WHEN Mr. William Belden walked out of his house one wet October evening and closed the hall door carefully behind him, he had no idea that he was closing the door on all the habits of his maturer life and entering the borders of a land as far removed from his hopes or his imagination as the country of the Gadarenes.

He had not wanted to go out that evening at all, not knowing what the fates had in store for him, and being only too conscious of the comfort of the sitting-room lounge, upon which, after the manner of the suburban resident who traveleth daily by railways, he had cast himself immediately after the evening meal was over. The lounge was in proximity—yet not too close proximity—to the lamp on the table; so that one might have the pretext of reading to cover closed eyelids and a general oblivion of passing events. On a night when a pouring rain splashed outside on the pavements and the tin roofs of the piazzas, the conditions of rest in the cozy little room were peculiarly attractive to a man who had come home draggled and wet, and with the toil and wear of a long business day upon him. It was therefore with a sinking of the heart that he heard his wife’s gentle tones requesting him to wend his way to the grocery to purchase a pound of butter.

“I hate to ask you to go, William dear, but there really is not a scrap in the house for breakfast, and the butter-man does not come until to-morrow afternoon,” she said deprecatingly. “It really will only take you a few minutes.”

Mr. Belden smothered a groan, or perhaps something worse. The butter question was a sore one, Mrs. Belden taking only a stated quantity of that article a week, and always unexpectedly coming short of it before the day of replenishment, although no argument ever served to induce her to increase the original amount for consumption.

“Cannot Bridget go?” he asked weakly, gazing at the small, plump figure of his wife, as she stood with meek yet inexorable eyes looking down at him.

“Bridget is washing the dishes, and the stores will be closed before she can get out.”

“Can’t one of the boys—” He stopped. There was in this household a god who ruled everything in it, to whom all pleasures were offered up, all individual desires sacrificed, and whose Best Good was the greedy and unappreciative Juggernaut before whom Mr. Belden and his wife prostrated themselves daily. This idol was called The Children. Mr. Belden felt that he had gone too far.

“William!” said his wife severely, “I am surprised at you. John and Henry have their lessons to get, and Willy has a cold; I could not think of exposing him to the night air; and it is so damp, too!”

Mr. Belden slowly and stiffly rose from his reclining position on the sofa. There was a finality in his wife’s tone before which he succumbed.

The night air was damp. As he walked along the street the water slopped around his feet, and ran in rills down his rubber coat. He did not feel as contented as usual. When he was a youngster, he reflected with exaggerated bitterness, boys were boys, and not treated like precious pieces of porcelain. He did not remember, as a boy, ever having any special consideration shown him; yet he had been both happy and healthy, healthier perhaps than his over-tended brood at home. In his day it had been popularly supposed that nothing could hurt a boy. He heaved a sigh over the altered times, and then coughed a little, for he had a cold as well as Willy.

The streets were favorable to silent meditation, for there was no one out in them. The boughs of the trees swished backward and forward in the storm, and the puddles at the crossings reflected the dismal yellow glare of the street lamps. Everyone was housed to-night in the pretty detached cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the trivial errand on which he had been sent. “In happy homes he saw the light,” but none of the high purpose of the youth of “Excelsior” fame stirred his heart—rather a dull sense of failure from all high things. What did his life amount to, anyway, that he should count one thing more trivial than another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being satisfied with the daily grind for a living and a dreamless sleep at night.

“‘Our life is but a sleep and a forgetting,’” he thought grimly, “in quite a different way from what Wordsworth meant.” He had been one of the foremost in his class at college, an orator, an athlete, a favorite in society and with men. Great things had been predicted for him. Then he had fallen in love with Nettie; a professional career seemed to place marriage at too great a distance, and he had joyfully, yet with some struggles in his protesting intellect, accepted a position that was offered to him—one of those positions which never change, in which men die still unpromoted, save when a miracle intervenes. It was not so good a position for a family of six as it had been for a family of two, but he did not complain. He and Nettie went shabby, but the children were clothed in the best, as was their due.

He was too wearied at night to read anything but the newspapers, and the gentle domestic monotony was not inspiring. He and Nettie never went out in the evenings; the children could not be left alone. He met his friends on the train in that diurnal journey to and from the great city, and she occasionally attended a church tea; but their immediate and engrossing world seemed to be made up entirely of persons under thirteen years of age. They had dwelt in the place almost ever since their marriage, respected and liked, but with no real social life. If Mr. Belden thought of the years to come, he may be pardoned an unwonted sinking of the heart.

It was while indulging in these reflections that he mechanically purchased the pound of butter, which he could not help comparing with Shylock’s pound of flesh, so much of life had it taken out of him, and then found himself stepping up on the platform of the station, led by his engrossing thoughts to pass the street corner and tread the path most familiar to him. He turned with an exclamation to retrace his way, when a man pacing leisurely up and down, umbrella in hand, caught sight of him.

“Is that you, Belden?” said the stranger. “What are you doing down here to-night?”

“I came out on an errand for my wife,” said Mr. Belden sedately. He recognized the man as a young lawyer much identified with politics; a mere acquaintance, yet it was a night to make any speaking animal seem a friend, and Mr. Belden took a couple of steps along beside him.

“Waiting for a train?” he said.

“Oh, thunder, yes!” said Mr. Groper, throwing away the stump of a cigar. “I have been waiting for the last half hour for the train; it’s late, as usual. There’s a whole deputation from Barnet on board, due at the Reform meeting in town to-night, and I’m part of the committee to meet them here.”

“Where is the other part of the committee?” asked Mr. Belden.

“Oh, Jim Crane went up to the hall to see about something, and Connors hasn’t showed up at all; I suppose the rain kept him back. What kind of a meeting we’re going to have I don’t know. Say, Belden, I’m not up to this sort of thing. I wish you’d stay and help me out—there’s no end of swells coming down, more your style than mine.”

“Why, man alive, I can’t do anything for you,” said Mr. Belden. “These carriages I see are waiting for the delegation, and here comes the train now; you’ll get along all right.”

He waited as the train slowed into the station, smiling anew at little Groper’s perturbation. He was quite curious to see the arrivals. Barnet had been the home of his youth, and there might be some one whom he knew. He had half intended, earlier in the day, to go himself to the Reform meeting, but a growing spirit of inaction had made him give up the idea. Yes, there was quite a carload of people getting out—ladies, too.

“Why, Will Belden!” called out a voice from the party. A tall fellow in a long ulster sprang forward to grasp his hand. “You don’t say it’s yourself come down to meet us. Here we all are, Johnson, Clemmerding, Albright, Cranston—all of the old set. Rainsford, you’ve heard of my cousin, Will Belden. My wife and Miss Wakeman are behind here; but we’ll do all the talking afterward, if you’ll only get us off for the hall now.”

“Well, I am glad to see you, Henry,” said Mr. Belden heartily. He thrust the pound of butter hastily into a large pocket of his mackintosh, and found himself shaking hands with a score of men. He had only time to assist his cousin’s wife and the beautiful Miss Wakeman into a carriage, and in another moment they were all rolling away toward the town hall, with little Mr. Groper running frantically after them, ignored by the visitors, and peacefully forgotten by his friend.

The public hall of the little town—which called itself a city—was all ablaze with light as the party entered it, and well filled, notwithstanding the weather. There were flowers on the platform where the seats for the distinguished guests were placed, and a general air of radiance and joyful import prevailed. It was a gathering of men from all political parties, concerned in the welfare of the State. Great measures were at stake, and the election of governor of immediate importance. The name of Judge Belden of Barnet was prominently mentioned. He had not been able to attend on this particular occasion, but his son had come with a delegation from the county town, twenty miles away, to represent his interests. On Mr. William Belden devolved the task of introducing the visitors; a most congenial one, he suddenly found it to be.

His friends rallied around him as people are apt to do with one of their own kind when found in a foreign country. They called him Will, as they used to, and slapped him on the shoulder in affectionate abandon. Those among the group who had not known him before were anxious to claim acquaintance on the strength of his fame, which, it seemed, still survived him in his native town. It must not be supposed that he had not seen either his cousin or his friends during his sojourn away from them; on the contrary, he had met them once or so in two or three years, in the street, or on the ferry-boat—though they traveled by different roads—but he had then been but a passing interest in the midst of pressing business. To-night he was the only one of their kind in a strange place—his cousin loved him, they all loved him. The expedition had the sentiment of a frolic under the severer political aspect.

In the welcome to the visitors by the home committee Mr. Belden also received his part, in their surprised recognition of him, almost amounting to a discovery.

“We had no idea that you were a nephew of Judge Belden,” one of them said to him, speaking for his colleagues, who stood near.

Mr. William Belden bowed, and smiled; as a gentleman, and a rather reticent one, it had never occurred to him to parade his family connections. His smile might mean anything. It made the good committeeman, who was rich and full of power, feel a little uncomfortable, as he tried to cover his embarrassment with effusive cordiality. In the background stood Mr. Groper, wet, and breathing hard, but plainly full of admiration for his tall friend, and the position he held as the center of the group. The visitors referred all arrangements to him.

At last they filed on to the platform—the two cousins together.

“You must find a place for the girls,” said Henry Belden, with the peculiar boyish giggle that his cousin remembered so well. “By George, they would come; couldn’t keep ’em at home, after they once got Jim Shore to say it was all right. Of course, Marie Wakeman started it; she said she was bound to go to a political meeting and sit on the platform; arguing wasn’t a bit of use. When she got Clara on her side I knew that I was doomed. Now, you couldn’t get them to do a thing of this kind at home; but take a woman out of her natural sphere, and she ignores conventionalities, just like a girl in a bathing-suit. There they are, seated over in that corner. I’m glad that they are hidden from the audience by the pillar. Of course, there’s that fool of a Jim, too, with Marie.”

“You don’t mean to say she’s at it yet?” said his cousin William.

“‘At it yet!’ She’s never stopped for a moment since you kissed her that night on the hotel piazza after the hop, under old Mrs. Trelawney’s window—do you remember that, Will?”

Mr. William Belden did indeed remember it; it was a salute that had echoed around their little world, leading, strangely enough, to the capitulation of another heart—it had won him his wife. But the little intimate conversation was broken off as the cousins took the places allotted to them, and the business of the meeting began.

If he were not the chairman, he was appealed to so often as to almost serve in that capacity. He became interested in the proceedings, and in the speeches that were made; none of them, however, quite covered the ground as he understood it. His mind unconsciously formulated propositions as the flow of eloquence went on. It therefore seemed only right and fitting toward the end of the evening, when it became evident that his Honor the Mayor was not going to appear, that our distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. William Belden, nephew of Judge Belden of Barnet, should be asked to represent the interests of the county in a speech, and that he should accept the invitation.

He stood for a moment silent before the assembly, and then all the old fire that had lain dormant for so long blazed forth in the speech that electrified the audience, was printed in all the papers afterward, and fitted into a political pamphlet.

He began with a comprehensive statement of facts, he drew large and logical deductions from them, and then lit up the whole subject with those brilliant flashes of wit and sarcasm for which he had been famous in bygone days. More than that, a power unknown before had come to him; he felt the real knowledge and grasp of affairs which youth had denied him, and it was with an exultant thrill that his voice rang through the crowded hall, and stirred the hearts of men. For the moment they felt as he felt, and thought as he thought, and a storm of applause arose as he ended—applause that grew and grew until a few more pithy words were necessary from the orator before silence could be restored.

He made his way to the back of the hall for some water, and then, half exhausted, yet tingling still from the excitement, dropped into an empty chair by the side of Miss Wakeman.

“Well done, Billy,” she said, giving him a little approving tap with her fan. “You were just fine.” She gave him an upward glance from her large dark eyes. “Do you know you haven’t spoken to me to-night, nor shaken hands with me?”

“Let us shake hands now,” he said, smiling, flushed with success, as he looked into the eyes of this very pretty woman.

“I shall take off my glove first—such old friends as we are! It must be a real ceremony.”

She laid a soft, white, dimpled hand, covered with glistening rings, in his outstretched palm, and gazed at him with coquettish plaintiveness. “It’s so lovely to see you again! Have you forgotten the night you kissed me?”

“I have thought of it daily,” he replied, giving her hand a hearty squeeze. They both laughed, and he took a surreptitious peep at her from under his eyelids. Marie Wakeman! Yes, truly, the same, and with the same old tricks. He had been married for nearly fourteen years, his children were half grown, he had long since given up youthful friskiness, but she was “at it” still. Why, she had been older than he when they were boy and girl; she must be for—He gazed at her soft, rounded, olive cheek, and quenched the thought.

“And you are very happy?” she pursued, with tender solicitude. “Nettie makes you a perfect wife, I suppose.”

“Perfect,” he assented gravely.

“And you haven’t missed me at all?”

“Can you ask?” It was the way in which all men spoke to Marie Wakeman, married or single, rich or poor, one with another. He laughed inwardly at his lapse into the expected tone. “I feel that I really breathe for the first time in years, now that I’m with you again. But how is it that you are not married?”

“What, after I had known you?” She gave him a reproachful glance. “And you were so cruel to me—as soon as you had made your little Nettie jealous you cared for me no longer. Look what I’ve declined to!” She indicated Jim Shore, leaning disconsolately against the cornice, chewing his moustache. “Now don’t give him your place unless you really want to; well, if you’re tired of me already—thank you ever so much, and I am proud of you to-night, Billy!”

Her lustrous eyes dwelt on him lingeringly as he left her; he smiled back into them. The lines around her mouth were a little hard; she reminded him indefinably of “She”; but she was a handsome woman, and he had enjoyed the encounter. The sight of her brought back so vividly the springtime of life; his hopes, the pangs of love, the joy that was his when Nettie was won; he felt an overpowering throb of tenderness for the wife at home who had been his early dream.

The last speeches were over, but Mr. William Belden’s triumph had not ended. As the acknowledged orator of the evening he had an ovation afterward; introductions and unlimited hand-shakings were in order.

He was asked to speak at a select political dinner the next week; to speak for the hospital fund; to speak for the higher education of woman. Led by a passing remark of Henry Belden’s to infer that his cousin was a whist player of parts, a prominent social magnate at once invited him to join the party at his house on one of their whist evenings.

“My wife, er—will have great pleasure in calling on Mrs. Belden,” said the magnate. “We did not know that we had a good whist player among us. This evening has indeed been a revelation in many ways—in many ways. You would have no objection to taking a prominent part in politics, if you were called upon? A reform mayor is sadly needed in our city—sadly needed. Your connection with Judge Belden would give great weight to any proposition of that kind. But, of course, all this is in the future.”

Mr. Belden heard his name whispered in another direction, in connection with the cashiership of the new bank which was to be built. The cashiership and the mayoralty might be nebulous honors, but it was sweet, for once, to be recognized for what he was—a man of might; a man of talent, and of honor.

There was a hurried rush for the train at the last on the part of the visitors. Mr. William Belden snatched his mackintosh from the peg whereon it had hung throughout the evening, and went with the crowd, talking and laughing in buoyant exuberance of spirits. The night had cleared, the moon was rising, and poured a flood of light upon the wet streets. It was a different world from the one he had traversed earlier in the evening. He walked home with Miss Wakeman’s exaggeratedly tender “Good-by, dear Billy!” ringing in his ears, to provoke irrepressible smiles. The pulse of a free life, where men lived instead of vegetating, was in his veins. His footstep gave forth a ringing sound from the pavement; he felt himself stalwart, alert, his brain rejoicing in its sense of power. It was even with no sense of guilt that he heard the church clocks striking twelve as he reached the house where his wife had been awaiting his return for four hours.

She was sitting up for him, as he knew by the light in the parlor window. He could see her through the half-closed blinds as she sat by the table, a magazine in her lap, her attitude, unknown to herself, betraying a listless depression. After all, is a woman glad to have all her aspirations and desires confined within four walls? She may love her cramped quarters, to be sure, but can she always forget that they are cramped? To what does a wife descend after the bright dreams of her girlhood! Does she really like above all things to be absorbed in the daily consumption of butter, and the children’s clothes, or is she absorbed in these things because the man who was to have widened the horizon of her life only limits it by his own decadence?

She rose to meet her husband as she heard his key in the lock. She had exchanged her evening gown for a loose, trailing white wrapper, and her fair hair was arranged for the night in a long braid. Her husband had a smile on his face.

“You look like a girl again,” he said brightly, as he stooped and kissed her. “No, don’t turn out the light; come in and sit down a while longer, I’ve ever so much to tell you. You can’t guess where I’ve been this evening.”

“At the political meeting,” she said promptly.

“How on earth did you know?”

“The doctor came here to see Willy, and he told me he saw you on the way. I’m glad you did go, William; I was worrying because I had sent you out; I did not realize until later what a night it was.”

“Well, I am very glad that you did send me,” said her husband. He lay back in his chair, flushed and smiling at the recollection. “You ought to have been there, too; you would have liked it. What will you say if I tell you that I made a speech—yes, it is quite true—and was applauded to the echo. This town has just waked up to the fact that I live in it. And Henry said—but there, I’ll have to tell you the whole thing, or you can’t appreciate it.”

His wife leaned on the arm of his chair, watching his animated face fondly, as he recounted the adventures of the night. He pictured the scene vividly, and with a strong sense of humor.

“And you don’t say that Marie Wakeman is the same as ever?” she interrupted with a flash of special interest. “Oh, William!”

“She called me Billy.” He laughed anew at the thought. “Upon my word, Nettie, she beats anything I ever saw or heard of.”

“Did she remind you of the time you kissed her?”

“Yes!” Their eyes met in amused recognition of the past.

“Is she as handsome as ever?”

“Um—yes—I think so. She isn’t as pretty as you are.”

“Oh, Will!” She blushed and dimpled.

“I declare, it is true!” He gazed at her with genuine admiration. “What has come over you to-night, Nettie?—you look like a girl again.”

“And you were not sorry when you saw her, that—that—”

“Sorry! I have been thinking all the way home how glad I was to have won my sweet wife. But we mustn’t stay shut up at home as much as we have; it’s not good for either of us. We are to be asked to join the whist club—what do you think of that? You used to be a little card fiend once upon a time, I remember.”

She sighed. “It is so long since I have been anywhere! I’m afraid I haven’t any clothes, Will. I suppose I might—”

“What, dear?”

“Take the money I had put aside for Mary’s next quarter’s music lessons; I do really believe a little rest would do her good.”

“It would—it would,” said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary’s after-dinner practicing hour had tinged much of his existence with gall. “I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it’s really best for them, too. Haven’t we immortal souls as well as they? Can we expect them to seek the honey dew of paradise while they see us contented to feed on the grass of the field?”

“You call yourself an orator!” she scoffed.

He drew her to him by one end of the long braid, and solemnly kissed her. Then he went into the hall and took something from the pocket of his mackintosh which he placed in his wife’s hand—a little wooden dish covered with a paper, through which shone a bright yellow substance—the pound of butter, a lump of gleaming fairy gold, the quest of which had changed a poor, commonplace existence into one scintillating with magic possibilities.

Fairy gold, indeed, cannot be coined into marketable eagles. Mr. William Belden might never achieve either the mayoralty or the cashiership, but he had gained that of which money is only a trivial accessory. The recognition of men, the flashing of high thought to high thought, the claim of brotherhood in the work of the world, and the generous social intercourse that warms the heart—all these were to be his. Not even his young ambition had promised a wider field, not the gold of the Indies could buy him more of honor and respect.

At home also the spell worked. He had but to speak the word, to name the thing, and Nettie embodied his thought. He called her young, and happy youth smiled from her clear eyes; beautiful, and a blushing loveliness enveloped her; clever, and her ready mind leaped to match with his in thought and study; dear, and love touched her with its transforming fire and breathed of long-forgotten things.

If men only knew what they could make of the women who love them—but they do not, as the plodding, faded matrons who sit and sew by their household fires testify to us daily.

Happy indeed is he who can create a paradise by naming it!