was bitterly disappointed ; in surprise he saw that she was bitterly humiliated. She had sunk in her own estimation.

It was not, perhaps, to his credit that he stood on higher ground in certain regards than she. He owed it rather to his Bohemian method of living than to any innate nobility that he cared for money because of what it would buy. While she did not sufficiently prize, in one sense, money, she definitely prized wealth, its subtler as well as its practical values. Her fortune, her consequence, her expensive social training and education, and her position had all been a part of herself ; she had adequately, perhaps unconsciously, appreciated them; she had appreciated herself much because of them.

She lifted her dismayed eyes to his. All at once she held out both hands with an expressive gesture of despair.

“ If I am not rich,” she said, in a tense, low voice, “ what am I ? I have no talents, no occupation, no hopes, no friends, no home. And no money as well? I am indeed a poor thing, — a parasite, mean and insignificant.”

In some respects hers was the stronger nature ; under her influence he saw her sorrows with her eyes. It might have occurred to a different man to suggest that she was, instead of this, a wife, who held in trust her husband’s happiness as well as her own.

Suddenly she cried out sharply : —

“ And we have no choice ? You are sure? We must live on this way, in this repulsive atmosphere — with these men we know, and these — these women ? Can’t you see that it is killing me ? I am dying by inches! I am torn to pieces ! I am broken on the rack ! To breathe the same air that she — that they do ! To see you — to see you look as you did last night when — when — you spoke of — Oh, what am I saying ! And she calls you — calls you ‘ Hugh ’ ! She dares to call you by your name ! And last night — when you spoke of her you looked — you looked — Oh, how can I remember it and live ! ” She rose and walked wildly about the room, striking her hands frantically together. He sat motionless, staring at her, the amazement in his face canceling all other expressions. For the moment he was possessed by the idea that she had lost her senses. Then there flashed into his mind the thought that there was something deeper than the grievance of their mode of life, — something more bitter than merely external conditions, bitter though he knew they were to her. In his surprise and agitation he had hardly followed what she was saying.

“I — I don’t understand you " — he began.

In a moment there came to him a vague realization of her full meaning. He rose and confronted her. " Tell me,” he said, catching both her hands in his, and bringing her irregular progress to a stop, — “ tell me what it is you mean.”

She stood panting, and looking at him with dilated, terrified eyes. For all at once she was afraid of him. That latent ferocity which was so seldom called to his face expressed itself now in the stern eyes, the strong lower jaw brought heavily forward, the set teeth, the intent frown. She shrank away from him. “ I don’t know what I meant! ” she cried, piteously. " It is all folly. I am ill. I am nervous. I don’t mean anything ! ”

“ What did you mean by what you said ? ” he persisted. " Look at me, Felicia. Tell me what you meant.”

His deep gray eyes, lit by that unwonted fire, constrained her. In what broken words she could command she told him what had been in her thoughts for the last twenty-four hours. She interrupted herself sometimes by cries and hysterical sobs, and more than once declared wildly that she had been nervous and ill ; she had not been herself; she had been frantic with a delusion. In her agitation she did not see that she had taken all the blame to herself ; she only saw that he was intensely angry, and her arraignment seemed to her now strangely inadequate.

He heard her through without a word of reply. When she had concluded, he stood motionless a moment; then he threw her hands from him. It might have been a sarcastic commentary upon the habit of mind which had, through years of training, come to be his second nature that, at this moment of supreme earnestness, the gesture was one suggestive of finished feigning, — the accepted stage expression of renunciation. He caught up his overcoat, tossed it over his arm, and looked about for his hat, still ominously silent.

“ Oh, Hugh, Hugh,” she cried, catching at his hand, " you are not going without a word to me ? ”

“ Such discussions do no good,” he said. His voice was cold, but it trembled ; his hands were shaking.

“ You are angry with me ! You will say nothing — give me no assurance ” —

“ You want your husband to assure you that he is not a scoundrel ? I cannot find words for that.”

He opened the door and made his way along the hall, striving to quiet his nerves and master his agitation. He walked downstairs instead of ringing for the elevator. As he passed through the office, the current of his thoughts was sharply altered. His eyes chanced to fall upon the big clock. He took out his watch, and hurriedly compared the two timepieces. There was no mistake.

These complicated family discussions require time. It was past eight o’clock.

He encountered a messenger in redhot haste, as he neared the theatre. When he arrived, he met black looks, swift reproaches, and eager injunctions. He heeded nothing. He absorbed himself, mind and body, in the feat of changing his clothes in the least possible time, and, without an instant’s intermission, he who had so ordered his life that for twenty years he had not permitted himself to be hurried, or agitated, or derelict, who accounted serenity of soul and mastery of the physique the first elements of artistic excellence, walked upon the stage into the presence of a large and critical audience, dazed, panting, breathless, dinnerless, — prosaic consideration, but of primal importance to a singer, — his limbs trembling, his nerves shattered, his memory and his voice at the mercy of the accidents of the evening.

It seemed as if the long anguish of that performance would never drag to its conclusion. His previous habit of self-command was as if it had never existed ; it had prepared him for no such emergency, no such tumult of feeling, as this. During the waits he struggled frantically for composure. “ You ’re all right now, dear old boy,” Abbott said to him again and again ; and was that the voice so often heard in bitter satires, and in taunts that stung like the lash of a whip? Venom? It was so gentle and mellifluous, so fraternal and cordial, that Kennett found himself relying on it as he had never before relied on any power outside of his own control. While he was on the stage, he would, without warrant or precedent, change his place that he might feel the strong support of a friendly proximity; a sympathetic hand laid on his shoulder when it might be ; a few words in an undertone ; the glance of eyes that he had often known as mocking, often quizzical, but now kind — kind.

This influence helped him to regain in some degree his tranquillity. To the general public there was as yet nothing unusual. To those versed in the minutiæ of theatrical matters a hurry was perceptible, an eagerness ; the lack of polish, assurance, control, that usually characterized him. Perhaps his modicum of self-possession came to him a little too early, bringing with it a relaxation of the intense strain that had served him in lieu of his wonted calm equipoise.

In the last scene of the last act he had a solo, through which ran, as an accompaniment, a series of pianissimo phrases by a chorus of female voices, — a nice effect and very popular. It occurred at an important moment, — the culmination of the act, and indeed of the whole work. What was the matter with it ? Was the orchestra to blame, the chorus ? In another instant the fact was evident. The voice of the soloist was not only faulty of intonation, but false, — glaringly, grotesquely false; by turns flat and sharp, completely out of tune. The most unmusical auditor could not fail to notice it; it was an affliction to connoisseurs. The volume and robustness of tone only intensified the discord ; the anguish on the singer’s face pointed the disaster.

“ This is the beginning of the end,” said Abbott to Preston, off at the right wing.

returned Preston, smothering his laugh.

The English tenor also smelt the blood of an American man ; he kept, with what decency he might, his elation out of his face, but his eyes were gleaming.

Kennett was calm enough at last; the worst had happened. He dashed aside the icy drops that had started upon his brow; he moved with ease; his voice was itself once more. There was little after this for him to do. He did it smoothly and mechanically enough. As he took his way to his dressing-room, he passed, near one of the wings, the manager, who did not look toward him, and whose face wore a certain absolute neutrality more expressive of intense anger than the most indignant glance.

“ Go and get drunk, Kennett,” said Abbott, bitterly, — “ go and get drunk. That ’s the only thing for you now.”

He made no reply. He composedly changed his clothes, and took his way to the hotel.

He hardly looked at Felicia. In his preoccupation, he did not notice, as he entered the room, that she was coming toward him with outstretched hands, — that her face was eager, her eyes appealing. She stopped abruptly as he spoke.

“ Does it never occur to you,” he said, crossing his arms on the back of a chair and leaning on them, “ that you undertake a serious responsibility when you use your influence on a man to frustrate his ambition and nullify his talents ? ”

“ What has happened ? ” she asked, tremulously.

“ I made a bad failure to-night, for the first time in my life.” After a pause, he added, with a short laugh, “ A few more such unnerving scenes as we had this evening, and it will not be a question of relinquishing the stage.”

He had intended to say much in reproach ; he did not relent, but in a moment all the fire of his indignation seemed spent. He was leaning heavily on the chair, his tired eyes on the floor, his listless hands hanging before him.

She took one of them in hers: it lay unresponsive in her clasp for a moment; then he withdrew it.

“ I must get into the air! ” he exclaimed, abruptly.

He went out without another word.

He walked far that night, — at first irregularly, spasmodically ; his heavy feet hardly dragging along in obedience to his languid will ; his deadly fatigue a trifle less potent than the torture of restlessness that had taken possession of him. Gradually the reserve force of his splendid physique began to assert itself; his step grew more firm and rapid ; he made his way doggedly through the thickly falling snow, which stung cruelly as it fell, for a blizzard was blowing. And from the vague haze of his mental processes consecutive thought came to him. — dreary thinking. He went back over many years of toilsome endeavor and patient purpose. It had been hard to compass his present place; he had expected to go much further; he had felt that the end justified every labor and relinquishment. If it were indeed ungenteel, according to superficial standards, what did that matter ? Little points of spurious worldly value were not to be considered. It was his calling, for which he was fitted by the gift of nature and half a lifetime of effort, — a possession of intrinsic value, æsthetically and practically.

And now, what of the result, — what of his future ?

That he should retrace lost ground, bitterly won; retrieve his prestige ; recapture the favor of the exacting public, easy to offend, hard to propitiate; overcome the eager and insidious disparagement which follows so hard upon failure or partial failure, and fatally difficult to confute when the point at issue is anything so intangible as purity of tone, pitch, quality,—this was his immediate future. And for the rest, — his ultimate future? In one brief interval to-night he had been grieved by his wife’s grief ; his heart had been more cruelly stabbed by the affront of her jealousy. Now these considerations were in the background; already they had taken their place only as an element affecting the development of his ambition and his capacities. So it was that he asked himself what, if hampered by the influence of an unhappy domestic life, was to be his future. It was to enter into a race handicapped; to essay to soar with clipped wings ; to drag down to the plane of mechanical, unlighted drudgery the delicate and ethereal achievements of inspiration and talent, and a most artistic school. It was to convert his life’s ambitions into a life’s failure, — not tame, inconspicuous failure, but public, absolute, ludicrous, pitiable, egregious.

XVII.

One of the distinctive qualities of a woman’s grief is its possibility of duality. During Kennett’s absence at the theatre, Felicia, reviewing the scene between them, feeling vicariously all that he had felt, the pain, the repulsion, the amazement, the shocked realization, was also acutely conscious that he had not uttered one word of vindication, of denial. She endured for him as well as for herself : the poignancy of his wounded pride and affection as a wronged and insulted man; her doubts and despair as a wretched and jealous woman.

And when he returned, instead of the reproaches she feared, the reconciliation she hoped, he told her of his failure. That seemed a minor matter until she noted the change in his face. The expressions he had formerly worn were as foreign to it now as if that other happier, more fortunate entity he once was had been the inhabitant of another planet. Sharp Care had registered itself in strong, definite lines between his brows and about his mouth ; the muscles of his face seemed to have relaxed ; it was strangely heavy, inert; beneath his eyes was that indescribable yet unmistakable imprint left by a stupendous nervous shock. His expression was as if he had received a mortal blow.

She heard, with a sort of anguished incredulity, slowly resolving itself into dismayed realization, those bitter words of his which imputed to her the responsibility of his failure. And she had done this thing ? Was it through her that this calamity had come upon him ?

It was like murder, she said to herself, in her terror and abasement and tumult of anxiety, to interfere with a man’s life work, to obliterate his ambitions, to frustrate his achievement, to be the cause, direct or remote, which brought him to a crisis affecting him like this.

Then, when he again left her suddenly, declaring that he must get out into the air, she had these thoughts for company. Her grievances, her disappointments, even her doubts of him, were far from her now. Had she done a cruel thing? Was it irreparable? Had the elements which had been at work in her character during the last year—since, in fact, she had, with her eyes open and aware of her peril, dared the conventionalities and married him — been in insidious and deadly conflict with the only possibilities which made life of value to him ? She had been afraid of her marriage for her own sake, — what if it had ruined him ? She had attempted to conserve all that she deemed of value,—what if she had wrested from him all that he deemed of value? Their ideals were as far asunder as the poles. Had she arrogated to herself the office of judge as to which should survive?

As to that other responsibility which she had assumed toward this art of his, her thoughts lingered vaguely about the theory which was to him so real a fact, — that the development of certain tendencies in art is a great power in intellectual growth. Had she interfered to rob the world of some subtle, far-reaching possibility of achievement which might have ennobled and sanctified other minds and ambitions in a sordid age, sorely in need of eyes that lift themselves to the stars ? The world ? Well, with her limitations, it was hardly within her horizon to comprehend what it meant to say that the world should be robbed. But since it was he who so tensely held his eager ambition to bestow upon it his “great future,” she might seek to realize what throes were his in relinquishment, what desolation for love of the thing itself.

And now the woman whose heart ached for him must endure with what fortitude she might the knowledge that in his hour of disaster it was his impulse to escape from her, and be alone with the winter wind and his griefs.

The wind was high. She could see through the window that it was sweeping across the sky vast masses of black clouds that held cavernous depths, defined sometimes by illusive pallid gleams and mysterious swirls and rifts ; strange of contour, suggesting the volcanoes and mountains and gigantic remnants of continents that appertain to some burntout world, still obeying the great uncomprehended law which set it in motion and sent it revolving through space. The snow had ceased to fall. Once was visible for a moment a dim, veiled moon, with a yellow aureola about it. The chaos of black vapor was bathed in a pale radiance; and suddenly it had vanished, save for fugitive flecks of white light that gleamed a moment longer, then one by one were gone. And ever the strong wind, with its sense of resistless motion, and the inexplicable suggestion of impending calamity which comes with the implacable rising and falling of that mighty voice, swept along the sky, and over the vast plains of the prairies, and through the corridor-like streets of the city.

Kennett came at last, with a heavy tread. There was deadly fatigue in his face. He spoke in a stern voice.

“ If you want to ruin me, now is your chance,” he said. “ It is necessary that I sleep; so only talk to me with excitement, and the game is up.”

It is one of the tragic elements of intense feeling that it can make no compact with policy. The faculty to cajole, to palliate, to deplore, to predict good fortune for next week, for to-morrow ; assuming the guise of partisanship, to resent calamity as an affront, — this adroit management in arrogating the office and functions of ally is a most potent factor in the art of consolation. Perhaps it is too much to assert that this is possible only when sympathy is lukewarm, but certainly the heart that feels another’s disaster as a supreme calamity prompts few pat phrases. These same pat phrases, — how welcome, how healing, how indispensable ! Kennett, strong as he thought himself, expected them, longed for them, felt that he could not exist without them, he glanced wistfully — his inconsistent bitter words still vibrating on the air — at her face ; white it was, and tense. In the utter collapse of his powers, he could only feel indefinitely that it held deep meanings ; he could not now comprehend the expression in her eyes, as she lifted them mutely to him.

He sighed heavily as he walked across the room. “ I don’t want to be waked till the last moment before rehearsal, tomorrow,” he said.

For all her alertness of interpretation in the trivial crises of life, she did not understand the feeling underlying his words and his stern, almost cruel tone ; she, who had so many tactful devices at command when nothing was at stake, was helpless now, her faculties paralyzed in the realization that a calamity had through her come upon him, and in the thought of his anger. Long after he had fallen into a sleep so profound that he seemed to have passed into the vague border lands that lie between life and death, she still sat motionless, staring with a white face out of the window at the dark, tempestuous night, striving definitely to realize what had happened in all its relations to his life and to hers.

By degrees the wind sank ; the clouds broke slowly apart; stars looked through the rifts, icy and aloof; the pale gibbous moon stole into view, sending long shafts of spectral light into the room.

After all, does much of our woe come about because we have no mental system of appraisement ? If we had such a formula, — simplest of processes, — if, for instance, we should definitely consider as a set-off against possible bliss, valued, let us say, at 90, the joy actually in possession, should we not write against it also 90, even 100 ? In its deep subconsciousness, overswept by the turbulent, superficial emotions of daily life, does the soul distinctly realize its possession, while lighter values drift along lighter currents, or gleam prismatic on the surface ? And is it these which, in our careless habit of thought and speech, we call precious ?

She had often said to herself in the past year that life was worthless without appropriateness, dignity, embellishment. It had not occurred to her to weigh against these potent forces that strong element which had come to be a part of her very existence, until she feared that its possession was threatened. Now, so distinctly did it assert itself in this vigil of hers that the terror of losing her hold upon her husband’s heart was of more moment than the terror of menace to him.

The theory that she was losing her hold upon his heart received, apparently, the fatal corroboration of accident. He came back the next morning from rehearsal gloomy, absorbed, with no words of greeting for her as he entered. He stood silent before the fire for some moments, then suddenly crossed the room and seated himself at the piano.

She summoned her composure. She made a strong effort to overcome the timidity and anxiety that had taken possession of her. She too crossed the room, and stood beside him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. But her hand was trembling; her face was pale; tears were in her eyes.

He glanced up, with a palpable shrinking. He feared her, she said to herself, — that was evident. He thought she was on the verge of another scene; he deemed her a weak, hysterical, jealous creature, ready for wild criminations and ecstatic reconciliations, which would tear his nerves and exhaust his strength when he most needed the full mastery of his faculties. Yes, it was evident. He feared her.

The thought controlled her. She stood motionless for some moments ; then, after a few casual words when she could trust her voice, she turned away. His face expressed relief, — she could not mistake it, — and she could only say to herself again that he feared her ; he could hardly look at her; he dreaded that she should even speak to him.

As the long day wore on she became an adept in self-torture. She believed that her reproaches and exactions had borne fruit in his indifference, even his aversion. Her sense of justice was as if annihilated ; she no longer recollected that she too had been severely tried; she only saw the years stretching before her in which she would slip further and further out of his life, and become, indeed, only its unlucky incident, with which it might well have dispensed. In her despair she humbly kept in the background, that she might not in an unguarded moment say something which would agitate him and again place him at a disadvantage.

He was silent and absorbed throughout the afternoon. His manner was evidently unstudied, unintentional; it was not designed as punishment, to mark his displeasure because of that ill-timed outbreak of hers ; it was not the luxury of wreaking on another something of his own suffering. He gave her little thought, —that was the simple explanation. With his somewhat blunt perception of actual in contrast with imaginary emotion, he did not compass the tumult of feeling in which she was involved. He considered her not at all; he remembered only his own troubles, and that this was a determining crisis in his career.

But as he was about to leave the room for the theatre he turned back suddenly. It was only an impulse. He had noticed nothing of the white despair in her face, so absorbed was he, and so still a presence had she become. He took her in his arms and looked into her eyes. His own were still anxious and haggard. His very soul seemed to gaze from them. Under that long, tender look her heart began to beat heavily ; the slow tears welled up. He kissed her as he turned away. “Good-by, dear,”he said.

It was only an impulse. It was not because he forgave her ; he had forgotten that he had something to forgive, — he loved her much. It was not a plea that she should forgive-his reproaches last night; these too he had forgotten, — he knew she loved him much.

For her it was a benignant impulse ; it gave her back, as it were, to life. The throbbing of her heart and her tumultuous rising tears seemed to pulverize and wash away the heavy, numbing, poignant pain she had endured.

As he opened the door and started out of the room, he turned again and closed it.

“Surely, surely,” he said, in the insistent tone of one who would fain constrain what he desires to believe, “ my voice must be all right now.”

He drew himself up, inflated his lungs, and began to sing. The opening phrases of the unlucky solo which had come to grief rose in smooth, mellow resonance, — delicately accurate in pitch and modulation, indescribably rich and effective in quality. The anxiety and intentness on his face faded ; he drew a long sigh of relief, looked at her with a half smile, and was gone.

He loved much, too, what he called his art.

“ Art ” is a word of elastic significations. Just now all its vast systems of science and presentation, its potentialities, its ramifications, its possibilities, were merged into the personation that night of Prince Roderic.

His Highness was Felicia’s rival, with his powder, and his paint, and his curls; with his attitudinizing and his triumphs of facial expression; with his robust metrical defiances and his languishing love ditties, — he and such as he.

And her only rival?

She was sure of that now, because, she said to herself with conviction, his eyes could not look into hers with truth in them while his heart held a lie. Her doubts had not been very logical; perhaps her reasoning now was as inconsequent, but to her it was certainty, and it sufficed.

As she sat alone that night, she had no prevision of the fate coming so fast. Her reaching thought, that would fain have pierced the future and foreseen its promise, and in anticipating its menaces annulled them, lifted no fold of the veil which hid the next hour. When she roused herself, it was with the realization of an unusual commotion on the street. Then a heavy rattling invaded the air, and the sharp strokes of a gong rang out peremptorily. She drew up the shade, opened the window, and looked out.

A strong wind was blowing ; the night was bitterly cold. The stars glinted frostily above the snow-covered roofs. There was a deep red glow against the horizon, extending to the zenith ; it was strong enough to pale the lamps, and cast a roseate light along the façade of the buildings that lined the street. A number of men on the pavement below were hurrying in that direction ; several had stopped, and were speaking excitedly to others.

It was a strange thing for her to do, — she was not consciously alarmed, a fire was such a usual incident, — but, obeying some imperative inward demand, she leaned out of the window and called to them.

“ Where is the fire ? ” she asked.

They looked up as her silvery tones split the air suddenly. Then the answer floated back to her : —

“ The Opera House is burning.”

For one instant they thought she was about to throw herself from the window, she swayed so violently forward. The next moment she was running along the dimly lighted hall, down the stairs, and out into the street.

Strangely enough, she was not conscious of terror, — she was only unnaturally conscious of the external conditions : that more snow had fallen ; that the pavements were covered ; that the hurrying crowd of excited men was constantly increasing ; that the sullen red glare was intensified ; that another engine, and then a hose carriage, sharply turned a corner as she was about to cross the street. She was caught by strong hands and held in a firm grasp, as she would have dashed in front of the madly plunging horses ; the driver’s loud, hoarse cries of warning and anger resounded above the unceasing clamor of the gong. Then they had passed, and she wrested her arm from the detaining hands and hurried on. Now in the crowd were gentlemen, with wild eyes and white faces, hatless, their gala attire crushed and torn. Soon she was meeting women as well, frantically agitated, many screaming piteously. And always the crowd was denser, until it was difficult, with all her preternaturally alert faculties, deftly and swiftly to edge her way through it. When at last she turned a certain corner, the scene revealed might have been Pandemonium.

From the roof and windows of the great building flames were shooting, — red and deeply orange, sometimes veined with purple gleams, and again shading into amethystine banners that waved fantastically. Where streams of water were thrown columns of steam and of black smoke ascended, and through them played fiery jets of sparks, that floated high into the air, and traveled far on the wings of the wind. That bitter north wind had already done strange, effective work. Gigantic icicles, growing momently more massive under its arctic influence, hung, glittering and splendid, from every projection on which the streams of water chanced to fall. The firemen were encased in gleaming mail that rattled with a loud sound. As they appeared for an instant within the glassy arches surrounding the windows, or moved about on the roof, the red light, falling upon their sparkling vesture and their ice-covered hair and beards, was reflected back with prismatic gleams. Suddenly, a loud, peremptory command rang out, and a moment later, above the roar of the flames, and the heavy panting of the engines, and the continuous swash of the water, there arose a long, loud, hideous crash, as a portion of the eastern wall gave way.

Felicia was swept with the retreating crowd out of the rain of cinders that drifted downward. Mechanically she dashed the burning fragments from her hair, her hands, her face ; then, as she looked up, she stood as if turned to stone.

Many other eyes were fixed on Kennett. Never had drama more effective stage setting; never had actor more intent audience. In the background, high above the high roofs of the building, rolled dense clouds of black smoke, permeated through and through with upward-drifting sparks, and elusive scarlet and orange plumes of flame that capriciously waved, and shot swiftly out, and vanished, to flare anew on a higher level of the cloud.

When he had sprung suddenly upon the roof, it was as if he had emerged from that chaos of fire and smoke. He stood for a moment gazing about him; then he walked to the edge of the building. At that great height he seemed to move with consummate grace and lightness. He was dressed in the costume he wore in the last act of Prince Roderic. The blue and silver vividly accented his figure against the darkly rolling clouds. He stood motionless a moment, looking at the sea of upturned faces ; at the building across the alley ; at the fiery gulf into which the eastern wall had fallen ; at the firemen on the lower roofs of the building, separated from him by that maelstrom of flames ; at those other flames, each moment fiercer, more implacable, more assertive, shooting out of the windows below him; then he looked again at the mass of human beings on the streets. There rose to him incoherent murmurs, breaking into frantic exclamations. The intense terror, inherent in human nature, of that most frightful fate, death by fire, manifested itself in quick, wild cries, uttered by men ordinarily sane enough, of insistence that he should jump. Then in a breath came counter cries, — “Wait!" “ Wait!"—then loud calls for the hook and ladder companies, then assertions that there was no time to wait; and again desperate injunctions to jump rose into a loud chorus inexpressibly shattering to the nerves in its quality of uncontrollable terror.

Presently he turned slowly, and retraced his steps toward the scuttle. Already the space along the flat roof was greatly lessened; fire and smoke were bursting out in many places.

There was a pause of uncertainty and speculation. Would he try to go down the stairs, in the hope of finding egress through some door or window not yet essayed ? Such an effort was manifestly futile.

In another moment it was apparent that his intention was to leap across the alley and reach the opposite building, an achievement barely within the limits of possibility.

He stooped and tightened the straps that bound his light sandals about his feet. Then he placed his hands upon his hips, and ran so swiftly, so lightly, so elastically, that the effect was as if he were miraculously destitute of weight. It was an infinitesimal interval of time before he reached the edge of the roof. He threw his hands in front of him as he leaped and launched himself into midair. For one second the swift figure — a gleam of white and blue and silver — was visible in transit across the sheer space between the two buildings; and for that wild instant the realization of the deadly danger was annulled in the exultant sense of the stupendous achievement. How high he was, how light, how strong ! Inexorable physical laws, — how airily he waved them away ! And did he leap or fly !

In one second more a huge dun-colored cloud of smoke, with its fiery embroidery of sparks, drifted down and hid him from view. There had been tense silence until this instant; now arose a clamor of ejaculations and eager questions. Had he made it ? Had he missed it ? Had he fallen ? And “ Ah ! God help him ! ” cried many.

A moment later they saw what had happened.

At the foot of the wall lay a mass of blue and silver, blood-stained and contorted, and a face and figure mutilated past recognition. There was a quiver of unrealized agonies, and then — problems solved ? ideals attained in higher fruition than the paltry human mind conceives ? values estimated with the clear cognition of the immortals ? What strange, wise presence, set free in one tremendous moment, went forth into the darkness !

The events of that night wrought radical changes where Kennett had been closely concerned. Judge Hamilton discovered he held the opinion that a tragedy can dignify even an absurd situation, and that, under the circumstances, it was not unseemly for him to forgive his daughter. He took her home with him shortly, and thus she was restored to the appropriateness, the dignities, the embellishments, of life. These were not of so much worth to her as once they had been.

Does it take the mighty problems of life and death to elucidate the lesser problems of relative values ? Can we discriminate fairly as to relative values when vast and complicated forces, extraneous conditions in unnumbered combinations, inherited tendencies, the tyranny of tradition, the tyranny of training, the implacable, exacting human heart, are elements of the problem ?

Is the artificial entity which we labor to endow with strong and subtle qualities, which we ambitiously call Character, and which we bestow on our inmost selves, saying, “ Soul, this is thy twin. Walk hand in hand through life,” — is it, after all, the stronger, more subtle, more uncontrollable, of the two ? May it not prove even antagonistic, and in the end destroy its dedicated companion ?

This chronicler is no Œdipus to solve these riddles.

Fanny N. D. Murfree.