Josephine Daskam Bacon

“ Your last chance, Bob! Think how you called it that yourself! If this lady realised all this meant to you, she'd excuse you, I'm sure. Don't be a fool, Bob! Let me put you in a cab and go right to Stebbins—old Steb'll put you up, and nobody will ever know! You can sleep it off—it's only eight o'clock."
To his unexpected delight Bob yawned sleepily. His eyes were dull, his mouth drooped.
"Sleep it off," he murmured. "I wish I was in bed this minute. Lord, I'm tired. And I know why, too. I told her bromo-seltzer would settle me. Always puts me to sleep—no good at all. Fool to drink it. ”

“ He nodded complacently.
"I'll bring you around the rest of the things to-morrow. I knew you'd enjoy this, Anne. You love—really love—this sort of thing, don't you?"
She nodded eagerly.
"But nothing else? Nobody—you don't think that perhaps you're letting—after all, my dear, life is something more than the beautiful things you surround yourself with—pictures and music and poetry, and all that. It really is. There is so much——"
"There is one's religion," she said quietly and not uncordially. ”

“ Willard, whose 'Windflower' distanced all competitors and won the Minot prize by a unanimous verdict of the judges, has displayed, aside from his thorough master of technic, a breadth of atmosphere, an imaginative range rarely if ever equalled by an American. Nothing but the work itself, so manifestly idealistic in subject and treatment, could convince us that it is not a study from life, so keen, so haunting is the impression produced by the remarkable figure of the Spirit of the Gale, who seems to sink before our eyes on the falling trunk, literally riding the storm. ”

“ In the vivid swiftness of effect, the simple subtlety of treatment, there was a recalling of the Japanese witchery of suggestion; the faint tinge of sadness in every poem left in the mind precisely the sweet regret that the beauty of the world must always leave. At the "Clearing Shower," perhaps the most compelling of all his work, quick drops started to the [79] girl's eyes, so intense was the vision of the moist, green-breathing earth, the torn fleece of the clouds, the broken chirping of frightened birds, the softened, yellow light that reassures and saddens at once. ”

“ Once in her private sitting-room the matron began, low-voiced, with an occasional glance at the closed door, as if to make certain that no curious inmate lurked behind it:
"If Harriet Blake doesn't grow more sensible very soon I shall certainly go crazy; I invited you, Mr. Freeland, to dinner to-day because Harriet used to like your prayers in the afternoon, and it may help her to talk to you—but I don't know. She's a very obstinate old lady. The whole house talks about nothing else, and she's just morbid enough to like it. ”

“ A block away from the studio a flower-woman met him with a tray of daffodils and late crocuses. A sudden puff of wind blew out her scant, thin skirt; a tree in the centre of the park they were crossing bent to it, the branches creaked faintly. The fresh, earthy odour of the flowers moved him strangely. He bought a bunch, turned, and went back to the studio, to sit for an hour gazing sightlessly ahead of him.
Suddenly he started up and approached the sketch.
"It wants wind," he muttered, half unconsciously, and fell to work. An hour passed, two, three—he still painted rapidly. ”

“ Anne started.
"Here, here, West, none of that," the older man corrected, sharply. "That's no thing to say—what is the matter?"
"It's Pippa," he returned, simply. "She won't marry me. I'll kill myself if she don't. I can't eat, [90] I can't sleep, I can't think. It cuts into me night and day. You don't know how it kills me—you don't know!"
He writhed like a child in physical pain. His face was distorted: he made no more effort to conceal his misery than his delight of weeks ago. Delafield showed a little of his disgust. ”

“ A few moments later, as he stood at the window in the parlour, looking at the waving elm-boughs and lazily wondering how the moon could be so bright when there were so many clouds, the soft [41] swish of a woman's skirt sounded close to his ear. As he turned, the frightened "Oh!" and the little gasp of surprised femininity revealed Sarah, standing near the table in the centre of the room. Even at that distance and in the dark he was aware of a difference in her, a subtle element of personality not present before. ”

“ All the crowding, sweating humanity of his stunted boyhood had flowed through his youth like an ugly drain laid through a fresh mountain stream. He seemed to have lived all his years with young [83] David on the hillside, and wealth and poverty, crowds and loneliness, love and death were as far from his life as if the vast procession of them all that swept by him daily through the great city had never been. ”

“ Her slender body swayed easily with the wind that nearly bent Willard double. She seemed unreal—a phantom of the storm, a veritable wind-spirit. Her loosened hair flew across his face, and its touch completed the strange thrill that her hand-clasp brought. He followed unresistingly.
"Aren't—you—afraid—of—the—woods?" he gasped, the gusts tearing the words from his lips, as he saw that she was making for the thick growth of trees that bordered the cliff. Her high, light laughter almost frightened him, so weird and unhuman it came to him on the wind.
"Why should I be afraid? ”

“ And when he knew his friends again, Darby had been buried a long time. Joan did not know whether a broken neck is so much worse than anything else in the world. He hadn't any curiosity about the mill—he didn't care to hear the details of how they burned it to the ground. Perhaps after a while he will be too tired to contradict ignorant people. But he thinks—he has said, that when a man has not slept five hours in a week, nor spoken for days together without agony, much may be forgiven him in the line of intolerance of other people's ignorance—a blessed ignorance gentlemen, a blessed ignorance. ”

“ He wondered as he thought of it why he had not noticed it before, and decided that her silence was not obtrusive, but only the outcome of her colourless personality—like the silence of the prim New England house itself.
He groaned inwardly. "What in time can I do? Nothing to read within five miles: my last cigar gone yesterday: this beastly weather driving me to melancholia! If she weren't such a stick—heavens! I never knew a girl could be so thin!" ”

“ The man came to the bed, dragging the hound, and Joan shut his eyes, not to see the dark evil face. He would die in the dark, alone, unaided. Oh! to call once! To hear a human voice! But there was no sound but the panting of the great, eager dog.
"The man seemed not to see him. He seized the girl, and turning her toward the light that burned at the pane, he bound her to the bed-post with the silken sash. She writhed and bent and tried to grasp his feet; she pleaded with her eyes till their agony cut Joan like a knife, but the man tied her straight and fast. ”

“ As Delafield left the little table he did not rise with him, but sat with his eyes fixed on the smoke-rings.
"They do not teach courtesy in the night-schools, evidently," mused the older man, peering for a cab; "but one can't have everything. My manners have been on occasion commended—but I can't write poetry like that."
He tasted in advance the pleasure of reading the poem to Anne: how her brown eyes would dilate and glow, how eagerly her long, slender fingers would clasp and unclasp. ”

“ Without a word Sam turned and left the library, and Miss Watkins from her ladder remonstrated feebly.
"Why, Jimmy, if that boy has a ticket you haven't any right——"
"Do you know what he does with those books, Miss Watkins?" replied the dauntless squire of dames. "He reads 'em after supper to his little sister Susy. That one where the house all falls down and the one where the lady's teeth come out and she carries 'em in her hand! And she don't dare take her feet off the rungs, she sits so still. And she don't go to sleep hardly ever. ”

“ Dillon interrupted sternly. "No sister could have been more of an angel to you, Bob.
"Now I'll go on. It's going to be necessary just here for me to tell you that I love your sister. You don't know anything about that, of course. You don't for a second of your life realise what it is to love a woman as I've loved her for—for five years, we'll say. I put it five because, though I loved her long before, things happened in between, and I don't count it till five years ago. Heaven knows I'm not worth her shoe-laces. ”

“ The man, large, dark, heavy-jawed; the stone-grey, snarling hound, licking its frothing jaws, straining at its chain. The girl writhed against the bed in terror—she opened her lips, but with a stride the man was upon her, his heavy hand was over her mouth. He dragged her up, shaking and sinking, he snatched the sash and bound her mouth, he held her at arm's length [213] and stared once in her eyes. Scorn and rage and murder were in his.
"Joan forgot his own danger in terrified pity. ”

“ To be disappointed again would be too cruel! I watched the soiled, untidy figure collapse onto the stool. Then I shut my eyes, to hear without prejudice of sight the opening triple-octave scale of the professional pianist. For with such assurance as he showed he should at least be able to play the scales.
The hall seemed so large and dim, I was so alone—I was glad of the Nice Boy. Suppose it should all be a horrible plot, and the tramp should rush down with a revolver? Suppose—and then I stopped thinking. For from far-away somewhere came the softest, sweetest song. A woman was singing. ”

“ The girl in question rose and began clearing the table. Her mother bustled out of the room, and left Willard in the old-fashioned arm-chair by the window, almost interested, as he wondered what the girl would do or say now. After five minutes of silence he realised the strange impression, or rather the lack of impression, she made on him. He was [33] hardly conscious of a woman's presence. The intangible atmosphere of femininity that wraps around a tête-à-tête with even the most unattractive woman was wholly lacking. She seemed simply a more or less intelligent human being. ”

“ Delafield chuckled involuntarily, and then, as a quick red poured over the other's cheeks, he made a hasty gesture of apology.
"No offence—none at all, I assure you, Mr.—Mr. Poet! I was only taken by surprise. One doesn't often assist a poet in catching his works!" ”

“ She moved across to the window and set it in the sill. Then she glided to the door and locked it. Joan heard the bolt slip.
"Steps sounded on the ladder outside. Into Joan's half-dulled thought came a kind of comfort. Darby was coming. Some one knocked on the pane and the window was raised from the outside.
"'Joan! Joan!' whispered Darby, 'are you all right? Why did you light the lamp? Where are you?' And then Joan, the fool, forgot that if he had not answered, Darby would surely have come in. It seemed to him that if he did not speak now, he was lost. ”

“ A woman, like Pippa herself, is the best person to understand the matter."
"All right," the boy assented wearily, "only she isn't like Pippa, not a bit. Pippa's different."
Anne coloured deeply, and Delafield cursed the day he met the boy. His niece he did not pretend to understand.
The next afternoon, as he chafed in the stuffy dining-room-parlour of the flat that was Pippa's home, listening to the quarrelling of a half dozen children on the dreary little roof-garden below him as to who should swing in Uncle Joseph's hammock, he understood her less and less. ”

“ But I have noticed that the Nice Boy and the girl who heard him play do not feel so sure that his death was best. For myself, I shall always feel that the world has lost its musical master. I have heard the music-makers of two generations, and not one of them has excelled his exquisite light [26] ness and force of touch, and that wonderful singing stress—oh! I could cry to think of it! And when we go abroad next I shall find out the name of the man who played in Leipsic and Paris and Vienna—for he must have played there once ”

“ One was young—about your age," nodding to Sanford. "The other was older. He was not so clever nor so attractive nor so brilliant nor so jolly as the younger, but he had a characteristic—perhaps his only one—for he was a very ordinary man. He had an iron will. His determination was as unbreakable as anything human could be. And he was devoted to his friend, who, somehow, loved him. I don't know why, because he had so many other admirers—but he stuck to his friend—Joan. They called the two Darby and Joan. ”

“ For, though my brother-in-law says that the musical temperament in combination with a Bohemian tendency gives an emotional basis which is absolutely unsafe and therefore untrustworthy in its reports of actual facts, I know that the most glorious music of my life gained nothing from my imagination. ”

“ Henry's afraid of a horse, you know. It don't seem quite natural for a man not to know about horses, does it, now?"
"If you had only waited till his book came out," said Delafield tentatively. As he looked at her he was conscious of a ridiculous satisfaction that such a fine woman should know her own mind so perfectly. She was a very complete creature, in her way. He realised that in this strangely assorted quartette he and she were involuntarily on one side of an intangible line, his niece and their unintelligible protegé on the other. ”

“ He tapped on the pane to Darby.
"'I'll lie down and take a little nap,' he whispered, opening the window softly. 'You can call me at twelve.' Darby nodded.
"'How do you feel, old fellow? All right?' he asked."
The man choked again and was silent for a time. The strain was growing. The men waited for something to happen as one awaits the falling of the red, snapping embers.
"Joan lay down in that bed," said the stranger hoarsely, and from this point he hurried on almost too quickly for clearness, "on that hideous checked blanket, and fell asleep. ”