The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Preliminaries, by Cornelia A. P. Comer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Preliminaries And Other Stories Author: Cornelia A. P. Comer Release Date: September 7, 2010 [EBook #33665] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRELIMINARIES *** Produced by Don Kostuch [Transcriber's notes] Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. Obvious spelling or typographical errors have been corrected. "Inventive" and contemporary spelling is unchanged. For example, the insertion of a space in contractions is preserved, as in "has n't". [End transcriber's notes] THE PRELIMINARIES And Other Stories BY CORNELIA A. P. COMER BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside press Cambridge 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CORNELIA A. P. COMER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published September 1912 CONTENTS THE PRELIMINARIES 1 THE LONG INHERITANCE 51 CLARISSA'S OWN CHILD 127 {1} THE PRELIMINARIES {2} {3} THE PRELIMINARIES I Young Oliver Pickersgill was in love with Peter Lannithorne's daughter. Peter Lannithorne was serving a six-year term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. It seemed to Ollie that there was only one right-minded way of looking at these basal facts of his situation. But this simple view of the matter was destined to receive several shocks in the course of his negotiations for Ruth Lannithorne's hand. I say negotiations advisedly. Most young men in love have only to secure the consent of the girl and find enough money to go to housekeeping. It is quite otherwise when you wish to marry into a royal {4} family, or to ally yourself with a criminal's daughter. The preliminaries are more complicated. Ollie thought a man ought to marry the girl he loves, and prejudices be hanged! In the deeps of his soul, he probably knew this to be the magnanimous, manly attitude, but certainly there was no condescension in his outward bearing when he asked Ruth Lannithorne to be his wife. Yet she turned on him fiercely, bristling with pride and tense with overwrought nerves. "I will never marry any one," she declared, "who does n't respect my father as I do!" If Oliver's jaw fell, it is hardly surprising. He had expected her to say she would never marry into a family where she was not welcome. He had planned to get around the natural {5} objections of his parents somehow--the details of this were vague in his mind--and then he meant to reassure her warmly, and tell her that personal merit was the only thing that counted with him or his. He may have visualized himself as wiping away her tears and gently raising her to share the safe social pedestal whereon the Pickersgills were firmly planted. The young do have these visions not infrequently. But to be asked to respect Peter Lannithorne, about whom he knew practically nothing save his present address! "I don't remember that I ever saw your father, Ruth," he faltered. "He was the best man," said the girl excitedly, "the kindest, the most indulgent--that's another thing, Ollie. I will never marry an indulgent man, nor one who will let his wife manage {6} him. If it had n't been for mother--" She broke off abruptly. Ollie tried to look sympathetic and not too intelligent. He had heard that Mrs. Lannithorne was considered difficult. "I ought n't to say it, but can't explain father unless I do. Mother nagged; she wanted more money than there was; she made him feel her illnesses, and our failings, and the overdone beefsteak, and the underdone bread,--everything that went wrong, always, was his fault. His fault--because he did n't make more money. We were on the edge of things, and she wanted to be in the middle, as she was used to being. Of course, she really has n't been well, but I think it's mostly nerves," said Ruth, with the terrible hardness of the young. "Anyhow, she might just as well have stuck {7} knives into him as to say the things she did. It hurt him--like knives. I could see him wince--and try harder--and get discouraged--and then, at last- -" The girl burst into a passion of tears. Oliver tried to soothe her. Secretly he was appalled at these squalid revelations of discordant family life. The domestic affairs of the Pickersgills ran smoothly, in affluence and peace. Oliver had never listened to a nagging woman in his life. He had an idea that such phenomena were confined to the lower classes. "Don't you care for me at all, Ruth?" The girl crumpled her wet handkerchief. "Ollie, you're the most beautiful thing that ever happened except my father. He was beautiful, too; indeed, indeed, he was. I'll never {8} think differently. I can't. He tried so hard." All the latent manliness in the boy came to the surface and showed itself. "Ruth, darling, I don't want you to think differently. It's right for you to be loyal and feel as you do. You see, you know, and the world doesn't. I'll take what you say and do as you wish. You must n't think I'm on the other side. I'm not. I'm on your side, wherever that is. When the time comes I'll show you. You may trust me, Ruth." He was eager, pleading, earnest. He looked at the moment so good, so loving and sincere, that the girl, out of her darker experience of life, wondered wistfully if it were really true that Providence ever let people just live their lives out like that being good, and prosperous, and generous, advancing {9} from happiness to happiness, instead of stubbing along painfully as she felt she had done, from one bitter experience to another, learning to live by failures. It must be beautiful to learn from successes instead, as it seemed to her Oliver had done. How could any one refuse to share such a radiant life when it was offered? As for loving Oliver, that was a foregone conclusion. Still, she hesitated. "You re awfully dear and good to me, Ollie," she said. "But I want you to see father. I want you to go and talk to him about this, and know him for yourself. I know I'm asking a hard thing of you, but, truly, I believe it's best. If he says it's all right for me to marry you, I will if your family want me, of course," she added as an after thought. {10} "Ought n't I to speak to your mother?" hesitated Oliver. "Oh,--mother? Yes, I suppose she'd like it," said Ruth absent-mindedly. "Mother has views about getting married, Ollie. I dare say she'll want to tell you what they are. You must n't think they're my views, though." "I'd rather hear yours, Ruth." She flashed a look at him that opened for him the heavenly deeps that lie before the young and the loving, and he had a sudden vision of their life as a long sunlit road, winding uphill, winding down, but sunlit always--because looks like that illumine any dusk. "I'll tell you my views--some day," Ruth said softly. "But first--" "First I must talk to my father, your mother, your father." Oliver checked them off on his fingers. "Three of them. Seems to me that's a lot of {11} folks to consult about a thing that does n't really concern anybody but you and me!" II After the fashion of self-absorbed youth, Oliver had never noticed Mrs. Lannithorne especially. She had been to him simply a sallow little figure in the background of Ruth's vivid young life; some one to be spoken to very politely, but otherwise of no particular moment. If his marital negotiations did nothing else for him, they were at least opening his eyes to the significance of the personalities of older people. The things Ruth said about her mother had prepared him to find that lady querulous and difficult, but essentially negligible. Face to face with Mrs. Lannithorne, he had a very {12} different impression. She received him in the upstairs sitting-room to which her semi-invalid habits usually confined her. Wrapped in a white wool shawl and lying in a long Canton lounging-chair by a sunshiny window, she put out a chilly hand in greeting, and asked the young man to be seated. Oliver, scanning her countenance, received an unexpected impression of dignity. She was thin and nervous, with big dark eyes peering out of a pale, narrow face; she might be a woman with a grievance, but he apprehended something beyond mere fretfulness in the discontent of her expression. There was suffering and thought in her face, and even when the former is exaggerated and the latter erroneous, these are impressive things. "Mrs. Lannithorne, have you any objection to letting Ruth marry me?" {13} "Mr. Pickersgill, what are your qualifications for the care of a wife and family?" Oliver hesitated. "Why, about what anybody's are, I think," he said, and was immediately conscious of the feebleness of this response. "I mean," he added, flushing to the roots of his blond hair, "that my prospects in life are fair. I am in my father's office, you know. I am to have a small share in the business next year. I need n't tell you that the firm is a good one. If you want to know about my qualifications as a lawyer why, I can refer you to people who can tell you if they think I am promising." "Do your family approve of this marriage?" "I have n't talked to them about it yet." "Have you ever saved any money {14} of your own earning, or have you any property in your own name?" Oliver thought guiltily of his bank account, which had a surprising way of proving, when balanced, to be less than he expected. "Well,--not exactly." "In other words, then, Mr. Pickersgill, you are a young and absolutely untried man; you are in your father's employ and practically at his mercy; you propose a great change in your life of which you do not know that he approves; you have no resources of your own, and you are not even sure of your earning capacity if your father's backing were withdrawn. In these circumstances you plan to double your expenses and assume the whole responsibility of another person's life, comfort, and happiness. Do you think that you have shown {15} me that your qualifications are adequate?" All this was more than a little disconcerting. Oliver was used to being accepted as old Pickersgill's only son which meant a cheerfully accorded background of eminence, ability, and comfortable wealth. It had not occurred to him to detach himself from that background and see how he looked when separated from it. He felt a little angry, and also a little ashamed of the fact that he did not bulk larger as a personage, apart from his environment. Nevertheless, he answered her question honestly. "No, Mrs. Lannithorne, I don't think that I have." She did not appear to rejoice in his discomfiture. She even seemed a little sorry for it, but she went on quietly:-- {16} "Don't think I am trying to prove that you are the most ineligible young man in the city. But it is absolutely necessary that a man should stand on his own feet, and firmly, before he undertakes to look after other lives than his own. Otherwise there is nothing but misery for the women and children who depend upon him. It is a serious business, getting married." "I begin to think it is," muttered Oliver blankly. "I don't want my daughters to marry," said Mrs. Lannithorne. "The life is a thousand times harder than that of the self-supporting woman --harder work, fewer rewards, less enjoyment, less security. That is true even of an ordinarily happy marriage. And if they are not happy --oh, the bitterness of them!" She was speaking rapidly now, with {17} energy, almost with anguish. Oliver, red in the face, subdued, but eager to refute her out of the depths and heights of his inexperience, held him self rigidly still and listened. "Did you ever hear that epigram of Disraeli--that all men should marry, but no women? That is what I believe! At least, if women must marry, let others do it, not my children, not my little girls!--It is curious, but that is how we always think of them. When they are grown they are often uncongenial. My daughter Ruth does not love me deeply, nor am I greatly drawn to her now, as an individual, a personality,--but Ruth was such a dear baby! I can't bear to have her suffer." Oliver started to protest, hesitated, bit his lip, and subsided. After all, did he dare say that his wife would never {18} suffer? The woman opposite looked at him with hostile, accusing eyes, as if he incarnated in his youthful person all the futile masculinity in the world. "Do you think a woman who has suffered willingly gives her children over to the same fate?" she demanded passionately. "I wish I could make you see it for five minutes as I see it, you, young, careless, foolish. Why, you know nothing,--nothing! Listen to me. The woman who marries gives up everything: or at least jeopardizes everything: her youth, her health, her life perhaps, certainly her individuality. She acquires the permanent possibility of self-sacrifice. She does it gladly, but she does not know what she is doing. In return, is it too much to ask that she be assured a roof over her head, food to her mouth, clothes to her body? How many men marry {19} without being sure that they have even so much to offer? You yourself, of what are you sure? Is your arm strong? Is your heart loyal? Can you shelter her soul as well as her body? I know your father has money. Perhaps you can care for her creature needs, but that is n't all. For some women life is one long affront, one slow humiliation. How do I know you are not like that?" "Because I'm not, that's all!" said Oliver Pickersgill abruptly, getting to his feet. He felt badgered, baited, indignant, yet he could not tell this frail, excited woman what he thought. There were things one did n't say, although Mrs. Lannithorne seemed to ignore the fact. She went on ignoring it. "I know what you are thinking," she said, "that I would regard these matters differently if I had married {20} another man. That is not wholly true. It is because Peter Lannithorne was a good man at heart, and tried to play the man's part as well as he knew how, and because it was partly my own fault that he failed so miserably, that I have thought of it all so much. And the end of all my thinking is that I don't want my daughters to marry." Oliver was white now, and a little unsteady. He was also confused. There was the note of truth in what she said, but he felt that she said it with too much excitement, with too great facility. He had the justified masculine distrust of feminine fluency as hysterical. Nothing so presented could carry full conviction. And he felt physically bruised and battered, as if he had been beaten with actual rods instead of stinging words; but he was not yet defeated. {21} "Mrs. Lannithorne, what do you wish me to understand from all this? Do you forbid Ruth and me to marry--is that it?" She looked at him dubiously. She felt so fiercely the things she had been saying that she could not feel them continuously. She, too, was exhausted. Oliver Pickersgill had a fine head, candid eyes, a firm chin, strong capable hands. He was young, and the young know nothing, but it might be that there was the making of a man in him. If Ruth must marry, perhaps him as well as another. But she did not trust her own judgment, even of such hands, such eyes, and such a chin. Oh, if the girls would only believe her, if they would only be content to trust the wisdom she had distilled from the bitterness of life! But the young know {22} nothing, and believe only the lying voices in their own hearts! "I wish you would see Ruth's father," she said suddenly. "I am prejudiced. I ought not to have to deal with these questions. I tell you, I pray Heaven none of them may marry--ever; but, just the same, they will! Go ask Peter Lannithorne if he thinks his daughter Ruth has a fighting chance for happiness as your wife. Let him settle it. I have told you what I think. I am done." "I shall be very glad to talk with Ruth's father about the matter," said Oliver with a certain emphasis on father. "Perhaps he and I shall be able to understand each other better. Good morning, Mrs. Lannithorne!" {23} III Oliver Pickersgill Senior turned his swivel-chair about, bit hard on the end of his cigar, and stared at his only son. "What's that?" he said abruptly, "Say that again." Oliver Junior winced, not so much at the words as at his father's face. "I want to marry Ruth Lannithorne," he repeated steadily. There was a silence. The elder Pickersgill looked at his son long and hard from under lowered brows. Oliver had never seen his father look at him like that before: as if he were a rank outsider, some detached person whose doings were to be scrutinized coldly and critically, and judged on their merits. It is a hard hour for a beloved child when he first sees that look in {24} heretofore indulgent parental eyes. Young Oliver felt a weight at his heart, but he sat the straighter, and did not flinch before the appraising glance. "So you want to marry Peter Lannithorne's daughter, do you? Well, now, what is there in the idea of marrying a jail-bird's child that you find especially attractive?" "Of course I might say that I've seen something of business men in this town, Ross, say, and Worcester, and Jim Stone, and that, if it came to a choice between their methods and Lannithorne's, his were the squarer, for he settled up, and is paying the price besides. But I don't know that there's any use saying that. I don't want to marry any of their daughters and you wouldn't want me to. You know what Ruth Lannithorne is as well as I do. If there's a girl in town that's {25} finer-grained, or smarter, or prettier, I'd like to have you point her out! And she has a sense of honor like a man's. I don't know another girl like her in that. She knows what's fair," said the young man. Mr. Pickersgill's face relaxed a little. Oliver was making a good argument with no mushiness about it, and he had a long-settled habit of appreciating Ollie's arguments. "She knows what's fair, does she? Then what does she say about marrying you?" "She says she won't marry anybody who doesn't respect her father as she does!" At this the parent grinned a little, grimly it is true, but appreciatively. He looked past Oliver's handsome, boyish head, out of the window, and was silent for a time. When he spoke, it was gravely, not angrily. {26} "Oliver, you're young. The things I'm as sure of as two and two, you don't yet believe at all. Probably you won't believe 'em if I put them to you, but it's up to me to do it. Understand, I'm not getting angry and doing the heavy father over this. I'm just telling you how some things are in this world,--facts, like gravitation and atmospheric pressure. Ruth Lannithorne is a good girl, I don't doubt. This world is chuck full of good girls. It makes some difference which one of 'em you marry, but not nearly so much difference as you think it does. What matters, from forty on, for the rest of your life, is the kind of inheritance you've given your children. You don't know it yet, but the thing that's laid on men and women to do is to give their children as good an inheritance as they can. Take it from me that this {27} is gospel truth, can't you? Your mother and I have done the best we can for you and your sisters. You come from good stock, and by that I mean honest blood. You've got to pass it on untainted. Now--hold on!" he held up a warning hand as Oliver was about to interrupt hotly. "Wait till I'm through--and then think it over. I'm not saying that Peter Lannithorne's blood is n't as good as much that passes for untainted, or that Ruth isn't a fine girl. I'm only telling you this: when first you look into your son's face, every failing of your own will rise up to haunt you because you will wish for nothing on God's earth so much as that that boy shall have a fair show in life and be a better man than you. You will thank Heaven for every good thing you know of in your blood and in your wife's, and you will regret every {28} meanness, every weakness, that he may inherit, more than you knew it was in you to regret anything. Do you suppose when that hour comes to you that you'll want to remember his grandfather was a convict? How will you face that down?" Young Oliver's face was pale. He had never thought of things like this. He made no response for a while. At last he asked,-- "What kind of a man is Peter Lannithorne?" "Eh? What kind of--? Oh, well, as men go, there have been worse ones. You know how he came to get sent up. He speculated, and he borrowed some of another man's money without asking, for twenty-four hours, to protect his speculation. He didn't lose it, either! There's a point where his case differs from most. He pulled the thing {29} off and made enough to keep his family going in decent comfort, and he paid the other money back; but they concluded to make an example of him, so they sent him up. It was just, yes, and he said so himself. At the same time there are a great many more dishonest men out of prison than Peter Lannithorne, though he is in it. I meet 'em every day, and I ought to know. But that's not the point. As you said yourself, you don't want to marry their daughters. Heaven forbid that you should! You want to marry his daughter. And he was weak. He was tempted and fell, and got found out. He is a convict, and the taint sticks. The Lord knows why the stain of unsuccessful dishonesty should stick longer than the stain of successful dishonesty. I don't. But we know it does. That is the way things are. Why not marry where there is no taint?" {30} "Father--?" "Yes, Ollie." "Father, see here. He was weak and gave way--once! Are there any men in the world who have n't given way at least once about something or other?--are there, father?" There was a note of anguish in the boy's voice. Perhaps he was being pushed too far. Oliver Pickersgill Senior cleared his throat, paused, and at last answered somberly,-- "God knows, Ollie. I don't. I won't say there are." "Well, then--" "See here!" his father interrupted sharply. "Of course I see your argument. I won't meet it. I shan't try. It doesn't change my mind even if it is a good argument. We'll never get anywhere, arguing along those lines. I'll propose something else. Suppose {31} you go ask Peter Lannithorne whether you shall marry his daughter or not. Yes, ask him. He knows what's what as well as the next man. Ask Peter Lannithorne what a man wants in the family of the woman he marries." There was a note of finality in the older man's voice. Ollie recognized it drearily. All roads led to Lannithorne, it seemed. He rose, oppressed with the sense that henceforward life was going to be full of unforeseen problems; that things which, from afar, looked simple, and easy, and happy, were going to prove quite otherwise. Mrs. Lannithorne had angered rather than frightened him, and he had held his own with her, but this was his very own father who was piling the load on his shoulders and filling his heart with terror of the future. What was it, after all, this adventure of the married life {32} whereof these seasoned travelers spoke so dubiously? Could it really be that it was not the divine thing it seemed when he and Ruth looked into each other s eyes? He crossed the floor dejectedly, with the step of an older man, but at the door he shook himself and looked back. "Say, dad!" "Yes, Ollie." "Everybody is so terribly depressing about this thing, it almost scares me. Aren't there really any happy times for married people, ever? You and Mrs. Lannithorne make me feel there are n't; but somehow I have a hunch that Ruth and I know best! Own up now! Are you and mother miserable? You never looked it!" His father surveyed him with an expression too wistful to be complacent. {33} Ah, those broad young shoulders that must be fitted to the yoke! Yet for what other end was their strength given them? Each man must take his turn. "It's not a soft snap. I don't know anything worth while that is. But there are compensations. You'll see what some of them are when your boys begin to grow up." IV Across Oliver's young joy fell the shadow of fear. If, as his heart told him, there was nothing to be afraid of, why were his elders thus cautious and terrified? He felt himself affected by their alarms all the more potently because his understanding of them was vague. He groped his way in fog. How much ought he to be influenced by {34} Mrs. Lannithorne's passionate protests and his father's stern warnings? He realized all at once that the admonitory attitude of age to youth is rooted deep in immortal necessity. Like most lads, he had never thought of it before save as an unpleasant parental habit. But fear changes the point of view, and Oliver had begun to be afraid. Then again, before him loomed the prospect of his interview with Peter Lannithorne. This was a very concrete unpleasantness. Hang it all! Ruth was worth any amount of trouble, but still it was a tough thing to have to go down to the state capital and seek one's future father-in-law in his present boarding-place! One oughtn't to have to plough through that particular kind of difficulty on such an errand. Dimly he felt that the path to the Most Beautiful should be rose-lined and soft to {35} the feet of the approaching bridegroom. But, apparently, that was n't the way such paths were laid out. He resented this bitterly, but he set his jaws and proceeded to make his arrangements. It was not difficult to compass the necessary interview. He knew a man who knew the warden intimately. It was quickly arranged that he was to see Peter Lannithorne in the prison library, quite by himself. Oliver dragged himself to that conference by the sheer strength of his developing will. Every fibre of his being seemed to protest and hold back. Consequently he was not in the happiest imaginable temper for important conversation. The prison library was a long, narrow room, with bookcases to the ceiling on one side and windows to the ceiling on the other. There were red {36} geraniums on brackets up the sides of the windows, and a canary's cage on a hook gave the place a false air of domesticity, contradicted by the barred sash. Beneath, there was a window-seat, and here Oliver Pickersgill awaited Lannithorne's coming. Ollie did not know what he expected the man to be like, but his irritated nerves were prepared to resent and dislike him, whatever he might prove. He held himself rigidly as he waited, and he could feel the muscles of his face setting themselves into hard lines. When the door opened and some one approached him, he rose stiffly and held out his hand like an automaton. "How do you do, Mr. Lannithorne? I am Oliver Pickersgill, and I have come--I have come--" His voice trailed off into silence, for he had raised his eyes perfunctorily {37} to Peter Lannithorne's face, and the things printed there made him forget himself and the speech he had prepared. He saw a massive head topping an insignificant figure. A fair man was Peter Lannithorne, with heavy reddish hair, a bulging forehead, and deep-set gray eyes with a light behind them. His features were irregular and unnoticeable, but the sum-total of them gave the impression of force. It was a strong face, yet you could see that it had once been a weak one. It was a tremendously human face, a face like a battle ground, scarred and seamed and lined with the stress of invisible conflicts. There was so much of struggle and thought set forth in it that one involuntarily averted one's gaze. It did not seem decent to inspect so much of the soul of a man as was shown in Peter {38} Lannithorne's countenance. Not a triumphant face at all, and yet there was peace in it. Somehow, the man had achieved something, arrived somewhere, and the record of the journey was piteous and terrible. Yet it drew the eyes in awe as much as in wonder, and in pity not at all! These things were startlingly clear to Oliver. He saw them with a vividness not to be overestimated. This was a prison. This might be a convict, but he was a man. He was a man who knew things and would share his knowledge. His wisdom was as patent as his suffering, and both stirred young Oliver's heart to its depths. His pride, his irritation, his rigidity vanished in a flash. His fears were in abeyance. Only his wonder and his will to learn were left. Lannithorne did not take the offered {39} hand, yet did not seem to ignore it. He came forward quietly and sat down on the window-seat, half turning so that he and Oliver faced each other. "Oliver Pickersgill?" he said. "Then you are Oliver Pickersgill's son." "Yes, Mr. Lannithorne. My father sent me here--my father, and Mrs. Lannithorne, and Ruth." At his daughter's name a light leaped into Peter Lannithorne's eyes that made him look even more acutely and painfully alive than before. "And what have you to do with Ruth, or her mother?" the man asked. Here it was! The great moment was facing him. Oliver caught his breath, then went straight to the point. "I want to marry your daughter, Mr. Lannithorne. We love each other very {40} much. But--I have n't quite persuaded her, and I have n't persuaded Mrs. Lannithorne and my father at all. They don't see it. They say things--all sorts of dreadful things," said the boy. "You would think they had never been young and--cared for anybody. They seem to have forgotten what it means. They try to make us afraid-- just plain afraid. How am I to suppose that they know best about Ruth and me?" Lannithorne looked across at the young man long and fixedly. Then a great kindliness came into his beaten face, and a great comprehension. Oliver, meeting his eyes, had a sudden sense of shelter, and felt his haunting fears allayed. It was absurd and incredible, but this man made him feel comfortable, yes, and eager to talk things over. {41} "They all said you would know. They sent me to you." Peter Lannithorne smiled faintly to himself. He had not left his sense of humor behind him in the outside world. "They sent you to me, did they, boy? And what did they tell you to ask me? They had different motives, I take it." "Rather! Ruth said you were the best man she had ever known, and if you said it was right for her to marry me, she would. Mrs. Lannithorne said I should ask you if you thought Ruth had a fighting chance for happiness with me. She does n't want Ruth to marry anybody, you see. My father--my father"--Oliver's voice shook with his consciousness of the cruelty of what was to follow, but he forced himself to steadiness and got the words out "said I was to ask you what a man wants in the family of the woman {42} he marries. He said you knew what was what, and I should ask you what to do." Lannithorne's face was very grave, and his troubled gaze sought the floor. Oliver, convicted of brutality and conscience-smitten, hurried on, "And now that I've seen you, I want to ask you a few things for myself, Mr. Lannithorne. I--I believe you know." The man looked up and held up an arresting hand. "Let me clear the way for you a little," he said. "It was a hard thing for you to come and seek me out in this place. I like your coming. Most young men would have refused, or came in a different spirit. I want you to understand that if in Ruth's eyes, and my wife's, and your father's, my counsel has value, it is because they think I see things as they are. And that means, first of all, that I know {43} myself for a man who committed a crime, and is paying the penalty. I am satisfied to be paying it. As I see justice, it is just. So, if I seem to wince at your necessary allusions to it, that is part of the price. I don't want you to feel that you are blundering or hurting me more than is necessary. You have got to lay the thing before me as it is." Something in the words, in the dry, patient manner, in the endurance of the man's face, touched Oliver to the quick and made him feel all manner of new things: such as a sense of the moral poise of the universe, acquiescence in its retributions, and a curious pride, akin to Ruth's own, in a man who could meet him after this fashion, in this place. "Thank you, Mr. Lannithorne," he said. "You see, it's this way, sir. Mrs. Lannithorne says--" {44} And he went on eagerly to set forth his new problems as they had been stated to him. "Well, there you have it," he concluded at last. "For myself, the things they said opened chasms and abysses. Mrs. Lannithorne seemed to think I would hurt Ruth. My father seemed to think Ruth would hurt me. Is married life something to be afraid of? When I look at Ruth, I am sure everything is all right. It may be miserable for other people, but how could it be miserable for Ruth and me?" Peter Lannithorne looked at the young man long and thoughtfully again before he answered. Oliver felt himself measured and estimated, but not found wanting. When the man spoke, it was slowly and with difficulty, as if the habit of intimate, convincing speech had been so long disused that {45} the effort was painful. The sentences seemed wrung out of him, one by one. "They have n't the point of view," he said. "It is life that is the great adventure. Not love, not marriage, not business. They are just chapters in the book. The main thing is to take the road fearlessly, to have courage to live one's life." "Courage?" Lannithorne nodded. "That is the great word. Don't you see what ails your father's point of view, and my wife's? One wants absolute security in one way for Ruth; the other wants absolute security in another way for you. And security--why, it's just the one thing a human being can't have, the thing that's the damnation of him if he gets it! The reason it is so hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven is that {46} he has that false sense of security. To demand it just disintegrates a man. I don't know why. It does." Oliver shook his head uncertainly. "I don't quite follow, sir. Ought n't one to try to be safe?" "One ought to try, yes. That is common prudence. But the point is that, whatever you do or get, you are n't after all secure. There is no such condition, and the harder you demand it, the more risk you run. So it is up to a man to take all reasonable precautions about his money, or his happiness, or his life, and trust the rest. What every man in the world is looking for is the sense of having the mastery over life. But I tell you, boy, there is only one thing that really gives it!" "And that is--?" Lannithorne hesitated perceptibly. For the thing he was about to tell this {47} undisciplined lad was his most precious possession; it was the piece of wisdom for which he had paid with the years of his life. No man parts lightly with such knowledge. "It comes," he said, with an effort, "with the knowledge of our power to endure. That's it. You are safe only when you can stand everything that can happen to you. Then and then only! Endurance is the measure of a man." Oliver's heart swelled within him as he listened, and his face shone, for these words found his young soul where it lived. The chasms and abysses in his path suddenly vanished, and the road lay clear again, winding uphill, winding down, but always lit for Ruth and him by the light in each other's eyes. For surely neither Ruth nor he could ever fail in courage! "Sometimes I think it is harder to {48} endure what we deserve, like me," said Lannithorne, "than what we don't. I was afraid, you see, afraid for my wife and all of them. Anyhow, take my word for it. Courage is security. There is no other kind." "Then--Ruth and I--" "Ruth is the core of my heart!" said Lannithorne thickly. "I would rather die than have her suffer more than she must. But she must take her chances like the rest. It is the law of things. If you know yourself fit for her, and feel reasonably sure you can take care of her, you have a right to trust the future. Myself, I believe there is Some One to trust it to. As for the next generation, God and the mothers look after that! You may tell your father so from me. And you may tell my wife I think there is the stuff of a man in you. And Ruth--tell Ruth--" {49} He could not finish. Oliver reached out and found his hand and wrung it hard. "I'll tell her, sir, that I feel about her father as she does! And that he approves of our venture. And I'll tell myself, always, what you've just told me. Why, it must be true! You need n't be afraid I'll forget--when the time comes for remembering." Finding his way out of the prison yard a few minutes later, Oliver looked, unseeing, at the high walls that soared against the blue spring sky. He could not realize them, there was such a sense of light, air, space, in his spirit. Apparently, he was just where he had been an hour before, with all his battles still to fight, but really he knew they were already won, for his weapon had been forged and put in his hand. He left his boyhood behind him as he {50} passed that stern threshold, for the last hour had made a man of him, and a prisoner had given him the master-key that opens every door. {51} THE LONG INHERITANCE {52} {53} THE LONG INHERITANCE I My niece, Desire Withacre, wished to divorce her husband, Dr. Arnold Ackroyd,--the young Dr. Arnold, you understand,--to the end that she might marry a more interesting man. Other men than I have noticed that in these latter days we really do not behave any better than other people when it comes to certain serious issues of life, notably the marital. "We" means to me people of an heredity and a training like my own,--Americans of the old stock, with a normal Christian upbringing, who presumably inherit from their forebears a reasonable susceptibility to high ideals of living. I grew {54} up with the impression that such a birth and rearing were a kind of moral insurance against the grosser human blunders and errors. Without vanity, I certainly did "Thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth had smiled." It puzzled me for a long while, the light-hearted, careless way in which some of the younger Withacres, Greenings, Raynies, Fordhams, and so on (I name them out of many, because they are all kin to me) kicked over the traces of their family responsibilities. I could understand it in others but not in them. It was little Desire Withacre who finally illuminated the problem for me. I am about to tell what I know of Desire's fling. If it seems to be a story with an undue amount of moral, I must {55} refer the responsibility of that to Providence. The tale is of its making, not of mine. I am afraid that, to get it all clearly before you, I shall have to prose for a while about the families involved. I am Benjamin Stubbins Raynie, Desire's bachelor uncle, and almost the last of the big-nosed Raynies. My elder sister, Lucretia Stubbins Raynie, married Robert Withacre, one of the "wild Withacres" in whose blood there is a streak of genius and its revolts. The Withacres all have talent-- mostly ineffectual--and keen aesthetic sensibilities. All of them can talk like angels from Heaven. By no stretch of the imagination can they be called thrifty. We considered it a very poor match for Lucretia. The Raynies are quiet people, not showy, but substantial and sensible; with a certain sentimental {56} streak out-cropping here and there, especially in the big-nosed branch; while the red-headed Raynies are the better money- makers. I know now that Lucretia secretly believed her offspring were destined to unite Withacre talent and Raynie poise. She prayed in her heart that the world might be the richer by a man child of her race who should be both gifted and sane. But her children proved to be twin girls, Judith and Desire. Queer little codgers I thought them, big-eyed, curly-headed, subdued when on exhibition. Lucretia told long stories, to which I gave slight attention, intended to prove that Judith was a marvelous example of old-head-on-young-shoulders, and that Desire, demure, elfin Desire, was a miracle of cleverness and winning ways. In view of Desire's career, I judge {57} that these maternal prepossessions were not wholly misplaced. As a small child she captivated her Uncle Greening as well as her aunt (our sister, Mary Stubbins Raynie, married Adam Greening of the well-known banking firm of Greening, Bowers & Co.). The Greenings were childless, and Desire spent much of her early life and nearly all her girlhood under Mary Greening's care and chaperonage. I confess to fondness for a bit of repartee with Desire now and then, myself. Perhaps I had my share in spoiling her. I take it a human being is spoiled when he grows up believing himself practically incapable of wrong-doing. That is what happened to Desire. Approval had followed her all of her days. How should she know, poor, petted little scrap, any thing about the predestined pitfalls of all flesh? {58} Of course the Robert Withacres were always as poor as poverty, and of course our family was always planning for and assisting them. Fortunately both the twins married early, and exceptionally well. Judith became engaged to a promising young civil engineer when visiting a school friend in Chicago. He said she reminded him of the New London girls. He was homesick, I think. At all events the engagement was speedy. But our little Desire did better than that. She witched the heart out of young Arnold Ackroyd. Do I need to explain the Ackroyds to any one? They are one of those exceptional families whose moral worth is so prominent that it even dims the lustre of their intellectual stability and their financial rating. They are so many other, better things that no one ever {59} thinks or speaks of them as "rich." And in this day and generation that is real achievement. Desire's marriage gratified me deeply, and for a wedding present I gave her the Queen Anne silver tea-set I inherited from great-aunt Abby. I believe in the Ackroyds, root and branch. They have, somehow or other, accomplished what all the rest of us are striving for. They have actually lifted an entire family connection to a plane where ability, worth, accomplishment, are matters of course. Nobody has ever heard of a useless, incompetent Ackroyd. Their consequent social preeminence, which possibly meant something to Mary Greening and which certainly counted with Desire, is merely incidental to their substantial merit. They are prominent for the rare reason that they deserve to be. They are the Real Thing. {60} Unless you happen to be in touch with them intellectually, however, this is not saying that you will always find all of them the liveliest of companions. The name connotes honor, ability, character; it does not necessarily imply humor, high spirits, the joy of life. Desire herself told me of her engagement. I don't, somehow, forget how she looked when she came to tell me about it--shy, excited, radiant. She fluttered into my office and stood at the end of my desk, looking down at me. Desire was very pretty at twenty-one, with her pointed face and big expressive eyes, her white forehead shadowed by a heap of cloudy, curling, dark hair. Palpitating with life, she looked like some kind of a marvelous human hummingbird. It did not surprise me that Arnold Ackroyd found her "All a wonder and a wild desire." {61} For all her excitement she spoke very softly. "Uncle Ben, mother wants me to tell you something. I have n't told anybody else but her." "What is it, Desire?" "I--why, Uncle Ben--I've promised to marry Arnold Ackroyd!" "Well, well," I said inadequately, "this is news!" Desire nodded wistfully. "It seems a little curious, does n't it? We're not a bit alike," she said. "But he is splendid! I'm sure I shall never meet a finer man, nor one I trust more." "Very true, Desire, and I am glad you are going to marry such a man," I observed, arising slowly to the occasion and to my feet, and offering a congratulatory hand. "Mother says it's a wonderful {62} thought for a young woman that her future is as secure as the cycle of the seasons," returned Desire, with her hand in mine, "and I suppose it is, but that is n't why I love him. Uncle Ben, he's really wonderful when you find out what he's thinking behind those quiet eyes. And then--do you know he's one of the few really meritorious persons I ever made like me. I've been afraid there was something queer about me, for freaks always take to me at once. But if Arnold Ackroyd likes me, I must be all right, mustn't I? It's such a relief to be sure of it!" I took this for a touch of flippancy, having forgotten how long the young must grope and wonder, hopelessly, before they find and realize themselves. It was, I think, precisely because Arnold Ackroyd helped that vibrant temperament to feel itself resting on {63} solid ground that he became so easily paramount in Desire's life at this time. However it may have been afterward, during their brief engagement he was all things to my niece, while she to him was a creature of enchantment. I shall always maintain that they knew young love at its best. Desire was wedded with more pomp and circumstance than Lucretia and I really cared for. That was her Aunt Greening's affair. Mary Greening always did like an effect of pageantry, and was willing to pay for it. They went abroad afterwards, and I remember as significant that Desire enjoyed the Musée de Cluny more than the lectures they heard at the Sorbonne. On their return they lived in dignity and comfort. They had a couple of pretty, unusual-looking children, who were provided with a French nurse at {64} twenty months, and other educational conveniences in due season, more in accordance with the standards of Grandmamma Ackroyd than with the demands of the Withacres and Raynies. They were certainly as happy as most people. If Desire had any ungratified wishes, I never heard of them. I dined with them frequently, but now see that I knew absolutely nothing about them. I took it for granted that they would always walk, as they seemed to be doing, in ways of pleasantness and peace. It never entered my head that anybody of my own blood and a decent bringing-up could do what Desire did presently. I had a simple-minded notion that we were above it. Which brings me back to my premise. After all, we of a long inheritance of upright {65} living do not always behave better than other people. II Lucretia was first to come. The winter it all happened, I was house-bound with rheumatism and had no active part in the drama. By day I was wheeled into the little upstairs study and sat with my mind on chloroform liniment and flannels, while my family and friends came to me, bearing gifts. Sometimes they sought the house to amuse me, sometimes to relieve their minds. Lucretia's burden was heaviest, so she was first. The November morning was raw and hideous. There were flakes of snow on my sister's venerable and shabby sealskin. She laid back the {66} veil on the edge of her little black bonnet,--she had been a widow for two years,--brushed the snow from her slightly worn shopping-bag and sat down in front of the fire, pulling nervously at her gloves. Lucretia is thin, sharp-featured ivory-skinned. Her aspect is both fatigued and ardent. Nothing that Mary and I were ever able to do for her lifted in the least from her own spirit the weight of her poverty-stricken, troublous, married life; and in her outer woman she persists in retaining that aspect of carefully brushed, valiantly borne adversity which is so trying to more prosperous and would-be-helpful kin. I made a few comments on the weather, which Lucretia did not answer. Realizing suddenly that she was agitated, I became silent, hoping that {67} the quiet, comfortable room, the snapping fire, and my own inertness, would act as a sedative. It did not occur to me that any really serious matter could be afoot. I had ceased to expect that life would offer any of us anything worse than occasional physical discomfort. Having regained her composure, my sister spoke without preface. "I am in great trouble, Benjamin. Desire has made up her mind to leave her husband, and nothing I say has the slightest effect." "Good Heavens! Lucretia! What do you mean?" "Just what I say. Desire declares she isn't satisfied as Arnold Ackroyd's wife. So she proposes to put an end to the relation. I judge she intends, later, to contract another marriage, though she is n't disposed to lay stress on that point." {68} I continued to look at Lucretia wide-eyed, and possibly wide-mouthed. The things she was saying were so preposterous, so incredible, that I could not accept them. It was as if I had received a message that the full moon was not "satisfied" to climb the evening sky. "Lord! Lord! Little Desire!" I muttered. "She is a woman of thirty, Benjamin." "What does she say?" I exploded. "What is wrong in her married life? People don't do these things causelessly--not the people we are or know." "She says a great deal," returned her mother dryly. "Did you ever know a Withacre to be lacking in words, Benjamin? Desire is very fluent. I might say she is eloquent." {69} "But what does it all amount to, anyhow?" I demanded impatiently. Dazed though I was, my consciousness of being the head of the family was returning. Lucretia lifted her left hand, which was trembling, and checked off the items on her fingers. Her hands were shapely, though dark and shrunken, with swollen veins across the back. The firelight struck the worn gold of her wedding ring. "She demands a less hampered life; a more variegated self-expression; a chance to help t...