Alice Ames Winter

“ Lena was almost as startling an apparition in that room as was Ram Juna’s rose in the dusty phial—whether a miracle or a clever trick. She looked so untouched by any vulgarity in her surroundings, so fresh and true, so instinct with virgin dignity, that the eyes that met her own were filled with the tribute of surprise; and she exulted in some hidden corner of her soul.
In the half-hour that they spent together she measured her new acquaintances carefully.
“And these are women of the world!” she said to herself. “Why, they’re boobies. I could do them up any time.” ”

“ Dick drew away and became rigid again.
“Extravagant!” he exclaimed as though to himself. “You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?”
“I do think, Dick,” said Lena severely, “that you can talk the silliest nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all this? No—no—” as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. “I have not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go. ”

“ Then Dick stiffened again.
“There isn’t anything to tell.”
“See here,” said Norris. “This isn’t only a question of the lighting franchise. The city may walk in darkness and be damned for all I care; but I can’t bear that you should walk in darkness. Do you realize what it means? You have fought your first public battle on a basis of truth. You make your first public appearance in league with evil. You are killing the hope of your public career before it is fairly in bud.”
“I know it,” said Dick.
“Percival, you’ve stirred this city into consciousness. ”

“ Dick’s chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have lived among pure and simple women. In everything that wore petticoats he saw something of his mother, fragile, noble, ambitious for those she loved and forgetful of self. When Lena began to show him things that he could not admire, he laid the blame of them, not to her, but to the world that had played the brute to her. ”

“ At this point Dick Percival’s lips began to move with the cynical amusement of youth.
“Pretty positive, isn’t he, about the things no mortal knows?” he whispered to Norris.
Softly spoken though the words were, Ram Juna instantly fixed his eyes upon the guilty youth. It was a habit of the Hindu to hear everything that rose above the sound of a thought.
“You think I speak of mysteries!” he demanded, suddenly breaking his discourse and leaning like a pine tree toward Percival. “You think that in a closet some one weaves a fantastic theory of life and lives. But no! ”

“ A curious gleam came into Ram Juna’s sleepy eyes.
“Ah, then you, like me, love to examine the soul, your own or another’s. You have fellow feeling. So you forgive. May I sit here beside you?”
Lena drew aside her petticoats and the Swami shared her little sofa.
“You see that while you make study of others, I make study of you. I should wish to be your friend. I should in fact fear to have you count me an enemy.”
Lena blinked at him in an uncomprehending way with her big eyes, and he smiled innocently in return.
“A woman who is an enemy is a danger. ”

“ Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance, society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and uninspiring at the breakfast-table.
It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.
Dick began to analyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover’s state of mind, he must continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he find that the faults are the biggest ingredient. ”

“ There’s no subject, so far as I can see, on which she is afraid to think; but I can not imagine that any subject would leave a deposit of mire in her mind.”
“Gee whizz!” scoffed Dick. “How fluent your year of journalism has made you! What a great thing it is to be a serious-minded young man with eye-glasses, engaged, while yet in youth, in molding public opinion through the mighty agent of the press! And Madeline is another of the same kind.”
“I wish I were of her kind,” said Ellery stiffly. “You may poke fun at me as much as you like, Dick, but it’s beneath you to jeer at her.” ”

“ Percival rose with the air of one who has heard and said what she desired.
“Good night, dear boy,” she purred as Dick struggled to his long legs. “How good it is to have you to lean on and trust! These have been lonely years while you were away. Now I shall leave you two to your quiet smoke.”
Dick kissed her hand and then her lips, as though to show both reverence and love. Norris, too, stooped and kissed her hand, and the two watched her as she moved in her slow way up the stairs. As she disappeared, Norris turned and laid an arm over Dick’s shoulder. ”

“ No one likes to be loved as a matter of duty, certainly not Lena Quincy, whose shrewd little soul easily divined that this equable warmth of manner, which she dubbed snippy condescension,270 sprang from affection for Dick and Mrs. Percival and not for herself. Madeline set Lena’s teeth on edge, and it must be confessed that Lena often did as much for Madeline, but each politely kept her sensations to herself. Miss Elton always assured her optimistic soul that things would come out all right, that love was a great developer, that small vulgarities of mind were the result of association. ”

“ Lena snapped.
She turned out the gas to undress in the dark rather than encourage her mother’s conversation. She needed to think. An awful problem had just presented itself. How was she to get a trousseau?
It was in another mood that Dick Percival walked home. Whenever anything very great and wonderful happens to us, we are apt to bow our heads and cry, “What am I, that this should be given to me?” Doubtless he is the noblest man who most often feels this exultant humility. This was Dick’s hour on the mountain. ”

“ Then she ran up stairs with light steps, ruffling her plumes like a cocky little lady-wren as she went back to the dreariness where Mrs. Quincy sat rocking her inevitable creaking chair.
“Well!” asked her mother after a pause, a pause just long enough, the daughter knew, to fill her with irritable curiosity.
“Well,” Lena answered smartly, “and what do you think? They came to call, if you please, because Mr. Percival asked them to; and they were sweet as honey. And Mrs. Lenox asked me to spend a whole week at her country place.” ”

“ He beheld again the quieter hours when the young men saw visions together and felt themselves called to put shoulder to the car of righteousness, while they discussed with the sublime self-sufficiency of inexperience the politics and sociology of the world. The fellows all believed in him as one of those who are destined to be prime pushers at the wheel. Perhaps he would be among those conquerors who climb aboard and ride, forgetful of the plodding crowd which toils at the drudgery of progress but does not taste its glory. So many oblivions go to make one reputation. ”

“ She seemed to be looking at a new Madeline; and while she stared, startled, this self grew greater and stronger.
“This is not the end of life; it is the beginning,” she whispered. “I’ve been looking down the wrong road. Dick has no such power over me as to consign me to misery everlasting. I am mistress of my own fate. I have not handed it over to him. Happiness is not a thing to get. It is a state of mind to live in. ”

“ God breathed His spirit into the earth and it became a living man. Man—His image—must breathe the spirit into the earth and make it a living civilization.
His father, with a Gettysburg bullet bruising his life, had nevertheless played the part, and done his share toward turning a frontier village into a noble city. With a thrill Dick saw himself building the structure higher on its firm foundations, making it great enough to match the wide fertile acres that lay about it, and the dazzling Minnesota sky that hung above. ”

“ The entrance to her new life was too brier-sprinkled for bliss. Daily to face her mother’s mingling of complaisance, self-pity and fault-finding; to meet Dick’s friends, whom Lena, in her suspicions, regarded as thinly-disguised enemies; to scrimp together some little show of bridal finery for her quiet wedding; all this filled her with mingled irritation and gratification.
Most aggravating of all were the persistent attentions of Miss Madeline Elton. ”

“ A fellow can’t help feeling tired to think how tired he’ll be before he gets to the end. To-night I feel as old and dry as a mummy. If you touch me, I’ll crumble.”
“Mrs. Lenox and I have been longer in the game than you, Dick,” answered his host whimsically. “We are getting dangerously near the equator; and we do not find ourselves exhausted. On the contrary, I rather think the scenery improves, in some respects, as we go along.”
“You are hardly capable of measuring the common fate. You have had the touchstone of success, and the world has opened up before you. ”

“ It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to the forest to meet its fate.
Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world’s warmth welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth Richard Percival’s wife, and the protégée of Mrs. Lenox, who took every pains to shield her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. ”

“ Lenox,” said Madeline. “Yourselves and all out-doors are surely sufficient. It will be good to get away from the grime. Now what bee have you in your bonnet, Dick?” For a new look had come into his face as she spoke.
Percival had been glancing around the cheerful comfortable room whose very books and pictures suggested peace of mind. It seemed to him that he looked with Lena’s longing eyes rather than with his own, familiar with these surroundings. He was thinking how little his small courtesies counted, and how much these women could do if they chose. Why shouldn’t he be bold? ”

“ We will not commit ourselves to anything at the behest of Richard Percival. On my way to the station, now, in fact, Madeline and I will go to see this rose among cabbages. We will introduce ourselves as your friends, Dick. If we think you are a mere deluded male thing, there the matter ends. If we, too, are carried away by enthusiasm, we will invite her on the spur of the moment, and Mr. Lenox, who, like most married men, is a connoisseur in pretty girls, can talk to her. ”

“ She found that lady lying in her favorite chair in the library—the chair that had been her refuge in the days of her early widowhood, that had comfortably housed her when books carried her away from her own world of sorrows and problems into the world of illusions, the chair in which she had dreamed of the great things that were to come into a younger life, not her own, and yet deeply her own,—her son’s. ”

“ He himself so liked young men that he frequently forgot that his daughter and not himself might be the object of their quest. So he plunged cheerfully into an animated discussion of the new tide in civic politics, while Norris dully and conscientiously tried to bear up his end.
Ellery’s eyes, however, as well as the thoughts behind those superficial thoughts that guided his words, were absorbed in the other side of the room, where Miss Elton canvassed with her mother the merits of various embroidery silks. She was lovelier than ever. ”

“ Ellery looked from one to the other.
“Don’t you?” Madeline asked.
“By Jove, I do!” he cried, sitting suddenly upright as though stirred with genuine feeling. “I love it without its legends. It does not seem to me to have any past. It is all future. It makes me feel all future, too.”
“Do you know what’s happened to you?” Dick laughed exultantly. “Gitche Manito the Mighty has got you—the spirit of the West—which, being interpreted, is Ozone.”
“Something has got me, I admit,” Norris cried. “What is it? What is it that makes the sky so dazzling? ”

“ Madeline exclaimed. She looked flushed and vigorous, and Lena stared at her and wondered how she could care for such things. Was it pure affectation?
“Oh, you’re young, my dear,” said Mrs. Lenox laughingly. “You must hold all your opinions violently. And you haven’t been South. Things can’t help looking different down there.”
“Vera!” cried Miss Elton so explosively that Lena sat up straighter than ever, “you’re not really a renegade yourself, are you?” and she spoke as though her life depended on the answer. ”

“ This was a shaft that struck so near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. “I am sure I think a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine,” Mrs. Lenox went on.
Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted to make a friend of this girl, because Dick had asked her to, and here, at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them. ”

“ There came from the doorway a girl who was lifted above the pharisaism of clothes into the purer ether. She was calm-eyed and well-poised, and Lena hated her for the rest of her life for her obliviousness of the sordid. Behind her walked a young man who now opened the carriage door and lingered a moment and laughed as he talked with the girl who had taken her seat. Lena involuntarily drew her feet closer beneath her skirts that no careless glance of that girl should fall upon their shabbiness. She looked at the man as she looked at the Russian sables. ”