Amelia E. Barr “Howso’er I stray or range, Whate’er I do, thou dost not change; I steadier step when I recall That if I slip thou dost not fall.” ––Clough.

“Have you buried your happiness? Well, live bravely on. The plant does not die though all its flowers be broken off. It remembers that spring will surely come again.”

Roland and Denasia were in Liverpool. They were full of hopes and of prudent plans. Roland had again turned over a new leaf; he had renounced his past self––the faults he could no longer commit; he had renounced also his future faults. If he was a little extravagant in every way for a day or two before making so eventful a voyage, he felt that Denasia ought not to complain. Alas! it is not the renunciation of our past and future selves that is difficult; it is the steady denial of our present self which makes the disciple.

They spent two pleasant days in Liverpool, and on the eve of the second went to the wonderful piers and saw the vast companies of steamers smudging the blue sky with their lowering clouds of black smoke. Denasia clung closely to Roland; she felt that she was going into a new world, and she looked 226 with a questioning love into his eyes, as if she could read her fortune in them. Roland was unusually gay and hopeful. He reminded his wife that the mind and the heart could not be changed by place or time. He said that they had each other to begin the new life with, and he was very sure they would soon possess their share of every other good thing. And Denasia fell asleep to his hopeful predictions.

In the morning all was changed. The sun was hidden behind banks of black clouds, the streets were plashy and muddy, the fierce showers smote the windows like hail, and the view outside was narrowed to a procession of dripping umbrellas. It was chilly, too, and the hotel was inexpressibly dreary and uncomfortable. Greatly to Denasia’s astonishment, Roland was already dressed. All his hopes were fled. He was despondent and strangely woe-begone and indifferent. He said he had had a miserable dream. He did not think now it was right to go to America; they would do nothing there. He wished they were at Broadstairs; he had been a fool to mind the chatter of men who were probably guying him; he wished Denas had not urged the plan; if she had only stood firm, etc., etc., etc.

Denasia looked at him with amazement and with some anger. She reminded him that the American idea was entirely his own. She wondered what stuff he was made of, to be so dashed and quailed by a dream. She said that she also had had a bad dream. They had both eaten late; and as for dreams, 227 everyone knew they went by contraries. And as limp spirits like to lean, Roland was soon glad to lean upon Denasia’s bravery.

The few last weary hours in England went slowly by. Roland and Denasia became at last impatient to be off; any place must certainly be better than that dreary hotel and that storm-beaten town; the cab that took them to the wharf was a relief, and the great steamer a palace of comfort. They were not sick, and the storm was soon over. After they lost sight of land the huge waves were flatted upon the main; the weather was charming; the company made a fair show of being intensely happy, and day after day went past in the monotonous pretension. Nothing varied the life until the last night on board, when there was to be a concert. Denasia had been asked to take a part in it, and she had promised to sing a song.

No one expected much from her. She had not been either officious or effusive during the voyage, and “song by Mrs. Tresham” did not raise any great expectations. As it was nearly the last item on the programme, many had gone away before Roland took his place at the piano and struck a few startling chords. Then Mrs. Tresham stepped forward and became suddenly Mademoiselle Denasia.

thrilled the great ship’s cabins from end to end. The captain was within the door before the first verse was finished. There was a crowd at the doors; 228 all the servants in the lower saloon had ceased work to listen. Song after song was called for. Perhaps, indeed, Denasia had a sweeter taste of her power that night than she had ever felt in halls crowded with strangers who had paid a shilling to be amused by her.

The listener most interested in this performance said the least at the time; but he never took his eyes off the singer, and his private decision was, “That young woman is a public singer. Her voice has not been trained for parlours; she has been used to fling its volume through the larger space of halls or theatres. I must look after her.” He approached Roland the next day and spoke in guarded terms about Mrs. Tresham’s voice. Roland was easily induced to talk, and the result was an offer which was really––if they had known it––the open door to fortune. But it is the fatality of the unlucky to have the spirit of recklessness in their veins and the weakness of prudence in their hearts. Instead of letting events guide them, they have the presumption to think they can guide events. Roland received the offer coolly, and said he would consult Mrs. Tresham on the matter. But, instead of consulting with his wife, he dictated to her after the fashion of the suspicious:

“This man is the manager of a company, I think. He is very anxious for you to sign an agreement. His offer appears to be good, but we know nothing of affairs in New York; it may be a very poor offer. If you have made such an impression on him, you may make a much more pronounced one on others. 229 We will not think of this proposal at all, except as the straw which shows us what a great wind is going to blow.”

Denasia was extremely opposed to this view. She quoted the old proverb of “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” She said it would be a sure living during the time they were learning the new country and its opportunities. She begged Roland to let her accept the offer. When he refused, she said that they would live to regret the folly.

The manager thought so also. “For you must understand,” he said to Roland, “that I was desirous to engage Mrs. Tresham, not for what she is––which is ordinary––but for the possible extraordinary I see in her if she could have the proper advantages and influences.” With the words he bowed a little sarcastically to Mrs. Tresham’s husband, and afterward spoke no more to him. And then there came to the foolish young man that sudden chill and foreboding which a despised opportunity leaves behind it.

But whether we do wisely or foolishly, the business of life must be carried on. They were at the point of landing, and for some days the strange experiences of their new life occupied every moment and every feeling. Then came a long spell of hot weather, such heat as Denasia had never dreamed of. Roland, who had been in Southern Europe, could endure it better; as for Denasia, she lay prostrate with but one idea in her heart––the cool coverts of the Cornish undercliff and the trinkling springs 230 where the blue-bells and the forget-me-nots grew so thickly.

Yet it was necessary that something should be done, and through the blazing heat, day after day, the poor girl was dragged to agencies and managers. But she found no one to make her such an offer as the one so foolishly declined. And the time wore on, and the money in their purse grew less and less, and a kind of desperation made both silent and irritable. Finally an engagement to go “on the road” was secured, and Roland affected to be delighted with it. “We shall see the whole country,” he said, “and we can keep our eyes open for something better.”

Denasia sighed. Disappointment and a sense of wrong and grievous mistake filled her heart and sat upon her face. She submitted as to an irreparable injury, and left New York without the least enthusiasm. “Good fortune knocked at our door,” she said, “and we had not intelligence enough to let him in.” This was all the reproach she gave her husband, and as she said “we” he accepted her generous self-accusation, and finally convinced himself that it was entirely Denasia’s fault that the offer was refused. “But then I do not blame you, Denasia,” he remarked magnanimously; “you had every right to consider yourself worthy of a larger salary.”

They left New York in September and went slowly West. Denasia had a fine physique, but it was not a physique trained to the special labour it had to endure: long days in hot railway cars; hurry and worry at every performance; no seclusion, no time 231 for study; no time to acknowledge headache or weariness; a score of little humiliations and wrongs; a constant irritability at Roland’s apparent indifference to her wretchedness and apparent satisfaction with the company and life into which he was thrown. The men, indeed, all seemed satisfied. They had cigars to smoke, and they told stories and played cards, and so beguiled the weary hours of travel. The women were headachy and tired; they soon threw aside their paper novels and confidential talks. Some of the very young ones––pretty, wilful, inexperienced girls, not yet disillusioned, not yet weary––added flirtation to their amusements. It pained Denasia to see Roland a willing aid to their foolish pastime. She had no fear that her husband would wrong her, but the pretence pained and humbled her.

It was a wearisome seven months, a nightmare kind of life, unrelieved by even a phantom show of success. Men in the Sierras, out on the great Western plains, knew not the sea. They could not be roused to enthusiasm. Fisher-folk and fisher-life were outside their sympathies. They preferred a comic song––a song that hit a famous person, or a political principle, or a Western foible. Miners liked to hear about “Leadville Jim.” It touched their sensibilities when the “Three Fishers who Went Sailing out into the West” made no picture in their minds. Without being a failure, Denasia could not be said to be a success. She was out of her place, and consequently out of sympathy with all that touched her life.

Coming back eastward, while they were at Denver 232 Denasia was stricken with typhoid fever. It was the result of months of unsatisfactory, unhappy labour, of worry and fret and disappointment. Nostalgia also of the worst kind had attacked her. She shut her eyes against the great mountains and endless plains. She wanted the sea. She wanted her home. Above all, she wanted to hide herself in her mother’s breast. Roland had been frequently unkind to her lately. She had been utterly unable to respond to his moods, so different from her own, and she had been more and more pained by the silly attentions he bestowed on others.

At last she could endure it no longer. She had come to a point of indifference. “Leave me and let me die.” This was all she said when Roland was at length forced to believe that her sickness was not temper, or disappointment, or jealousy. The company were compelled to leave her; Roland saw his favourites on the train and then he returned to nurse his sick wife. He found her insensible, and she remained so for many days. Doctors were called, and Roland conscientiously remained by her side; but yet it was all alone that she fought her battle with death. No one went with her into the dark valley of his shadow. She was deaf to all human voices; far beyond all human help or comfort. Through the long nights Roland heard her moaning and muttering, but it was the voice of one at an inconceivable distance––of one at the very shoal of being.

She came back from the strife weak as a baby. Her clear, shrill voice was a whisper. She could 233 not lift a finger. It was an exhausting effort to open her eyes. A new-born child was in every respect more alive and more self-helpful, for Denasia could not by look or whisper make a complaint or a request. She was only not dead. The convalescence from such a sickness was necessarily long and tiresome. The fondest heart, the most unselfish nature must at times have felt the strain too great to be borne. Roland changed completely under it. His love for Denasia had always been dependent upon accessories pleasant and profitable to himself, as, indeed, his love for any human being would have been. While Denasia’s beauty and talent gave him Éclat and brought him money, he admired Denasia; and while her personality made sweet his private and enviable his public hours, he loved her.

But a wife smitten by deathly sickness into breathing clay––a wife who could give him no delight and make him no money––a wife who compelled him to waste his days in darkness and solitude and unpleasant duties and his money in medicines and doctor’s fees––was not the kind of wife he had given his heart and name to. It was evident to him that Denasia had failed. “She has failed in everything I hoped from her,” he said to himself bitterly one day, as he sat beside the still, death-like figure; “and there must be an end of this some way, Roland Tresham.”

Financial difficulties were quickly upon him, and though he had written to Elizabeth a most pitiful description of his position, a whole month had passed and there was no letter to answer his appeal. 234 He had momentary impulses to run away from a situation so painful and so nearly beyond his control. But it was fortunately much easier for Roland to be a scoundrel in intent than in reality. His selfish instincts had some nobler ones to combat, and as yet the nobler ones had kept the man within the pale of human affections. There had been one hour when the temptation was very nearly too much for him; and that very hour there came to him two hundred dollars from Elizabeth. It turned him back. Ah, how many a time two hundred dollars would prevent a tragedy! How many a time financial salvation means also moral salvation!

It was midsummer before Denasia was strong enough to return to New York, though she was passionately anxious to do so. “We are so far out of the right way,” she pleaded. “So far! In New York we are nearer home. In New York I shall get well.”

And by this time Roland had fully realised how unfit he was for the vivid, rapid life of the West. The cultivated, gentlemanly drawl of his speech was of itself an offence; his slow, unruffled movements and attitudes, his “ancient” ways of thinking, his conservatism and gentility and ultra-superficial refinement were the very qualities not valued and not needed in a community full of new life, ardent, impulsive, rapid, looking forward, and determined not to look backward.

So with hopes much dashed and hearts much dismayed they re-entered New York. The question 235 of the future was a serious one. They were nearly dollarless again, and even Roland felt that Elizabeth could not be appealed to for some months at least. Denasia was facing the sorrowful hopes of motherhood. For three or four months she could not sing. They restricted themselves to a small back room in a Second Avenue boarding-house, and Roland searched the agencies and the papers daily for something suitable to his peculiar characteristics and capabilities, and found nothing. There was a great city full of people, but not one of them wanting the services of a young gentleman like Roland.

As for Denasia, she was still very weak. July and August tried her severely. Some few little garments had to be made, and this pitiful sewing was all she could manage. She did not lose her courage, however, and if anything touched Roland’s best feelings at this time, it was her unfailing hope, her smiling welcome no matter how frequently he brought disappointment, her brave assurances that she would be quite well before the winter season, and then all would be put right.

In the last days of August the baby was born. Denasia recovered rapidly, but the little lad was a sickly, puny child. He had been wasted by fever, and fretted by anxious cares and by many fears, even before they were his birthright. All the more he appealed to his mother’s love, and Denasia began now to comprehend something of the sin against mother-love which she herself had committed.

Perhaps she permitted her joy in her child to dominate her life too visibly; at any rate it soon 236 began to annoy her husband. He had been so accustomed to all of Denasia’s time and attention that he could not endure to be put off until baby was asleep, or until some trifling want of baby’s had been attended to. He fancied that her attention was divided; that even when she appeared to be listening to his complaints or his intentions, her heart was with the child and her ears listening for its crying. The transient pleasure he had experienced in the little one’s birth soon passed away, and an abiding sense of petty jealousy and wrong took its place.

“You are for ever nursing that crying little creature, Denasia,” he said one day when he returned to their small, warm room in a fever of annoyance at some unappreciative manager. “No one can get your attention for five minutes. You hear nothing I say. You take no interest in anything I do. And the little torment is for ever and for ever crying.”

“Baby is sick, Roland. And who is there to care for him but me?”

“We ought to be doing something. Winter is coming on. Companies are already on the road; you will find it hard to get a position of any kind, soon.”

“I will go out to-morrow. I am strong enough now, I think.”

“I can find nothing suitable. People seem to take an instant dislike to me.”

“That is nonsense! You were always a favourite.”

“I have had to sell most of my jewelry in order to provide for your sickness, Denasia. Of course I was glad to do it, you know that, but–––”

“But it is my duty now, Roland. I will begin to-morrow.”

So the next day Denasia went to the agencies, and Roland promised to take care of baby. A two weeks of exhausting waiting and seeking, of delayed hope and destroyed hope, followed; and Denasia was forced to admit that she had made no impression on the managerial mind. No one had heard of her singing and dancing, and those who condescended to listen were not enthusiastic.

“You see,” said one of the kindest of these caterers for the public’s pleasure––“you see, New Yorkers have no ideas about fisher men and women. If their fish is fresh, that is all that troubles them. If they think about the men who catch it, they very likely think of them as living comfortably in flats with all the modern improvements. A good topical song, a spirited dance––they are the things that fetch.”

In different forms this was the general verdict, and every day she found it harder and harder to return home and meet Roland’s eager face as she opened the door. Pretty soon the anxiety became tinctured with complaint and unreasonable ill-temper, and with all the domestic miseries which accompany resentful poverty.

The poor little baby in Roland’s opinion was to blame for every disappointment. Its arrival had belated Denasia’s application, or if he wanted to be particularly irritating, he accused Denasia of being in such a hurry to return to her child that she did not attend to her most necessary duties. So instead 238 of being a loving tie between them, the poor wailing little morsel of humanity separated very love, while Roland’s complaints of it soon really produced in his heart the impatient dislike which at first he only pretended.

He grumbled when left in charge of the cradle. As soon as Denasia was out of sight he frequently deserted his duty, and the disputes that followed hardened his heart continually against the cause of them. And when it came to naming the child, he averred that it was a matter of no importance to him, only he would not have it called Roland. “There had been,” he said, “one too many of the Treshams called Roland. The name was unlucky; and besides, the child did not resemble his family. It looked just like the St. Penfer fisher children.”

Denasia coloured furiously, but she answered with the moderation of accepted punishment, “Very well, then! I will call him ‘John’ after my father. I hope he may be as good a man.”

Matters went on in this unhappy fashion until the end of October––nay, they continually grew worse, for poverty deepened and hope lessened. Denasia had lost the freshness of her beauty, and she was too simple and ignorant to make art replace nature. Indeed, it is doubtful whether any persuasion could have made her imitate the “painted Jezebel” who had always been one of the most pointed examples of her religious education. In her first experience of public life her radiant health and colouring shamed all meaner aids and had been amply sufficient for the brightest lights and the longest hours. 239 But that fierce ordeal of acclimating under conditions of constant travel and hard work had drained even the magnificent vitality that had been her heritage from generations of seamen, and typhoid and unhappy maternity had robbed her of much of her almost defiant youth, with its indomitable spirit and invincible hope.

She had become by the close of October pale, fragile-looking, and woefully depressed. Roland no longer found her always smiling and hoping, and he called the change bad temper when he ought to have called it hunger. Not indeed hunger in its baldest form for mere bread, but hunger just as killing––hunger for the nourishing delicate food and proper tonics that were just as necessary as bread; hunger for hope, for work, and, above all, hunger for affection.

For Roland had begun privately––yea, and sometimes openly––to call himself a fool. And the devil, who never chooses a wrong hour, sent him at this time an important letter from Elizabeth. In it she told him that Mr. Burrell had died suddenly from apoplexy, and that she had resolved to sell Burrell Court and make her residence in London and Lucerne. She deplored his absence, and said how much she had needed some one of her own family in the removal from Cornwall and in the settlement of her husband’s estate; and she sent her brother a much smaller sum of money than she had ever sent before.

When Roland had finished reading this epistle he looked at Denasia. She was walking about the 240 room trying to soothe and quiet the child. It was very ill, and she had not dared to speak about a doctor. Therefore she was feeling hurt and sorrowful, and when Roland said, “Elizabeth’s husband is dead,” she did not answer him.

“I said that Elizabeth’s husband is dead,” he angrily reiterated.

“Very well. I am not sorry. I should think the poor man would be glad to escape from her.”

“You are speaking of my sister, Denasia––of my sister, who is a lady.”

“I care nothing about her. She could always take good care of herself. I am heart-broken for my child, who is ill and suffering, and I can do nothing for his relief––no, not even get a doctor.”

Words still more bitter followed. Roland dressed himself and went out. He was not in a mood to do business or to look for business; indeed, there was no need that he should trouble himself for one day when he had Elizabeth’s order in his pocket. He turned it into cash, bought the daily newspapers, and, the morning being exquisite, he took the cars to Central Park. But it was not until he was comfortably seated in the most retired arbour that he permitted himself to think.

Then he frankly said over and over: “What a fool I have been! Here am I at thirty-three years of age tied to a plain-looking fisher-girl and her cross, sickly baby. All I hoped for in her has proved a deception. Her beauty has not stood the test of climate. Motherhood, that improves and perfects most women, has personally wrecked her. 241 Her voice is now commonplace. Her songs are become tiresome. She has grown fretful, and all her brightness and hopefulness have vanished. I do not know how to make a living. I may as well admit that my dramatic views are a failure––that is, they are in advance of the times. I can do nothing for myself. But if I had not been married, what a jolly time I might now be having with Elizabeth! London, Paris, Switzerland, and no care or trouble of any kind. Oh, what a fool I have been! How terribly I have been deceived!”

He did not take into consideration Denasia’s disappointment. He had no doubt Denasia was telling all her own sorrows to herself and weeping over them and her miserable little baby. After a while he lit a fresh cigar and opened the newspapers. For an hour or two he let his thoughts drift as they led him, and then, as he was folding up one, the following notice met his vision:

“Wanted, a private secretary. A young man who has had a classical education preferred. Call upon Mr. Edward Lanhearne, 9 Fifth Avenue.”

The name struck Roland. He had heard it before. It had a happy memory, an air of prosperity about it. Lanhearne! It was a Cornish name! That circumstance gave him the clew. When he was a boy at Eton, he remembered a Mr. Lanhearne who stayed with his father. “By Jove!” he cried, starting to his feet, “he was an American. What a piece of luck it would be if it should be the same man!” He fixed the address in his mind and went to it immediately.

The house pleased him. It was a large dwelling fronting on the avenue. A handsome carriage was just leaving the door, and in the carriage was a very lovely young woman. The entrance, the reception parlour, the servant who admitted him, all the apparent accessories of the house and household indicated wealth and refinement. What a heaven in comparison with that back room on Second Avenue! For the first time in many a month Roland had a sense of success in what he was going to do, and the feeling gave him a portion of the elements necessary to success.

Mr. Lanhearne received him at once. He was a kindly looking old gentleman, with fine manners and an intelligent face.

“Mr. Tresham,” he said, “I was attracted by your name. I once had a friend––a very pleasant friend indeed, called Tresham.”

“Did he live in London, sir?”

“He did.”

“He was Lord Mayor in the year 18--?”

“He was. Did you know him?”

“I am his son. I remember you very well. You went with me and my father to buy my first pony.”

“I did indeed. Mr. Tresham, sit down, sir. You are very welcome. I am grateful for your visit. And how is my old acquaintance? I have not heard of him for many years. We are both Cornishmen, and you know the Cornish motto is ‘One and all.’”

“My father is dead. He had great financial misfortunes. He did not survive them long. I came 243 to America hoping to find a better opening, but nothing has gone well with me. This morning I saw your advertisement. I think I can do all you require, and I shall be very glad indeed of the position.”

“How long have you been in America, Mr. Tresham?”

“More than a year. I went West at once, spent my money, and failed in every effort.”

“To be sure. The West is for physical and financial energies. I think if a young man is to rely on his mental qualities he had better remain East. I am glad you have called upon me. The duties I wish attended to are very simple. You will have to read my mail every morning and answer it as I verbally direct. With the help of printed plates you will arrange my coins and seals and such matters. I wish you also to read the newspapers to me. In a day or two you will find out which articles to read and which to omit. I want a companion for my drives. I want some one to chat with me on my various hobbies––a young man, because young men have such positive opinions, and therefore we shall be likely to come to pleasant disputing. You will have a handsome room, a seat at my table, a place among my guests, and one hundred dollars a month.”

“I am very grateful to you, sir.”

“And I am very grateful to the kind fate which sent you to me. I owe your father for many a delightful day. I am glad to pay my debt to his son. When can you come here?”

“This afternoon, sir.”

“I like that. We dine at seven. I will expect you to dinner. Do you––ahem!––excuse me, Mr. Tresham, perhaps you may require a little money in advance. I shall be pleased to accommodate you.”

“You offer is gracious and considerate, sir. I am glad you made it, although I do not fortunately need to accept it.”

They clasped hands and parted with smiles. Mr. Lanhearne was quite excited over the adventure. He longed for his daughter to come home, that he might tell her what a romantic answer had come to his prosaic advertisement. And Roland was still more excited. The air of the house, its peace, refinement, and luxury appealed irresistibly to him. It was his native air. He wondered how he had endured the vulgarity and penury of his surroundings for so long; how indeed he had borne with Denasia’s shortcomings at all. That refined old gentleman, that quiet, elegant woman whom he had had a glimpse of––these people were like himself, of his own order––he would never weary of them. The class he had voluntarily chosen, the people with whom poverty had compelled him to consort, they affected him now as the memory of a debauch affects a man when it is over.

“I had no business out of my proper sphere,” he said sadly. “Elizabeth was right––right even about Denasia.”

He sat down in Union Square to consider his position, and he came to a very rapid and positive conclusion. He declared to himself: “I will no longer 245 waste my life. Denasia and I have made a great mistake. Together, we shall be poor and miserable. Apart, we shall be happy. I no longer love her. I do not believe she loves me. All the love she can spare from her blustering father and mother she wastes on that miserable sickly babe, who would be a thousand times better dead than alive. If I leave her she will go back to St. Penfer. I have a hundred dollars; I will give her fifty of them. She can pay a steerage passage out of it or go in a sailing-vessel, or if she does not like that way she has things she can sell. If I give her half of what I have I do very well indeed.”

He went rapidly to his home, or room. He knew that Denasia had an engagement to keep, and he hoped that he might be fortunate enough to find her out. It was as he wished: Denasia had gone out and the landlady was sitting beside the baby’s cradle. Roland dismissed her with that manner all women declared to be charming, and then he sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. It did not occupy him ten minutes. Some of his clothing was yet very good and fashionable; he packed it in the leather trap which had gone with him to college, and then he sent a little girl for a cab. Without word and without observation he drove away from the scene of so much vexation and disappointment.

The whole life and vicinity had suddenly become horrible to him––Denasia, his child, the shabby landlady, the shabby house, the dirty little grocery at the corner where he had bought his cigars and their small household supplies, the meals cooked 246 there and eaten there, Denasia’s attempts at housekeeping––the whole series of memories made him wince and shiver with shame and annoyance. “Thank God it is over!” he said fervently. And he never once thought what an insult he was offering to eternal mercy and justice, in supposing God had anything whatever to do with his flagrant desertion of duty, his shameful abrogation of all the consequences of his own wilful selfishness, and his cruel farewell to the wife and son he was bound to nourish and cherish and defend.

He thought of none of these things. He thought only of the comfort and elegance; the peace, the delicate living, the delicate clothing, the congenial companionship he was going to. He was determined to have a luxurious bath, to be shaved and perfumed, to leave behind him the very dust of his past life. He resolved not to allow himself to remember Denasia. She was to be as if she never had been. He would blot out of his memory all the years she had brightened and darkened. And if any excuse can be found for him, it must be in his supposition that Denasia felt just as he did. She would be grateful to him for taking the initiative––glad to get back to her home and her people, glad to escape a life for which she must have discovered she had neither strength nor vocation.

So he thought, in spite of his resolve not to think. But a man must be even more selfish and reckless than Roland was to take years of his past life and plunge them into oblivion as he would plunge a stone into mid-ocean. In spite of the novelty of 247 his situation, of his delight with his quiet, handsome room, the thought of Denasia would enter where it was forbidden to enter, and he could not help wondering how she would receive his letter, and what steps she would take in consequence of it.

Denasia came home weary and disappointed. She had had a long, silent wait for the person she expected to see, and finally been compelled to accept the fact that he was not coming into town. She was heart-sick, and the paltry loss of the car fare was an addition to her anxiety. That the room was empty and the baby crying did not in any way astonish her. She understood from it that Roland had come home and dismissed the landlady, and then wearied of his watch and gone out again, leaving the child to sleep or to weep as it felt inclined to do. Her first action was to lift it from its bed, nurse and comfort it, and rock it to sleep on her breast.

Then her eyes wandered from her child to a letter lying on the table. The circumstance roused no interest in her mind. She knew from its general appearance that it had been put there by Roland, and it was by no means the first time he had left the child with a letter containing some excuse which he thought valid enough to satisfy Denasia. She looked at it with a little contempt. She expected to find it assert that some one had called for him or had sent him a message involving a possible engagement, and she knew the whole affair would resolve itself into some plausible story, which she would either have to accept or else deny, with the certain addition of a coolness or a quarrel.

So the letter lay until she had put off and away her street costume. Then she took it in her hand and sat down by the open window to read the contents. They were short and very much to the point:

“Denasia, my dear:––You have ceased to love me and I have ceased to love you. You are miserable and I am miserable. We have made a great mistake, and we must do all we can to correct it. When you read this I shall be on my way to England. I advise you to go back to your parents for a year. You may in that time recover your beauty and your voice. It may be well then to go to Italy and give yourself an opportunity to obtain the education I see now you ought to have had at the first. But until that is practicable we are better apart. You will find fifty dollars in the white gloves lying on the dressing-case. I advise you to take a sailing-vessel; a long voyage will do you good and will be much cheaper. It is what I have done. Farewell.

“Roland.”

She read every word and then glanced at the cradle. The child moved. With the letter in her hand she soothed it and then sat down again. She was overwhelmed with the shameful wrong. But to cry out and wring her hands and call in the neighbours to see and hear what things she suffered was not her way. Often she had seen her mother sitting speechless and motionless for hours while her father hung between life and death; it was natural for Denasia to take unavoidable sorrow with the same dumb patience.

Then she began to analyse the specious sentences and to deny the things asserted. “I have not ceased to love. Every hour of the day my life has been a witness to my love. I never said I was miserable. Nothing had power to make me quite miserable if Roland was kind to me. He is on his way to England. Of course he has gone to his sister. What did her sweet complaints and regrets at not having his help and company mean but ‘Come to me, Roland’? She has lost her own husband and now she must have mine. She has always been my evil angel. When she was kindest to me it was only a different way of serving herself. My soul warned me; my father warned me. She is one of those human vampires who suck love, luck, life itself from all near them, and who slay, and rob, and smile, and caress while they do it. And I am to go home for a year and get back my beauty and my voice. I am sorry I ever was beautiful. If I can help it I will never sing another song. Go home and shame my good father and mother for his sake? Go home and be lectured and advised and reproved by every woman in the village? Go home a deserted wife, a failure in everything? No; I will not go home. Nor will I go to Italy. I have had more than enough of singing for my living and his living, too. I will sew, I will wash, I will go to service, I will do anything with my hands I can do; but I will not sing. And I will bring up my boy to work at real work, if it is but to make a horseshoe out of a lump of iron! God! what a foolish woman I have been! What a silly, vain, loving woman! My 250 heart will break! My heart will break! Alone, alone! Sick, helpless, ignorant, alone!”

She closed her eyes and hid her face, and in that darkness gathered together her soul-strength. But she shed no tears. Pale as death, weak and trembling with suppressed emotion, she went softly about the little room putting things in order––doing she scarcely knew what, yet feeling the necessity to be doing something. Thus she came across the white gloves, and she feared to look in them. Her knowledge of Roland led her to think he would not leave fifty dollars behind him. He would take the credit of the gift and leave her to suppose herself robbed by some intruder or visitor.

So she looked suspiciously at the bit of white kid and undid it without hope. The money was there. After all, Roland had some pity for her. The sight of the bills subdued her proud restraint. One great pressure was lifted. No one could now interfere if she sent for a doctor for her sick baby. She could at least buy it the medicine that would ease its sufferings. And so far out was the tide of her happiness that from this reflection alone she drew a kind of consolation.