Harriet T. Comstock

“ With that "dosh" had the child Priscilla wooed the favour and recognition of the god. It was a triumph of appeal.
And then the dance began—the wild, fantastic steps full of grace and joy and the fury and passion of youth. Round and round spun the slight form, with arms over head or spread wide. The red cape floated, rising and falling; the uplifted face changed with every moment's flitting thought. It was a beautiful thing, that dance, grotesque, pagan, and yet divine, and through it all, panting and pulsing, sounded the strange, incomprehensible words:
"Skib, skib, skibble—de—de—dosh!" ”

“ Unable to think or act, Travers saw Priscilla take up her still damp coat and hat. Like a man in a nightmare he saw her turn a deadly white face upon him, and then the door closed and he was alone in her little room!
He looked about, dazed and emotionless. He felt her in every touch of the lonely place; her books, her little pictures, herself! Some women are like that: they leave themselves in the presence of them they love—forever!
"Kill her ideal!" The words rang in the empty corners of his heart and mind. "Somewhere he is following his ideal, and living true and sure!" ”

“ Those sad young creatures, with only blind instinct to uphold them, were so—divinely human, and paid so superbly. When it comes to the hour of a life for a life, one thing alone matters, I am afraid, and it is the thing you mean, Margaret."
"Yes. And what a horrible puzzle it all is. The thing I mean should be always there—always. The world's wrong when it is not."
Suddenly Priscilla, sending the light boat forward by the impulse of her last stroke, said, as if it were quite in line with all that had gone before:
"There's Doctor Travers on the wharf!" ”

“ When she was weak from weariness and lonely to the verge of exhaustion, she thought of Kenmore—not Travers—with positive yearning. The woman of her, madly defending, or about to defend, woman, excluded even her own love and her own man. It was sex against sex; the world's injustice against all that woman held sacred! If Margaret were to be sacrificed, so was she, for she blindly felt that Travers would not uphold her! How could he when tradition held him captive? How could he when his oath bound him like a slave? Doctor Hapgood had done his part, had spoken his word—to man! ”

“ Priscilla Glenn stood on the little slope leading down from the farmhouse to the spring at the bottom of the garden, and lifted her head as a young deer does when it senses something new or dangerous. Suddenly, and entirely subconsciously, she felt her kinship with life, her relation to the lovely May day which was more like June than May—and a rare thing for Kenmore—whose seasons lapsed into each other as calmly and sluggishly as did all the other happenings in that spot known to the Canadian Indians as The Place Beyond the Wind—the In-Place. ”

“ With this Mary McAdam came down to the boat and looked keenly at Farwell.
"Are you well?" she asked with a gentleness new and touching. "'Tis pale you look, and thin, I'm thinking. I'm getting to depend upon you, and the thought of anything happening to you grieves the heart of me. In all Kenmore there's no one as I lean on like you. There be nights when I look out toward your house and see your light a-shining when all else is dark, and say to myself, 'The master and me' over and over, and I'm less lonely." ”

“ For a full moment Priscilla stared helplessly, then she began to see light.
"Do you mean," she gasped, "that he who made me dance—was the boy of the Hill Place?"
"As if you did not know it!" Jerry-Jo grunted.
"But Jerry-Jo you said he—that boy was a poor, twisted thing, ugly past all belief, while he who played and laughed that day was like an angel of light just showing me the way to heaven!"
And now Jerry-Jo's dark face was not pleasant to look upon.
"Can't a twisted thing become straight?" he muttered; "can't a devil trap himself out like an—an angel?" ”

“ A pitiful bitterness crept into Priscilla's voice; her lips quivered.
"It is all Huntter! Huntter! All men! men! and there stands my dear—alone! No one goes to her to let—her choose; no one but me! Don't you see what I mean? Oh! my love, my love! My good, good man, can you leave her there in ignorance, all of you? Through the ages she has not had her say—about the chance, and that is why——"
Priscilla paused, choked by rising passion.
"Little girl, listen! What do you mean?" Travers was genuinely alarmed and anxious. ”

“ He had, to a certain extent, grown used to the detachment and colourlessness of his life since Farwell had left it; but here, quite unexpectedly, a young and vital personality had entered in and had given him, in a crude, friendly way, to be sure, what his absent friend had given—the assurance that his deformity could not exclude him from the sweet humanity that was keen enough to recognize the soul of him. Sensitive, shrinking from suffering and publicity, the man found in Priscilla's companionship and confiding friendliness the deepest joy he had known since his great loss. ”

“ The uncanny ceremony eased many an overstrained hour and did for the girl what should have been done in a more normal way. The place on the red rock became her sanctuary. To it she carried her daily task of sewing and dreamed her long dreams.
The Glenns rarely went to church—the distance was too great—but Nathaniel, looming high and stern across the table in the bare kitchen, morning and night, set forth the rigid, unlovely creed of his belief. This fell upon Priscilla's unheeding ears, but the hours before the shrine were deeply, tenderly religious, although they were bright and merry hours. ”

“ Boswell dropped the pencil upon the mahogany desk and looked blankly at Priscilla.
"Let us sit by the fire," he said presently, "I am cold and—tired. Turn down the lights."
They took their positions near the hearth: the dwarf in his low, deep leather chair with its wide "wings" that hid him so mercifully; Priscilla in the small rocker that from the first had seemed to meet every curve and line of her long, young body with restful welcome.
"And now," Priscilla urged, "please tell me. I feel, to-night, like myself once more. I am adjusted to the new life, I hope, ready to do my part." ”

“ With freedom Priscilla gained a bit of courage and a keen sense of the necessity of calmness. She did not move away from Jerry-Jo, but fixing him with her wide eyes she asked:
"Are—are the—family here—here in Kenmore?" Suspicion and anger shook the voice. The slow, tense words brought things down to fact.
"No! God knows where they are! I don't know or care."
Brought face to face with great danger, mental or physical, the majority of people rise to the call. Priscilla knew now that she was in grave peril—peril of a deeper kind than even her tormentor could realize. ”

“ It was a wise butterfly, by way of change. While it hesitated, a beetle crawled along and offered its services as guide. The pretty, bright thing was sane enough to accept. Do you follow?"
Priscilla started. She had been caught in the mesh of the story, and now with a sudden realization of its underlying thought she flushed and laughed.
"I still have my childish delight in stories, you see," she said. Then, "I—I do see what you mean. Again I repeat, I am so glad to accept your—your kindness."
"Middle life has its disadvantages." The voice from out the shadows sounded weary. ”

“ Priscilla, in her plain white linen dress, was sitting on the broad window seat, and Boswell, from his winged chair, looked at her with a tightening of the throat. There were times when she made him feel as he felt when Farwell Maxwell used to look at him before the shadow fell between them—the shadow that darkened both their lives.
"And that was why you had a—a Kenmore name graven on the stone?"
"Yes, Mr. Boswell, Jerry-Jo McAlpin. Jerry-Jo is dead, too, you know. They name living people after dead ones. Why not dead people?" ”

“ You see I have never had real children in my life. The kinds passed out to nice girls like me were sad travesties. Since I saw the darling of to-day I've been wondering—do not laugh, Priscilla—but I've been wondering what poor, cheated little morsel of humanity, in the unreal world, would find herself in that eleventh miracle of the wretched hovel? And what an art yours is, dear Priscilla! How you soothed away the suffering by your touch. ”

“ He was not blind to Jerry-Jo's primitive attempts to attract the girl's attention, but he was not deceived. When the moment came that Priscilla recognized the half-breed's real thought, Farwell knew her quick impulse would, as of old, be to fly away. She was like a wild bird, he often pondered; she would give to great lengths, flutter close, and love tenderly, but no restraining or harsh touch could do aught but set her to flight. ”

“ Boswell had never before so intimately permitted her to come close to his work. She had seen stories of his in print, had heard plans for others, but before the fire in his study that night he read, among other things, "The Butterfly and the Beetle." So beautifully, so touchingly, had he pictured the little romance, of which Priscilla herself was part, that the tears fell from the girl's eyes while her lips were smiling at the tender humour. The undercurrent of meaning threw new light on the lonely life of the rich, but wretched man. ”

“ I sometimes feel as if there were two of me, the one holding, demanding, and protecting the other. I will not have men always making my life and shielding me; the woman of me will have its way. Men and boys never know this feeling."
And Jerry-Jo could, of course, understand nothing of this, but the thing he had set out to do, more in rude, brutish fun than anything else, assumed graver purpose. A new and ugly look grew in his bold eyes, a sinister smile on his red mouth, which showed the points of his white, fang-like teeth. But Priscilla, too absorbed with her own thoughts, did not notice. ”

“ Priscilla got up stiffly, for she was cold and nerve-worn. She walked unsteadily to Boswell, her tear-stained face twitching with emotion, her hands outstretched. In her eyes was the look that only once or twice in his life had Boswell ever seen directed toward him by any human being—the look that claimed the hidden and best in him, forgetting the deformities that limited him.
"I think you are the best man on earth, the noblest friend. Oh! what can we do for Master Farwell?" ”

“ Priscilla was sleeping when Farwell silently closed the door after him, and, followed by his dogs, provided with food and blankets, he noiselessly took to the shadowy woods. It was a starry, still hour, lying between night and morning, and it partook of both. Dark it was, but with that silvery luminosity which a couple of hours later would be changed to pink glow. The stars shone, and the one great, pulsing planet that hung over the sleeping village seemed more gloriously near than Farwell had ever before noticed it. All nature was waiting for the magic touch of day ”

“ But Priscilla saw she had gone too far. The whimsical mood in Huntter had passed. He was himself again, and she was his nurse—his nurse who knew too much! More fretfully than he had ever spoken to her, he said:
"I wish to be alone, Miss Glynn."
Priscilla passed out, leaving the door between the rooms ajar, and lay down upon the couch.
To Doctor Hapgood she was a machine merely; an easy-running one, a dependable one, but none the less a machine. To Huntter, shut away from society, gregarious, friendly, and kindly, she had meant much more. ”

“ Across Priscilla's straight, young shoulders lay a yoke from both ends of which dangled empty tin pails, destined, sooner or later, to be filled with that peculiarly fine water of which Nathaniel Glenn was so proud. Nathaniel Glenn never loved things in a human, tender fashion, but he was proud of many things—proud that he, and his before him, had braved the hardships of farming among the red, rocky hills of Kenmore instead of wrenching a livelihood from the water. ”

“ We have played and played until we have made ourselves believe—such wonderful things; but to-morrow—we will wake up and be what we have been made! I have heard, oh! so many people, tell of your future, your honours. I have seen Doctor Ledyard's eyes upon you; I know you have a mother who adores you. I do not know your world; I could not touch your place but to mar it, and, because I love you so—oh! so absolutely, and because I would want, and must have, glory in my own love—we must stop playing! We have not"—and now the eyes dimmed—"we have not played for keeps!"
"You poor, little girl! ”

“ She was the sunniest creature he had ever known; the bleak life of Lonely Farm had spurred her to greater lengths of self-defence; nothing could daunt her. She had an absorbing curiosity about life, out and beyond the Kenmore confines; and more to keep his own memory clear than to satisfy Priscilla, Farwell set himself to the task of educating the girl in ways that would have appalled Nathaniel and reduced Theodora again to tears and apprehension. ”

“ They know—you cannot do this thing alone; it is their duty, too—they must help you, for, oh!"—Priscilla leaned toward him with tear-blinded eyes and pleading hands—"For the sake of the—the little children of the world. Oh! men are fathers, good fathers, but they have forgotten the part mothers must take! We women cannot leave it all to you. It is wicked, wicked for women to try! There is something mightier than our love—we are learning that!"
Travers took her in his arms. ”

“ Priscilla's upper lip twitched. This was a trick her nerves had of warning her, but she heeded not.
"You—you would force me to marry Jerry-Jo even against his will? You would make that little hell for me without even knowing what has happened? You'd fling me in it to—to save your name?"
"You've made your own hell! No matter what has happened, there is only one way out for you. If you refuse that——" And here Nathaniel flung his big arms wide, as if pushing his child out—out! ”

“ The joy depicted in simple, friendly intercourse, the aspiration of the Beetle, the grateful appreciation for the plain, common happenings that in most lives were taken for granted, but which in his rose to monumental importance, endeared him to her anew. It brought back to her what Boswell had told her of his relations with Farwell Maxwell, her Anton Farwell. She could now, with her broader, more mature reason, understand the devotion the cripple had given the one man who, in the empty years, had taken him without reservation, had ignored his limitations, and had been his friend and comrade. ”

“ Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is the how to break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."
"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools. You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a—a woman; a beautiful one! Do you know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and protected?"
"What does it do?" The true eyes held Farwell commandingly, and with a sense of dismay he looked back at the only world he really knew: the world of his own ungoverned passions and selfishness. ”

“ Against it, unseen, faint, but persistent, beat what once had been—her grim father, her weak, tearful mother, lonely, kindly Master Farwell, and all the lesser folk of Kenmore. Pressing close and straining to hold her, these dim, shadowy memories clustered, but she no longer appeared a part of them, like them, or in any way connected with them. On the other hand, below the eyrie dwelling in which she was temporarily sheltered, lay the whirlpool of sound and motion into which, sooner or later, she must plunge. ”

“ She nodded toward the grinning skull. "On bright sunny afternoons in spring, when flowers and green things are beginning to live, he lets me dance, once in a great while, so that I can keep alive!"
Priscilla, with this, gave such a beaming and mischievous smile that Travers was bewitched.
"You——" But he did not put his thought into words; he merely gave smile for smile, and asked:
"Did he teach you to dance?"
"No. The dance is—is me! That's why he likes me. He's so dead that he likes to see something that is alive." ”

“ For a moment Farwell could not speak. Once an inward desire to laugh, to scoff, would have driven him to supernatural gravity; now he merely smiled with grave pleasure, and said:
"A tramp will do me good, Mrs. McAdam. Thank you. I'll take your words with me for comfort and cheer."
The first night Farwell slept beside his fire, not ten miles from Kenmore. He had revelled in his freedom all day, had played like a boy, often retracing his steps, carefully using the same footprints, and laughing as he imagined the confusion of any one trying to follow him; the vague somebody being always Ledyard. ”