The Artist

Dorothy Canfield
1911
The Artist

After the sickening stench of personality in theatrical life," the great Madame Orloff told the
doctor with her usual free-handed use of language, "it is like breathing a thin, pure air to be
here again with our dear inhuman old Vieyra. He hypnotizes me into his own belief that
nothing matters -- not broken hearts, nor death, nor success, nor first love, nor old age --
nothing but the chiaroscuro of his latest acquisition."

The picture-dealer looked at her in silence, bringing the point of his white beard up to his
chin with a meditative fist. The big surgeon gazed about him with appreciative eyes,
touched his mustache to his gold-lined coffee-cup, and sighed contentedly. "You're not the
only one, my dear Olga," he said, "who finds Vieyra's hard heart a blessing. When I am here
in his magnificent old den, listening to one of his frank accounts of his own artistic acumen
and rejoicing in his beautiful possessions, why the rest of the world -- real humanity --
seems in retrospect like one great hospital full of shrieking incurables."

"Oh, humanity -- !" The actress thrust it away with one of her startling, vivid gestures.

"You think it very clever, my distinguished friends, to discuss me before my face,"

commented the old picture-dealer indifferently. He fingered the bright-colored decorations
on his breast, looking down at them with absent eyes. After a moment he added, "and to
show your in-ti-mate knowledge of my character."

Only its careful correctness betrayed the foreignness of his speech.

"Oh, character -- !" Madame Orloff repudiated the conception in a vague murmur.

There was a pause in which the three gazed idly at the fire's reflection in the brass of the
superb old andirons. Then, "Haven't you something new to show us?" asked the woman.
"Some genuine Masaccio, picked up in a hill-town monastery -- a real Ribera?"

The small old Jew drew a long breath. "Yes, I have something new." He hesitated, opened
his lips, closed them again and, looking at the fire, "Oh yes, very new indeed -- new to me."
"Is it here?" The great surgeon looked about the picture-covered walls.

"No; I have it in -- you know, what you call the inner sanctuary -- the light here is not good
enough."

The actress stood up, her glittering dress flashing a thousand eyes at the fire. "Let me see it,"
she commanded. "I would like to see something new to you."

"You shall amuse yourself by identifying the artist without my aid," said old Vieyra.

He opened a door, held back a portiere, let his guests pass through into a darkened room,
turned on a softly brilliant light, and: "Whom do you make the artist?" he said. He did not
look at the picture. He looked at the faces of his guests, and after a long silent pause, he
smiled faintly into his beard. "Let us go back to the fire," he said, and clicked them into
darkness again.

"And what do you say?" he asked as they sat down.

"By Jove!" cried the doctor. "By Jove!"

Madame Orloff turned on the collector the sombre glow of her deep-set eyes. "I have
dreamed it," she said.

"It is real," said Vieyra. "You are the first to see it. I wished to observe how -- "

"It's an unknown Vermeer!" The doctor brought his big white hand down loudly on this
discovery. "Nobody but Vermeer could have done the plaster wall in the sunlight. And the
girl's strange gray head-dress must be seventeenth-century Dutch of some province I don't --
"

"I am a rich man, for a picture-dealer," said Vieyra, "but only national governments can
afford to buy Vermeers nowadays."

"But you picked it up from some corner, some attic, some stable -- "

"Yes, I picked it up from a stable," said the collector.

The actress laid her slender, burning fingers on his cool old hand. "Tell us -- tell us," she
urged. "There is something different here."

"Yes, there is something different," he stirred in his chair and thrust out his lips. "So
different that I don't know if you -- "
"Try me! try me!" she assured him ardently. "You have educated me well to your standards
all these years."

At this he looked at her, startled, frowning, attentive, and ended by shaking off her hand.
"No, I will not tell you."

"You shall -- " her eyes commanded, adjured him. There was a silence. "I will understand,"
she said under her breath.

"You will not understand," he said in the same tone; but aloud he began: "I heard of it first
from an American picture-dealer over here scraping up a mock-Barbizon collection for a
new millionaire. He wanted to get my judgment, he said, on a canvas that had been brought
in to him by a cousin of his children's governess. I was to be sure to see it when I went to
New York -- you knew, did you not, that I had been called to New York to testify in the
prosecution of Paullsen for selling a signed copy?"

"Did you really go?" asked the doctor. "I thought you swore that nothing could take you to
America."

"I went," said the old man grimly. "Paullsen did me a bad turn once, thirty years ago. And
while I was there I went to see the unknown canvas. The dealer half apologized for taking
my time -- said he did not as a rule pay any attention to freak things brought in from country
holes by amateurs, but -- I remember his wording -- this thing, some ways he looked at it,
didn't seem bad somehow."

The collector paused, passed his tongue over his lips, and said briefly: "Then he showed it to
me. It was the young girl and kitten in there."

"By Jove!" cried the doctor.

"You have too exciting a profession, my good old dear," said the actress. "Some day you
will die of a heart failure."

"Not after living through that!"

"What did you tell him?"

"I asked for the address of the cousin of his childrens' governess. When I had it I bought a
ticket to the place, and when I reached there I found myself at the end of all things -- an
abomination of desolation. Do you know America, either of you?"

The doctor shook his head.

"I have toured there three times," said the actress.

"Did you ever hear of a place called Pennsylvania?"

Madame Orloff smiled. "It is as large as five Englands."

"It is inhabited by an insufferable sect of fanatics called Quakers, who live in preposterously
ugly little wooden houses of the most naked cleanliness, who will not swear, who have no
priests and no doctrine, apparently, but the blasphemous one that color, sacred, holy color is
an evil thing, and that gray is the only virtuous -- "

The actress laughed. "There are other people in Pennsylvania," she protested.

Vieyra ignored her. "In a wretched huddle of little houses they call a village I found the
cousin, a seller of letter-paper and cheap chromos, who knew nothing of the picture except
that it was brought to him to sell by the countryman who sold him butter. I found the
address of the butter-maker, and drove endless miles over execrable roads to his house, and
encountered his mother, a stolid, middle-aged woman, who looked at me out of the most
uncanny quiet eyes -- all the fanatics there have the extraordinary eyes -- from under a
strange, gray head-dress, and asked: 'Is it about the picture? For you don't want to let on to
anybody but me. Nobody but the family knows he paints 'em!'"

At this the doctor burst out: "Gracious powers! You don't mean he is a living man!"

"Let him alone!" The actress turned with a lithe petulance on the big Briton.

"And there I had it all," the narrator went on; "the old woman could tell me what I wished to
know, she said. He was her uncle, the only brother of her mother, and he had brought up her
and her brothers and sisters. She knew -- oh, she knew with good reason, all of his life. All,
that is, but the beginning. She had heard from older Quakers that he had been wild in his
youth (he had always been, she told me gravely, queer) and she knew that he had travelled
far in his young days, very, very far.

"'To New York?' I ventured.

"'Oh, no, beyond that. Across the water.'

"'To Paris?'

"That she didn't know. It was a foreign country at least, and he had stayed there two, three
years, until he was called back by her father's death -- his brother-in-law's -- to take care of
his mother, and his sister and the children. Here her mind went back to my question, and she
said she had something perhaps I could tell from, where he had been. She kept it in her
Bible. He had given it to her when she was a child as a reward the day she had kept her little
brother from falling in the fire. She brought it out. It was a sketch, hasty, vigorous,
suggestive, haunting as the original itself, of the Leonardo da Vinci Ste. Anne.

"Yes, I told her, now I knew where he had been. And they had called him back from there --
here?

"'When my father died,' she repeated, 'my uncle was all my grandmother and my mother
had. We were five little children, and the oldest not seven, and we were all very poor.'

"'How old was your uncle then?' I asked.

"'A young man -- he was younger than my mother. Perhaps he was twenty-five.'

"I looked at the sketch in my hand. Twenty-five, and called back from Paris -- here!

"'When did he go back?'

"'Oh, he never went back.' She told me this quite placidly, as she said everything else. 'He
never went back at all.'

"He had stayed there the rest of his life, and worked the little farm that was all his sister had,
and made a living for them -- not large, the farm being poor and he not a first-class farmer,
but still enough. He had always been kind to them -- if he was quite queer and absent. She
had heard her grandmother say that at first, the first ten years, perhaps, he had had strange,
gloomy, savage fits, like a person possessed that you read of in the Bible; but she herself
could never remember him as anything but quiet and smiling. He had a very queer smile,
unlike any one else, as I would notice for myself when I went to see him about the picture.
You could tell him by that, and by his being very lame.

"That brought me back with a start. I rushed at her with questions. 'How about the picture?
Were there others? Were there many? Had he always painted? Had he never shown them to
any one? Was he painting now?

"She could not tell me much. It had been a detail of their common life she had but absently
remarked, as though she had lived with a man who collected snail-shells, or studied the
post-marks on letters. She had never noticed -- that was the answer to most of my questions.
No, she did not think there were very many now, though he must have painted 'most a
million. He was always at it, every minute he could spare from farming. But they had been
so poor he had not felt he could afford many canvases. The paints cost a good deal too. So
he painted them over and over, first one thing and then another, as he happened to fancy. He
painted in the horse-barn. 'Had a place rigged up,' in her phrase, in one corner of the room
where the hay was stored, and had cut a big window in the roof that was apt to let in water
on the hay if the rain came from the east.

"'What did he paint?' 'Oh, anything. He was queer about that. He'd paint anything! He did
one picture of nothing but the corner of the barn-yard, with a big white sow and some little
pigs in the straw, early in the morning, when the dew was on everything. He had thought
quite a lot of that, but he had had to paint over it to make the picture of her little sister with
the yellow kittie -- the one she'd sent down to the village to try to sell, the one -- '

"'Yes, yes,' I told her, 'the one I saw. But did he never try to sell any himself? Did he never
even show them to any one?'

"She hesitated, tried to remember, and said that once when they were very poor, and there
was a big doctor's bill to pay, he had sent a picture down to New York. But it was sent back.
They had made a good deal of fun of it, the people down there, because it wasn't finished off
enough. She thought her uncle's feelings had been hurt by their letter. The express down and
back had cost a good deal too, and the only frame he had got broken. Altogether, she
guessed that discouraged him. Anyhow, he'd never tried again. He seemed to get so after a
while that he didn't care whether anybody liked them or even saw them or not -- he just
painted them to amuse himself, she guessed. He seemed to get a good deal of comfort out of
it. It made his face very still and smiling to paint. Nobody around there so much as knew he
did it, the farm was so far from neighbors.

"'Twas a real lonely place, she told me, and she had been glad to marry and come down in
the valley to live closer to folks. Her uncle had given her her wedding outfit. He had done
real well by them all, and they were grateful; and now he was getting feeble and had trouble
with his heart, they wanted to do something for him. They had thought, perhaps, they could
sell some of his pictures for enough to hire a man to help him with the farm work. She had
heard that pictures were coming into fashion more than they had been, and she had
borrowed that one of her little sister and the kittie, and without her uncle's knowing anything
about it, had sent it off. She was about discouraged waiting for somebody down in the city
to make up his mind whether he'd buy it or not.

"I asked her a thousand other questions but she could answer none of them. The only detail I
could get from her being an account of her uncle's habit of 'staring' for sometimes a half an
hour at something, without once looking away. She'd seen him stop that way, when he'd be
husking corn maybe, and stare at a place where a sunbeam came in on a pile of corn. It put
him back quite considerable in his work, that habit, but they had nothing to complain of.
He'd done well by them, when you considered they weren't his own children.

"'Hadn't he ever tried to break away?' I asked her, amazed. 'To leave them? To go back?'
"She told me: 'Oh, no, he was the only support his mother and his sister had, and there were
all the little children. He had to stay.'"

The actress broke in fiercely: "Oh, stop! stop! it makes me sick to hear about. I could boil
them in oil, that family! Quick! You saw him? You brought him away? You -- "

"I saw him," said Vieyra, "yes, I saw him."

Madame Orloff leaned toward him, her eyebrows a line of painful attention.

"I drove that afternoon up to a still tinier village in the mountains near where he lived, and
there I slept that night -- or, at least, I lay in a bed."

"Of course, you could not sleep," broke in the listening woman; "I shall not to-night."

"When dawn came I dressed and went out to wander until people should be awake. I walked
far, through fields, and then through a wood as red as red-gold -- like nothing I ever saw. It
was in October, and the sun was late to rise. When I came out on an uplying heath, the mists
were just beginning to roll away from the valley below. As I stood there, leaning against a
tree in the edge of the wood, some cows came by, little, pinched, lean cows, and a young
dog bounding along, and then, after them, slowly, an old man in gray -- very lame."

The actress closed her eyes.

"He did not see me. He whistled to the dog and stroked his head, and then as the cows went
through a gate, he turned and faced the rising sun, the light full on his face. He looked at the
valley coming into sight through the mists. He was so close to me I could have tossed a
stone to him -- I shall never know how long he stood there -- how long I had that face before
me."

The narrator was silent. Madame Orloff opened her eyes and looked at him piercingly.

"I cannot tell you -- I cannot!" he answered her. "Who can tell of life and death and a new
birth? It was as though I were thinking with my fingernails, or the hair of my head -- a part
of me I had never before dreamed had feeling. My eyes were dazzled. I could have bowed
myself to the earth like Moses before the burning bush. How can I tell you -- ? How can I
tell you?"

"He was -- ?" breathed the woman.

"Hubert van Eyck might have painted God the Father with those eyes -- that mouth -- that
face of patient power -- of selfless, still beatitude. -- Once the dog, nestling by his side,
whimpered and licked his hand. He looked down, he turned his eyes away from his vision,
and looked down at the animal and smiled. Jehovah! What a smile. It seemed to me then
that if God loves humanity, he can have no kinder smile for us. And then he looked back
across the valley -- at the sky, at the mountains, at the smoke rising from the houses below
us -- he looked at the world -- at some vision, some knowledge -- what he saw -- what he
saw -- !

"I did not know when he went. I was alone in that crimson wood.

"I went back to the village. I went back to the city. I would not speak to him till I had some
honor worthy to offer him. I tried to think what would mean most to him. I remembered the
drawing of the Ste. Anne. I remembered his years in Paris, and I knew what would seem
most honor to him. I cabled Drouot of the Luxembourg Gallery. I waited in New York till
he came. I showed him the picture. I told him the story. He was on fire!

"We were to go back to the mountains together, to tell him that his picture would hang in
the Luxembourg, and then in the Louvre -- that in all probability he would be decorated by
the French government, that other pictures of his would live for all time in Paris, in London,
in Brussels -- a letter came from the woman, his niece. He was dead."

The actress fell back in her chair, her hands over her face.

The surgeon stirred wrathfully. "Heavens and earth, Vieyra, what a beastly, ghastly, brutally
tragic horror are you telling us, anyhow!"

The old Jew moistened his lips and was silent. After a moment he said: "I should not have
told you. I knew you could not understand."

Madame Orloff looked up sharply. "Do you mean -- is it possible that you mean that if we
had seen him -- had seen that look -- we would -- that he had had all that an artist -- "

The picture-dealer addressed himself to her, turning his back on the doctor. "I went back to
the funeral, to the mountains. The niece told me that before he died he smiled suddenly on
them all and said: 'I have had a happy life.' I had taken a palm to lay on his coffin, and after
I had looked long at his dead face, I put aside the palm. I felt that if he had lived I could
never have spoken to him -- could never have told him."

The old Jew looked down at the decorations on his breast, and around at the picture-covered
walls. He made a sweeping gesture.

"What had I to offer him?" he said.

The Scrubwoman
By Dorothy Canfield

HENRY RANDOLPH shook his white head in an impatient gesture of dissent, and
continued the discussions with a tenderly exasperated disregard of his cousin's scruples.
"No, no, Alice, dear, this is no time to split hairs on what it's proper to speak about. It's
infamous, I know, that I should be talking to you about it -- nobody but a woman should;
but, my dear child, how can I go and leave you so? And there's nobody else to speak. You
might as well have no brother at all as one in the navy."

Mrs. Smithers's resigned, though unpeaceful, drooping attitude changed at this to a sudden
nervous tension. She clasped and unclasped her thin hands, and spoke with a little rush of
eagerness. "Ah! that's it, Cousin Henry. If I could only see my brother oftener, he might be
able to do something." She relapsed again into listless despondency and continued dully:
"But I don't suppose he would ever see anything at all the matter. My husband would be so
different with him -- you know how Will is to outsiders."

Randolph struck one hand into the other fiercely. "I do! I do! But what's the use of knowing
him now, when you've been married ten years? Oh, if I'd only been here instead of on the
other side of the globe when he first went to Washington and met you! Why, in Heaven's
name, your parents -- -- " He checked himself abruptly. "No, I can't blame them -- poor,
simple souls! They never had any worldly discernment. You're just like them."

Mrs. Smithers spoke in a naively solemn and hesitant way. "I hope it's not wicked, Cousin
Henry, but I'm some-times glad they died so soon after my marriage -- and that Tom is
always away on his vessel. They couldn't help any, and I'm glad they don't have to suffer
with me. I'm sorry it makes you so sad, cousin, on your first visit home in so many years.
I'm afraid I've not been able to make you very happy."

At this Randolph roared out in indignant tenderness: "Good Heavens, Alice, don't be such a
perfectly angelic idiot! If you endure it day after day, and have for ten years, and will as
long as he or you live, don't you suppose a great hulking brute of a man like me can bear
just to hear about it?"

The woman stirred uneasily in her chair. "Oh, please, dear cousin, don't speak so. I know
I've done very wrong to let you know it all, but, seeing somebody who belongs to me after
all this long, lonely life in New York -- I'm afraid I haven't been very brave. I may not have
so much more to bear than other women. Will, you know, is never brutally unkind, as so
many husbands are -- he has never struck me -- we live in this expensive apartment; the
children go to the best schools; I always have plenty of money to spend -- -- "
She ended, quavering off into silence before the gathering wrath in the old man's eyes. He
caught her up grimly: "Yes, you have plenty of money to spend, but I notice you do your
own work most of the time. Your husband makes the apartment such a hell on earth with his
devilish ingenuity that you couldn't keep a maid for a week -- not for any price."

Alice interrupted him eagerly: "But, no -- I have old Belle, the scrubwoman, you know.
She's been with me almost ever since I was married -- ever since we came to this house to
live. She cleans the halls and stairways of this building, and so she's always on hand to come
in and help me out. She does all the rough work, and she won't let me do anything she can
manage to prevent. She's so faithful and strong, and so kind to me, I forget all about her
dreadful looks and profanity; and you couldn't drive her away. She never seems even to hear
the things Will says to her."

The man's voice was bitter as he answered gloomily: "Actually the best friend -- the only
friend you are allowed to have is that frightful old harridan I see around here. I wonder you
allow her to be with the children. I've never heard her speak without an oath, and little Jack
is so -- -- "

The mention of the child was like an electric shock to the mother. She sprang to her feet,
and running to the tall old man, she caught one of his hands in hers with a gesture of
distraction. "Oh, Cousin Henry, every time I hear Jack's name it makes me remember Will's
threat to send him away. It's only because of that I spoke to you at all. I could not bear to
have him go from me to a strange school. It would kill him."

The man suddenly gave a deep sob of pity, and gathered the frail, weeping woman into his
arms. The silence which followed was broken by the entrance from the dining-room of a
small woman of uncertain age, in dingy attire, carrying a pail of water in one bony hand and
a large cleaning-cloth in the other. Without noticing the silent couple by the window, she
dropped heavily to her knees and began to wipe up the edge of bare floor showing about the
carpet. Randolph spoke, and she turned, startled, showing a face blurred and battered by
hardship, but instantly alive in the keenest interest in the conversation.

"Alice, dear, unless you'll simply drop everything and come away with me to my home, I
don't see any way out."

Mrs. Smithers recoiled at this and spoke with a passionate denial: "Why, how can you think
of my doing that! How could I leave the children? They're all I live for -- all that keeps me
from going crazy!"

"You could bring the children along. They'd do well in Buenos Ayres."
"He'd come and take them from me. I've been all over that so many times with myself. And
I've read that the children are never allowed to stay with the mother if she has run away. If I
could only just snatch them up and hide from him -- all of us; but he's so clever and I'm so
stupid he'd find us out right away, and then I -- he'd never let me see them again."

The old man drew a long breath, in an evident attempt to control himself, but vainly, for he
broke out so fiercely that the scrubwoman sat up on her heels electrified. "Damnation! I beg
your pardon, Allie, dear, but it just tears me in pieces to see you so. Confound the fellow!
Why doesn't he just once go a step too far and give some ground for divorce? The hellish
cunning of him! -- to care so well for your outward wants and to murder inch by inch your
self-respect, your love for your children, your pride -- your very soul!"

He stopped her feeble gesture of protest with a furious torrent of words. "No, don't talk to
me. I've seen it, and I know. Tom may be fooled by his smooth ways, but I've seen Mexican
half-breeds before now. Sometimes I think it a mistake, his having had an American father -
- he's all greaser, every inch of him! I heard stories about him as a boy when I was in Bocas
del Toro. When he was ten years old he was caught burning a cat over a slow fire -- half-
breed Injun and Spaniard, just like his mother. No, he gets his business sense from old
Smithers, all right. And, good Lord! he gets those cold, pale eyes from him!"

He shuddered at the picture and went on in a mounting fury: "Allie, unless you give up the
children or divide them, there's nothing anybody can do to help. It's incredible there should
be such a situation in a civilized country, but it's so. The mere fact that you are tortured day
by day in a thousand subtle ways no decent man could even think of is as nothing, because
he doesn't strike you. A jury or judge would take no more cognizance of your mental agony
than -- your old scrubwoman!"

At this mention of her the woman started guiltily from her position of strained and intent
eavesdropping and let her cloth fall into the pail with a splash. The two turned, and, seeing
her, lowered their voices, Mrs. Smithers trying in vain to repress her sobbing.

Randolph went over to her and laid one hand tenderly on her shoulder. Oh, I know you
won't think of leaving the children. You couldn't, of course. But, Allie, do this for me, at
least: promise me that the next time you see Tom -- and may it be soon, or you won't keep
your reason -- tell him! Tell him what your married life is. He's your big brother, and I feel
that he'll be able to help you somehow. Promise me that! Don't send me away quite hopeless
over your future."

In a confused murmur of sobs and broken sentences the promise came: "Yes, yes, I promise.
I somehow feel, too, that if he really knows -- he can help -- but there's so much even he
can't know. Oh, I wish I had a mother! If my mother had only lived!"
Part 2

II

INTO this atmosphere of quivering agitation dropped suddenly the quiet, silvery tinkle of
the door-bell. It shocked them all into attitudes of expectation. Mrs. Smithers stopped her
sobbing with a convulsive effort and sat up straight, shivering uncontrollably and motioning
the scrubwoman to hurry. "Oh, that must be Will! He mustn't see me so upset. Belle, hurry!
Do hurry and open for him; he can't bear to be kept waiting. I'd go myself, but he doesn't
like to see me do it. Oh, Belle, please, please hurry!"

The significance of her terror-stricken disquiet pierced the old man with a savage thrust of
pity and sympathy, but the scrubwoman did not lift a heavy finger the quicker for it. She
finished wiping up a spot on the floor, wrung her cloth out deliberately, and hung it over the
pail before she rose to her feet and went down the long, narrow hall with the ungainly walk
of women who have long worked beyond their strength. Randolph and his cousin waited
and together caught a sudden breath when from the recesses of the hall came a smooth,
penetrating voice saying with an indescribably insulting accent: "Out of my way, you hag!"

Rapid steps came down the hall, and a tall man with a very black beard and pale-blue eyes
entered the room, bringing with him the lowering atmosphere of a thunder-storm. As he
caught sight of Randolph his face smoothed itself into a cordial smile, and advancing, he
insisted on taking the older man's hand in a hearty gasp. When he spoke, his voice had a
warm intonation of pleased surprise. "Why, Cousin Henry, this is a welcome sight. I
understood that you were to be off to-day, and that we were once more a desolate family,
without a relative to our names."

He took off his coat and hat as he spoke and gave them to the scrubwoman, who stood with
the apprehensive, repellent gaze of an ill-treated ash-cat. She turned to go out with them,
and as she disappeared down the hall Randolph noticed, with a qualm of disgust, as another
detail in the nightmare which surrounded him, that she spat fiercely on the hat. He roused
himself and said to the newcomer stiffly: "There was some accident to the engines, and the
boat won't sail until to-night, so I came back to -- -- "

Smithers interrupted him with a cheery laugh as he began opening some letters on the table
and glancing over them. "It's an ill wind, et cetera. I dare say little Allie was no end glad to
see you again. She's not much company for herself at any time, and when the children are
still in the country and she's been spoiled by so much of your delightful companionship, I
fancy my little child-wife got pretty dull."
He looked them both full in the face as he delivered this speech, and smiled at their wincing
under his accent. The scrubwoman, moving the furniture about, suddenly set a chair down
with so furious an energy that they all started.

"Oblige me, Belle, by being a little quieter," said Smithers mildly, and laughed aloud as he
caught Randolph's eye. Still smiling, he went rattling on, as he read a letter:

"Do you know, my dear Cousin Henry, you're the only relative who's been to see us since
the very first years of our married life? Alice doesn't know her other forty-second cousins
very well, and, to tell the truth, they don't seem to enjoy our simple life. Too bad, eh, Allie?"

His voice dropped into an absent murmur, and he lost himself in the letter. Randolph
crossed the room to the window where his cousin stood and drew her to him. "I'm going
now, dear child," he said in a low tone, "but it's like tearing a piece of my heart out to leave
you so. It seems to me, sometimes, I must go distracted thinking of you. But it's one ray of
light in my darkness that you've promised to speak to Tom and appeal to him to help you.
And remember, let me know if I can ever help and -- -- "

Smithers laid down his letter and turned toward them with so openly black a look of
suspicion that the old man answered as though he had been questioned.

"I'm telling Alice, William," he said defiantly, "that if she ever needs me I'll come from the
ends of the earth."

The younger man smiled again, so that his wife caught her breath and clung convulsively to
her cousin. He waved his hand genially. "Ah, very good of you -- very kind, I'm sure. Alice
will, of course, let you know at any time if there is something you can do for her." He added
dryly: "I'll see that she does myself." Randolph turned his back on him and kissed Alice on
the forehead. "Good-by, little girl. Heaven bless you!" he said, in an unsteady voice.

The scrubwoman stood up to show him the door, drying her distorted hands on her torn
apron. She made a furtive wipe at her eyes, and sniffed loudly with a grotesque contortion
of her face. Smithers turned on her suddenly, so that she dodged and lifted an arm in guard.
He spoke with the most careful gentleness:

"Don't bother to show Mr. Randolph the door, Belle. I'll go myself. No, don't protest, my
dear cousin. It's the last time. I'm not going to let a servant's face be the last one you see in
my house -- and such a face!" The two disappeared down the hall, Smithers ahead, talking
animatedly.

III
BELLE dropped her cloth and hastened heavily to where Alice sat. Her hard face was set in
lines of grim resolution. She spoke in a hoarse whisper, looking continually over her
shoulder toward the hall. "Ma'am -- Mrs. Smithers -- don't give up to him so! Paste him one
when he comes back. Git ahead of him and he'd let you alone. Give him fits before he has a
chance to git started."

Alice looked up in amazement, and spoke with a childish attempt at dignity. "Belle, you
forget yourself!"

Her husband came back into the room with his rapid, noiseless tread, cast a black look at the
two women, and went again to his mail. There was a silence which was ominous. The
scrubwoman went on stolidly with her work, and Alice waited in trembling suspense for the
first words. Smithers finished a letter and held it up, saying in a low, measured tone: "If
you've quite finished your furtive conversation with your especial friend, you may care to
know that this letter is from Jack. I believe you preserve the pose of being devoted to your
children."

He pocketed the letter in answer to an imploring gesture for it from his wife, and went on:
"No, there's no need for you to read it. I can tell you all that's necessary for you to know.
He's hurt his foot again."

His wife screamed out at this, striking her hands together in anguish. "Oh, Will! His lame
foot? How badly?"

The man gathered the letters together and threw some loose envelopes in the waste-paper
basket before he answered. Then he said sardonically: "It makes me smile to see the way
you carry out your attitude about that. If you care so much about it, it's a wonder you
carefully arranged matters so he would be lame."

The mother quivered as though under a physical blow. "Oh, Will, how can you?"

Her tormentor went on: "How could you? It was just pure carelessness on your part letting
him fall -- you, a mother of children! I wonder that you can look at the ugly little cripple
without hating yourself."

He listened impatiently to her feeble attempt at self-justification. "Why, Will, you know I
was thrown myself, and fell all those steps. The doctor has always said that if I hadn't held
him up he would have been killed, and -- -- "

"Confound the doctor! You got around him with your soft ways the same way you did me
before I knew what a fool you were. Besides, it would be better for Jack if he were dead. It
makes me sick to see him hobbling about. Anyhow, the fact remains that you were supposed
to be taking care of him and let him fall. I notice other mothers seem to be able to avoid
those little accidents."

He walked into the study, kicking viciously at Belle's pail and partly over-turning it, so that
the water ran out on the carpet. As the door slammed the scrubwoman looked
apprehensively at Mrs. Smithers, who returned the look sadly.

"Belle, you know I've always been good to you."

The workwoman brightened at the words and answered fervently, in a hoarse, cracked
voice: "Yes, ma'am, Lord knows I know."

Her mistress continued seriously, as though speaking to a naughty child: "There's one thing,
though, I can't allow. You must not speak to me as you did just now, or I can never have you
here again."

The shapeless body of the other drooped humbly under the reproof. "Just as you say, ma'am.
I couldn't help myself that time, but I won't never again. I couldn't live if I had to quit
workin' for you. I'm scrubbin' here in the house for less than I could git somewheres else just
so's I can git to see you. Why, ma'am -- Mrs. Smithers -- I'd go through hell every day to see
you!"

She flinched again at the deprecating hand of her mistress, and hung her head, shamefaced,
at the exhortation: "Oh, Belle, you shouldn't use such language."

The pathos of the unlovely figure went to Alice's heart. "Never mind this time, Belle. You
do a great deal for me, too. I couldn't have got along without you, a great many times, and it
makes me very happy to think that I'm not so weak that I can't help somebody a little."

The hard-featured face of the other suddenly broke into grotesque lines of emotion. She
spoke incoherently, sitting ungracefully on her heels and wiping her eyes with the cleaning-
cloth between her sentences. "Oh, ma'am, it just busts me wide open to have you say I help
you. When a body's had all done for them you've done for me -- keeping me at all! -- I know
how I look and how rough I talk. There isn't another lady in the world that would have me
around, and with the kids and all! And then to give me kind words and looks, and helpin' me
through with the typhoid, and goin' to that darned hospital to see me! Not if I live to be a
million, which Lord forbid! I couldn't never forget how you looked when you came in the
ward with all them flowers, as though I was anybody, and standin' by me all that month
when they thought I'd swiped the silver. You're the only livin' soul as ever give me a kind
word since I can't remember. I never did anything but fight anywheres else but here. It's just
been hell every minute. I cud ha' died like a dog and never knowed what it was to have
anybody so much as say -- oh, ma'am, Mrs. Smithers -- -- "
She paused, breathless, choked by emotion, unable to express herself, but staring at her
mistress, a look of doglike devotion in her somber eyes.

As Alice smiled sweetly at her with a wistful look of gratitude, she came to herself, and
began her work again, sniffing unpleasantly and drawing the back of her hand across her
nose from time to time.

She moved a picture which stood on the floor to another part of the room, looking at it
curiously and at Alice timidly, finally summing up courage to say: "Would it be too darn
much trouble, ma'am, to tell me what this picture's about?"

"That? Oh, that's a glacier -- ice, you know, on top of a mountain -- and two men are tied
together with a rope. One of them has just slipped into a great, deep hole, and he's getting
out his knife to cut the rope, so he won't drag the other man after him."

Belle seemed unconvinced. "But then he'll fall, won't he?"

Alice replied absently, looking at the picture of a child on the mantel. "Yes, but the other
man, his friend will be saved." She fell into a reverie, from which she was recalled by the
other's insistent questioning: "What do the words underneath mean, please, ma'am?"

"I forget what they do call it. What are the words?"

Belle followed the letters with a gnarled forefinger and read laboriously: "Greater love hath
no man," and listened with a painful face of endeavor to the explanation: "Oh, that's from
the Bible, where it says, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friend.' It means, you know, that -- -- "

IV

THE door from the study opened, and she started eagerly toward her husband. "Oh, Will,
won't you tell me about Jack's foot now? Did he hurt it badly?"

Smithers looked at her with a side-wise twist of his mouth and said evenly: "I see your usual
careful house-keeping in that large spot of dirty water on the carpet."

Belle and Alice both faced him, amazed, and Alice cried impulsively: "Why, Will, you
upset the -- -- "

He cut her off with one of his blighting looks. "It's curious how I am to blame for everything
that happens. I don't suppose your peerless beauty, there, is capable of getting me a bottle of
beer, is she? As usual, we are without any other servants. I dare say that I am also to blame
for your incapacity to keep any help in the house. It seems as though, with all the money
you have for service, you might be able to keep somebody besides that harridan. I suppose
the fact is you're jealous of any one who doesn't resemble your old eyesore. Oh, don't
explain. You needn't be afraid I'd ever think you capable of such a live flesh-and-blood
sentiment. Milk and water can't burn." He addressed himself threateningly to Belle: "Will
you get some beer, or won't you?"

She answered him sullenly: "The liquor man ain't sent the beer yet."

The man's smoothness broke into an ugly cold fury. He advanced upon his wife, so that she
shrank into herself in terror. "Alice, your incompetence is simply maddening! You know the
doctor has ordered me to drink beer. You seem actually to plan to thwart any measures for
my good. I'm not surprised that you show no interest in my health. Indeed, I dare say you
would be very glad if -- -- "

"Oh, no, Will!" shrieked his wife, in an agony of protest. "Don't! I can't bear to hear you say
such a dreadful thing!"

The sight of her agitation seemed to restore him to his usual cold control of himself. He
eyed her with a smile. "The extraordinary ease with which your guilty imagination fills out
my sentences is something surprising, even to me -- used as I am to your affection for your
husband. I'm going out to the kitchen myself to see if I can't find a bottle which your
vigilant handmaid has sequestered for her own use."

In the moment of his absence the scrubwoman raised her gaunt frame again in exhortation:
"Oh, blame it all, ma'am -- if you would -- just once -- just try it on!"

Alice hushed her, with a frantic fear of being overheard, and turned to her husband, who
entered the room with a bottle of beer, which he opened with a deft strength and half
emptied into a glass. The two women followed his most trivial actions with a fascinated
gaze. The first draft seemed to relax him, for he leaned back in his chair, wiping his beard
and looking neutrally at his wife. "Have you heard anything lately from Tom, Alice?" he
asked.

Alice flushed up into a timid desire to please him in this brief interlude of peace. "No, Will,
not for a long time. How kind of you to think of him! I long to hear from him so. I can't tell
you! I think I should almost die of happiness to see him again."

She drew away in a drooping submission under her husband's curt "Oh, don't be sickening!
Every time I try to have a little reasonable conversation with you you turn my stomach. It's
enough to drive any man with a nerve in his body mad with irritation -- your fawning ways.
I'm sorry for myself! It's not my fault. Any woman with a spark of grit in her -- you make
me hate myself as well as you -- -- " He interrupted himself sharply, pointing tensely into a
corner of the room. "A mouse! Alice, have you or have you not used that poison I got for
you?"

"Oh, Will," she fluttered protestingly, "I'm so afraid to have it around! I haven't seen any
mice for a long time, and I thought traps -- the children -- -- "

Smithers struck his hand heavily on the table, with a loud oath: "Can't a man be safe from
vermin in his own home because he has a fool for a wife?"

He rushed out, and Belle again approached with her ignorant, vacant look of curiosity.
"Why are you so afraid of that stuff, ma'am?"

Mrs. Smithers shuddered. "Oh, Belle, it's poison -- deadly poison -- and the least little drop
of it in anything we eat would kill us. And when the children are here -- -- "

Their whispered colloquy was interrupted by Smithers's entrance, bearing a small bottle,
which he placed on the mantelpiece in a complete and significant silence. As he seated
himself he said coldly: "I hope I shall not have to wait until we are attacked in our beds by
the rats before you decide to be reasonable." He fixed his pale eyes on her. "Alice, this is as
good a time as ever to tell you that I have decided to send Jack to school -- a military school
in Wisconsin."

Belle uttered a loud exclamation at this, which was lost in the high hysterical wail of Mrs.
Smithers's voice, "Will, I don't want to seem to doubt your judgment, but I really know
more about Jack's health than you can, and I know he can't live without the most anxious
care. A military school -- why, he's lame! And so far away! And Jack is only nine -- a baby -
- a baby!"

She flung herself upon him, kneeling with imploring hands and awaiting his answer in a
breathless suspense. He waited a long time before speaking, and then finished his glass of
beer and set it down carefully. "Quite what I expected -- just the silly exhibition of yourself
that I am used to. And you expect me to leave my children to be brought up by an hysterical
idiot like that! I had not finally decided, but I do so now, that the other two would be better
in a sane and reasonable atmosphere, which unfortunately, owing to my choice of a wife, I
cannot give them in my own house. Elsie and Harry, as soon as they come home from the
country, shall go abroad under the charge of a French governess."

His wife's face did not change at all. She slipped slowly to the floor in an unconscious heap,
and her face did not alter from its expression of stupefied horror.

V
THE scrubwoman darted to her mistress and knelt by her in a passion of anxiety. When
Smithers put her roughly on one side and gathered his wife's body into his arms she
scratched and struck at him like a cat, with an incoherent burst of objurgation. The man paid
no attention to her, carrying his wife down the long hall with an easy strength and
disappearing for a moment into a side room.

Belle was still on her knees, a squat figure of hatred, when he emerged again, closed the
door after him, and came back down the hall whistling "The Campbells Are Coming." At
the entrance to the parlor he looked at her in complete silence till she cringed abjectly. At
this he smiled, and said in a tone of finality: "That will be enough from you, Belle. One
more such incident and I'll have you dismissed from the apartment and the building. Do you
understand?"

She nodded faintly, and started up in a servile haste to answer the door-bell, bringing back a
letter which she placed on Mrs. Smithers's desk, saying significantly: "It's for your wife, Mr.
Smithers."

He cast her a sidelong look of contemptuous warning and opened the letter with a swift
deftness, reading it aloud in an inarticulate mumble, which at times rose into a clear note of
scornful emphasis.

"Dear little sister -- unexpectedly find we're ordered for -- stopping a day in New York --
hope you can get down to the vessel -- you'll need to start as soon as you get this, for we are
to -- hope you can manage it, for it will be the last chance in two years!"

The last sentence he read quite distinctly, in a tone of triumph, and gave a short laugh as he
tore the letter in two.

At the sound, the scrubwoman sprang toward him, her face convulsed. "Don't you dare tear
up that letter from her brother! I'll -- I'll -- -- " She struggled to wrest it away in an animal-
like frenzy. He struck her from him with a blow so powerful that she reeled to the other side
of the room, but, although the action was violent, he did not lose his uncanny smoothness,
and held her distant from him and impotently speechless by his cold eye.

"I said, Belle, that another time I would lose my patience with you. That has happened.
When you finish your work in this room you will leave the apartment, and you will not
come back -- either here or to the building." He cut short her paroxysm of horror with a
gesture so fierce that she cowered like a whipped dog. "Not a word from you," he said; "I've
heard enough. I'm going into the study now, and when I come out I expect you to be gone.
And don't dare go near your mistress."
 He crossed the room with his graceful, vigorous step, paused at the door, said in his ordinary
tone, "Bring me in the rest of that beer, will you," opened the door, and closed it with a
resolute jerk back of him.

The movement jarred a picture standing on the floor near the door, and it fell down with a
splintering crash of broken glass, which turned the scrubwoman's eye in that direction.
There was a moment's silence, and then, without rising from her crouching position, she
crept across the floor to where it lay and looked at it dully, making no movement to set it up.

And then suddenly she rose staggering to her feet, rushed heavily to the mantel, and seized
the bottle which stood there. With a sort of insane and extravagant haste she emptied its
contents and the beer into a glass at the same moment, and reeled across the room to the
study, knocking on the door with a hand hysterically shaking. Smithers's hand appeared,
took the glass, and the door was again shut. The scrubwoman leaned against the wall with
her eyes closed until the sound of a heavy fall was heard from the other room. She recoiled
from the wall at this and walked blindly and aimlessly about the room.

A sound of deep groans came through the closed door. The scrubwoman hastened to the
entrance into the hall and drew over it a heavy portière.

"Help! Help!" called Smithers's voice faintly. "Help! -- I'm poisoned!"

The scrubwoman began taking the scraps of the torn letter out of the waste-paper basket and
laying them carefully on Mrs. Smithers's desk.

There was a confused sound of struggle and the crash of an overturned chair. The
scrubwoman lifted up the broken picture and put it on the table, standing by it and absently
smoothing out a place in the paper torn by the splintered glass.

"Oh, help!" came in a choking gasp from beyond the closed door, and then in a supreme
effort, "Alice!"

At the sound of the name the scrubwoman smiled for the first time and stood listening
intently.

There was a profound silence. She waited, and then walked softly across the floor to where
Mrs. Smithers's shawl was lying across a chair. Still smiling, she held this to her face in a
passion of tenderness. "Oh, the poor, dear, good-for-nothing lady!" she said.

The Rescue
by Dorothy Canfield
THE old man controlled himself with a violent effort, and stopped his storming commands,
daunted by the face of fierce opposition which the girl turned to him. He wheeled about and
relieved his mind by a few clamorous, angry chords on the great piano against which he was
leaning. There was a moment's silence before he faced her again -- a silence full of faint
reminiscent murmurs and echoes from the music-soaked walls of the bare little room. The
tense rigidity of the girl's slenderness relaxed a little; and when the master again looked at
her, the stormy light of revolt was gone from her eyes, leaving their usual curious, half-
absent brooding.

The old man shook back his long white hair, and began afresh in a new manner.

"I am not so unreasonable as you think," he said in an argumentative tone. "I know well
enough I have no legal right to order your life in any way; but" -- his voice broke in a
grieved quaver -- "some rights I have -- your old master?"

The girl's eyes softened.

Every right a human parent can have over his child you have, a thousand times stronger,
over me -- you, who are the parent of my soul, who have made me what I am. But no parent
has the right to forbid his child life!"

"I don't forbid you life! I am human as well as you, and I have been young! There have been
women in my life, and from them I have drawn my best inspiration. I did not marry because
I felt my art would suffer -- love and marriage are two different things; but I don't forbid
you even marriage -- least of all, love! Love all you can, marry if you must; but, in the name
of heaven, do not select the one man who is separated from you by an impassable chasm.
You admit yourself that he has no musical feeling!"

"He does not know one note from another," said the girl firmly, "and I love him for it."

"You are insane! You are simply unfit to govern your life!" cried the other, in an irresistible
burst of choking fury. "What mad idea have you in your head to say that?" He calmed
himself again, one shaking hand at his wrinkled old throat. "And an American who is not
rich! And a college professor! You, with your training and knowledge of the world of live
men and women, to bury yourself in the gossiping, deadening existence of any company of
schoolmasters -- but in America! And Western America! You can have no faintest remnant
of reason left, to think of such a thing!"

The disciple smiled.

"It has been long since you have been in love, maestro mio!" she said.

"In love! Do you know what that means in America? It means a lure to get you -- you,
Federiga Potowska -- to do his housework, to make and maintain a tiresome social position
for him, to bear his children, and to sink every spark of your individual life and health and
strength in bringing them up!"

Federiga hesitated and then said with a sudden half bold, half terrified rush:

"What better can I do with my vigor and health?"

The old man screamed aloud in a sort of frenzy.

"You blaspheme! You blaspheme! You are beside yourself!"

And then he sank on the seat before the piano, and, laying his head on the keys, he wept
aloud, like a child or a heart-broken old man. The girl's face was drawn in nervous lines of
agitation, and she spoke pleadingly.

"Oh, no, I didn't mean that. Henry will never require me to give up my music. Dear master,
you love me; why deny me the right to take this one golden opportunity of my life?"

"The one golden opportunity! Have you no memory? How many men have you refused --
men who were mad for love of you, who could appreciate your music, which is your soul, as
well as your body and mind. But this half man, this barbarian who owns himself tone deaf!"

"That is just it -- can't you see? He is the only man who has ever loved me -- me! My music
is not myself, it is only a manifestation."

"It is not that I am going over the old ground that a woman of genius should not marry at all,
but it is as if the most beautiful woman in the world should insist on marrying a blind man."

"Master, tell me truly; I am speaking to you from my heart. If I had married Alexis
Nicolaievitch, as you wished -- Alexis Nicolaievitch, who would have given me passionate
love, position, freedom from care, and an almost insane admiration for my music -- and if,
on my wedding-day, my right hand had become paralyzed, what would have happened?"

The old man defended himself from this thrust almost indignantly as from an unfair weapon.

"Why, of course! What do you expect? Your music is a part of you. What have you a right
to ask of human men?"
Federiga's eyes suddenly blazed with a wild joy.

"That's it! That's it! That's all one has a right to expect! But by some unheard-of good
fortune I escape the common fate. I alone can be sure that I am really loved. It is as if a
beautiful woman should marry a blind man! Do you suppose, after a woman has lived long
enough to see the barrier that beauty puts between her and men, after she has seen the sort of
love it calls forth -- do you suppose, if she could find a blind man who would love her,
herself, truly and passionately, that she would not leave all the world to follow him?"

The old man stared at her in blank bewilderment.

"You are simply mad! You have refined on insane subtleties until you cannot see the
simplest truths of nature. What is beauty for, but to draw the hearts of men? What are you
but your music?"

"So I have always feared! I had come to feel it as inevitable, as part of the sadness of human
life. I have thought that the most beautiful woman never could find a blind man who would
love her; that, in truth, she was nothing but her beauty."

The musician beat frantically upon the keys, evoking a clangorous discord of maddened
exasperation.

"God in heaven grant me patience! That such a fool should have such a genius! How can a
man love a woman but for her qualities? You would not be you without your music!"

"So I feared, so I feared, although I cherished the wild hope that all women have, until it is
crushed out of them, that somewhere there would be a man who would, by loving it, prove
that I had something beyond the outward show that all the world may see. Music has been
like a prison to me, which has shut me away from all humanity. Henry Livingstone has
delivered me from my bondage, and I am so happy that it seems at times I must die of joy."

"But me -- do you never think of me? I have given these last ten years of my life to you; and
without a quiver of remorse, without a sign of self-reproach for your desertion, you leave
me."

Tears stood, large and glittering, in the girl's eyes.

"Oh, master, that is the hard part! There is where you make it bitter for me! Do you think I
have no remorse?"

The old man seized with pathetic eagerness upon this sign of weakening.
"Child, child, tell me it is all a bad dream -- a fancy that has passed!" The tears rolled down
the girl's cheeks, paled by the stress of the struggle. She was so evidently laboring under
some overpowering emotion that the other started up, eager hope in his eyes. "You have
seen reason, Federiga! You are rescued!"

He pushed her with an affectionate roughness into a chair, and bent his stiff old frame to
kneel beside her, his face all alight with hypnotic fervor, and so impassioned an earnestness
breathing from him that Federiga sank back, her hand over her eyes. She did not move from
this position during a long time, while the master painted with a flaming wealth of words the
golden and glorious future which lay before her. Wrought up by the intensity of his feeling,
he had an inspired certainty that he was succeeding, that he was hitting the weak places in
her arguments, that the curious, intangible barriers in the girl's mind were giving way before
the irresistible rush of his eloquence. He held up her hand, her long white artist hand, and
felt that he made her realize to the point of breaking nerves the entrancing possibilities that
lay in its firm grasp. He appealed to her ambition, the highest form of it he could imagine;
he appealed to her love for him, and to the debt she owed him; he argued, with cruelly sharp
divination of her character, that the life she had planned would be a desolate one, a
continual horror of abnegation of the best in her. He felt himself in one of those crises of
emotion when speech is no longer a barrier to expression, when the flame of feeling burns
itself palpably to view.

And yet, as his agitation grew, and as he felt hers respond to it, even this heaven-sent gift of
speech was not enough. He struggled in the grasp of a passion higher and keener than he
could put into words, and, with a musician's instinct, he turned to the piano. Federiga saw
his purpose, and, breaking the quivering stillness in which she had listened to him, she cried
in an agony of fear:

"Oh, no! Not that! Don't play to me! Don't play to me!"

She sprang from her chair and rushed across the room toward the door, as if to escape. The
old man, quicker and stronger than she, put her on one side roughly, locked the door, and
darted back to the piano, his eyes alight with an imperious certainty of victory. Federiga
sank down by the door, in the farthest corner of the room, and put her hands over her ears
with a frenzied gesture; but after the first puissant chords resounded, her hands dropped
despairingly, and she turned to gaze helplessly at the magician of sound who was weaving
relentlessly the most mighty of his spells.

Even as he played, the old master knew that he was touching the highest achievement of his
life. All the forces of his nature were fused into one overwhelming and indomitable resolve
to protect the sanctuary of all he held most sacred. It was as if his life had been one long
preparation for this moment, so consciously did he pour into his music all the potent vitality
gained from battles won in a life of combat for an ideal.
 After an interval, the defenseless girl on the other side of the room rose to her feet as though
under a spell, and made her way blindly across the floor to the piano. The player did not
look up, but into the already maddeningly poignant splendor of his harmonies he infused a
yet more piercing quality of intimate beauty. For a long time the three -- the invincible
master, the conquered woman, and the gloriously resounding instrument -- throbbed and
glowed and lived as one. And then the old man suddenly stopped and looked full at
Federiga.

The room hummed and whispered about them with the haunting murmurs of a huge sea-
shell. The girl's slender body shook almost visibly, and across the unearthly pallor of her
face there still vibrated inaudible echoes, like the unheard voice of a stringless and dumb
violin that answers with all its fibers the long-drawn call of another instrument.

"Ah, Federiga, am I not right? Is there anything else to live for? See, I put it on the highest
ground. Do not live for your music because of the joy of it -- even because of the heavenly
joy of it -- but for the sake of the divine thing itself. You are a priestess chosen by fate to
minister at the altar. You are necessary to the sacred art. Consecrate yourself to it -- to the
thing which makes us both what we are."

He rose and led her to the piano gently, as if not to break the spell which lay upon her. At
the touch of the instrument the blood came to her face in a rush. She sank upon the seat
before it, and spread out her arms upon it with a fierce, hungry gesture of devotion which
went to the old man's heart. She bowed her bright head above the keys, she laid her warm
cheek upon their cold surface. She kissed their deathlike whiteness with her red lips in a
fervor which the master took to be the passion of consecration.

"Heaven be praised!" she cried in a loud voice of joy. "You are too late!"

"Too late?" he asked.

"Too late! Too late! Too late! Thank God, I was married to Henry Livingstone this
morning!"

Poet and Scullery-Maid

by Dorothy Canfield

ONCE upon a time there was a little scullery-maid, who, like all scullery-maids, spent most
of her time in a kitchen. It was the kitchen of a boarding-house, and you can imagine what a
disagreeable place it was -- full of unpleasant smells, and usually piled high with dirty
dishes which the scullery-maid must wash. It was dark, it was greasy, the cook had a bad
temper, and the chimney smoked.

You would have thought the little scullery-maid would have been glad to get out of it the
instant her work was done, even though the only place to which she could go was one
corner of an attic on the top floor. But, oddly enough, she often left her attic room and
slipped back down to the kitchen after every one had gone.

For, much as she hated the kitchen, there was one thing about it she loved. It overhung a
rippling little river, which ran down from the mountains above the city, and which was
always talking to itself and to any one else who would listen. All day long it talked, but then
its voice was drowned in the rattle of pots and pans and the angry commands of the bad-
tempered cook. The scullery-maid sometimes went out on a little platform, directly over the
water, where she sat and peeled a mountain of potatoes. There she could hear the river much
more plainly; and she was always deeply disappointed when the cook decided to have the
potatoes boiled in their jackets, for on those days she had no opportunity to hear even for a
moment the singing voice of the clear stream.

But at night -- that was the time! The kitchen was quiet then, and although the door to the
platform was locked, she could put her head out of the window and see and hear the dear
little river almost as if she were floating on its surface in a boat. She came to know every
one of its moods, and how it looked and how it sang in fair weather and in foul. Sometimes
it was as merry as a child, and went along laughing and chuckling to itself till a smile came
on the scullery-maid's dirty face in answer. Sometimes, on dark nights, it whispered
something mournful and yet so sweet that she felt her heart swell. On moonlight nights it
glided smoothly along like a moonbeam, with only a gentle lapping where it passed the
pillars of the platform, and a low, happy murmur from the other bank.

But under the stars it was the best of all. Then it sang so gallant and heartening a song that
the little scullery-maid forgot how she hated the kitchen and the greasy dishes, forgot that
she had no friends and no sweetheart. She only felt glad that she was alive, and faced
bravely a long future of bad-tempered cooks and unpleasant smells.

Now one of the people who lived in the boarding-house was a poet -- a really, truly poet,
although people did not know it yet, for he was only a young man and looked like any one
else, except that he often forgot to shave himself. One evening he was invited out to a
fashionable late supper -- a great event with him, for he was very poor. When he dressed, he
noticed that as usual he had not shaved for two or three days, so that a blond stubble bristled
all over his cheeks and chin. It was too late to ring for anything, so he took his little pitcher
and went downstairs to the kitchen to get some warm water.
He had very old slippers on his feet, and they were so worn and soft that they made no noise
as he walked; so that the little scullery-maid, leaning out of the window, did not hear him,
any more than he saw her in the dark room. As he dipped his pitcher in the reservoir of
water, he caught his sleeve on a pan and it came crashing down on the stove. It was a
question which was more startled, the girl or the poet. They stood and stared at each other in
the dusk. He saw a very dirty little maid with a plain face and no figure at all, and she saw a
very handsome young man, for it was so dark that she could not see that he needed to shave.

"Who in the world are you?" asked the poet.

"I am the scullery-maid," she said.

"Good heavens, do you have to stay in this awful place at night as well as by day?"

The poet was like other poets, and could not bear to think of unpleasant things, although he
was glad enough to be benefited by their results.

"No, I don't have to stay here."

"Why under the sun do you come back, then?"

Now the scullery-maid was very ignorant and simple-minded -- you can imagine how much
so from the fact that she could not think of anything to say but the truth.

"I come back to listen to the river," she said.

The poet stared.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

"I do not know exactly why. I -- I like it."

There was a long silence, in which the poet heard the gallant song of the little river rushing
past under the stars, hurrying along it knew not whither, but still happy and sure that its path
was safe. Tears came into his eyes, and he set the pitcher of hot water down on the stove. He
had a sudden realization of what the voice of the stream meant to the ugly little scullery-
maid. After the manner of poets, he knew at once, much better than she did, what it said to
her. He felt a whole poem chanting in his heart.

"You poor child!" he said, and laid his hand on her shoulder. His voice was very soft.
Nobody else had ever spoken to her so before. "You poor child! I know why you like to
hear it."
And with that he went up-stairs and wrote the loveliest poem you can imagine -- all about
the little scullery-maid, and how she hated the kitchen, and her ugly, unhappy life, and yet
how sweetly the little river sang to her and told her to be brave. The tears were in his eyes
many times as he wrote, and he forgot all about the supper to which he had been invited, for
he was a real poet.

The scullery-maid stood still exactly where he had left her. For once she did not hear the
voice of the river. She heard some one saying, "You poor child! You poor child!" It seemed
to her she must have dreamed it, and yet there was the pot of hot water, glimmering white in
the dusk. There it was in the morning, too, although of course the water had grown cold.

The poet sent the poem he had written in the night to a great editor -- one who had refused
every single thing the poet had written before. The editor was as bad-tempered as he was
great, but he wiped his eyes after he had read the poem about the dirty little scullery-maid
and the song of the river, and sent for the poet at once, to tell him to write more like it. This
the poet was already doing. He had forgotten everything else, and imagined that he too was
a maid and lived in a greasy kitchen with only the sound of a river for comfort.

For that is the way with a poet. If he gets interested in somebody's point of view, he steps in
and pushes the owner out of the way and lives his life for a while. The scullery-maid below
stairs did not know that the blond young man on the fourth floor was washing her dishes,
peeling her potatoes, and dreading with her the harsh voice of the cook; but so he was. In
the evening he stood beside her as she listened to the song of the river; and he stole her
simple, ignorant thoughts, one by one, and carried away on the tip of his pen the love for the
little stream which filled her heart.

When he had taken them all, and written them down so beautifully that he made himself cry
many times, he put them all in a book. Then he forgot about them and fell to imagining he
was some one else. For that is the way with a poet.

But the editor did not forget, nor did any one who read the poems. Everywhere in the city
people were moved to tears by the beauty of the river's song and the sadness of the little
scullery-maid. Gray-haired business folk, lovely ladies of society, unhappy young men and
old women -- all imagined, while they read the poems, that they, too, were scullery-maids
and that the river sang to them; and they faced whatever was unhappy or ugly in their own
lives with more courage because of what it said. They did not say much in praise of the little
book, but they dried their eyes when they had finished it, and went to buy another copy to
send to a friend. Most remarkable of all, they treated their own scullery-maids with more
kindness, which is a tremendous thing for a poem to have accomplished. The editor who had
recognized before any one else how lovely the poems were was surer than ever that he was a
great man.
Scullery-maids were quite heroines, and even the ugly little one in the kitchen of the
boarding-house seemed so important that the grocer's boy tried to be her sweetheart. He was
a good fellow, and wished to be kind to her, but she would have none of him, because he
was not blond, and did not put his hand on her shoulder and say in a tender voice, "You
poor child!" -- in other words, because he was not a poet; whereas, if she had but known it,
it was a lucky thing for her that he was not.

She was so ignorant and neglected that she had never learned to read, and she was almost
the only one in the city who did not have the joy of the poems about her river. She found out
where the poet's room was, and whenever she could she would slip away to try and catch a
glimpse of him. But though he passed her several times on the stairs, he did not notice her.
He was so busy living the life of an old, old woman whom he had seen on the other side of
town that he could think of nothing else. Still, it was a joy to the scullery-maid even to see
him, and as she sat on the platform, peeling potatoes, she thought how yellow his hair was,
and how blue his eyes, instead of listening to the river which had comforted her so long.

And then, one day, the poet got so much money from the sale of his little book that he
decided to move away to a better boarding-place. When the little scullery-maid heard the
news, as she washed the dishes in the greasy kitchen, something snapped inside her head,
and she could no longer hear any sound of the river at all.

That day, as she sat peeling the potatoes, the little river flowed past, silently, silently, and
yet with so dizzying a gleam that, as she looked long and miserably at it, she lost her
balance and fell into the water and was drowned. It was probably the best thing that could
have happened to her. For when one can no longer hear any sound of brave song through the
hateful noise of dreary toil, when one has lost one's singing river, there is not much to live
for, is there?

She was carried down the current and cast ashore on the beach where the river runs into the
sea. The poet, walking on the beach, saw her lying there, and straightway fell to imagining
the most romantic ideas about an unhappy love story. The tears came to his eyes, although
that was nothing surprising for him. A beautiful poem sang in his heart, so that he forgot all
about the poor little scullery-maid lying dead at his feet. For that is the way with a poet.

-- End --