For three days Richard roamed like a caged creature from room to room. An impulse to immediate rebellion soon spent itself. His intentions had not changed, his position was not to be receded from, but the necessity for a new step was not yet pressing. He would wait, he could afford to wait for three days, reckless and unconsidered and foolish as his promise had been. He did not remember that Eleanor might be unhappy.

In the meanwhile he would make his plans. He walked up and down or sat at his window chin on hand. When Mrs. Scott came within his line of vision he made a childish grimace in her direction. She came no nearer than the common walk which led from both houses to the college gate, being entirely satisfied with her recent visit to Mrs. Lister.

Richard thought of writing to Eleanor, but promptly abandoned the idea of substituting a cool and unresponsive sheet of paper for a glowing cheek. He had inherited none of his Uncle Basil's facility with a pen. He must tell her everything, except that he had had to steal away and that he was received like a returning prodigal, and he must watch her as he talked.

It occurred to him after the first day that his father might have a really good reason for requiring him to stay with his mother. Could she be suffering from some dangerous and treacherous disease and for that reason need constant company? The possibility frightened him and he went at once to find her.

Mary Alcestis sat at the window of her bedroom, her little sewing-table beside her and a sock of Richard's stretched over her hand. Thus placed and thus occupied, she forgot for short periods her misery and with it his. It was difficult at best for her to put herself in the place of one who had experiences alien to her nature. Her large, sweet face now beamed upon her son. Richard, she was sure, would soon see, if he had not seen already, the blessedness of doing that which was exactly right.

"No, darling, I am not sick," said she. "There is nothing whatever the matter with me."

Richard read his mother's mind. She need not think that he was yielding, that he would ever yield—there should be demonstration of that immediately upon his father's return.

He took from his desk-drawer those neat notebooks which his mother admired without knowing their contents and turned from page to page. Here were his first transpositions and here his first exercises. How often he had worked at music when Greek and mathematics were supposed to be his occupation, until transposing had become much easier than reading Greek and until musical phrases stood for distinct ideas. Here were simple compositions, hymns, little tunes, and more elaborate exercises in counterpoint, worked out and agonized over by him and Thomasina, whose knowledge of harmony had been acquired because of his necessities. Here were sketches for greater works—his eyes glowed. Concerto, symphony, opera—his ambition was boundless. Weeks had passed since he had looked into his notebooks and in the meantime he had changed. His long conversation with Faversham, his new emotional experience, made all that he had done thus far seem puerile, undeveloped. He had now so much better plans! He studied his notes, covered sheets of music-paper with sketches, hummed a hundred airs, rewrote, and longed for Eleanor's piano. Faversham had opened undreamed-of vistas, and here he was doing nothing for three precious days which could never be his again!

Once he sat down at the piano. He lifted his long fingers over a great chord and let his hands fall—the result was a combination of tinkling and slightly discordant sounds, dying away with metallic echoes and even with a sharp wooden crack of the old frame. At the very end, he heard a gentle sigh and knew that his mother sat in the study across the hall. He longed at that to bring both hands and arms thumping down upon the yellow keys. It was a Richard far removed from the one who had once preached to the fishes.

Thomasina, to his keen disappointment, did not appear. The necessity for some one to talk to, the discomfort of repression, grew less tolerable. He went for the mail, his mother waiting for him on the porch, not with outspoken intention of staying there until he should return, but with every appearance to his mind of a jailer watching the short exercise of a prisoner. He stopped at Thomasina's door, but found that she was still absent. He met Cora Scott and answered her shortly, saying yes, it was a pleasant day. What he meant was that it was a long and hateful and intolerable day. Here was a heart aching for a word, here a mind which would have welcomed, cherished, and kept inviolate all confidences! Richard knew it and hated the heart upon Cora's sleeve.

That evening, the second of Dr. Lister's absence, black 'Manda sat herself down on the kitchen porch to rest before she went on her way to the cabins, and there she lifted up her voice in "I was a wandering sheep." Richard heard her from the front porch and sprang up from the hammock and went round the house. His clear and steady tenor took the melody from her, lifted it and went on with it, the deep tones of 'Manda proceeding undisturbed.

They sang one stanza, then another and another, 'Manda's "po' lamb" booming out. When they had finished, Mrs. Lister looked for Richard to return. She was almost smiling, the duet recalled so many blessed hours. But Richard did not return. He led off in "Hallelu," then "Swing low, sweet chariot." He sat down with 'Manda and an old-time concert began.

Suddenly the singers forsook religious themes. 'Manda's repertoire was not altogether that of the church; it included a variety of songs which Richard had up to this time never heard, mournful, uncanny, without intelligible words to express their burden of savagery, songs learned she knew not how long ago, unsung she knew not for how long. Mrs. Lister stopped her ears.

But that did not stop the sound. She went through the house into the kitchen and looked out. Richard sat on the upper step, a writing-pad on his knee, the light from the door falling on his bent head.

"Now, 'Manda, that last line once more. How perfectly extraordinary!" Mrs. Lister went back to her chair.

Cora Scott heard the singing clearly as she sat at her window and cried, and told her mother, when she came to her door, having heard also and being curious to know whether Cora heard, that she was very sleepy and had gone to bed. Her voice sounded sleepy.

Eleanor Bent, walking restlessly on a pretended errand to Thomasina's, heard and stood still in the thick shadow of the maple trees and listened. Richard was away, surely he was away! But here he was at home, singing! And his last word had been a promise to come again. He had taken her in his arms, had kissed her, and had not come back. Was he angry or offended? Had she said anything to hurt him?

At that instant all her frightened questions returned. It was in just such a black shadow that hideous, sodden Bates from the hotel had taken her mother by the arm. She ceased to hear Richard's singing, ceased to feel the soft breeze of the summer night, ceased to hear the sound of voices on the other side of the street which a moment before had warned her to go on her way. She heard that scolding, masculine voice out of the past, she saw again her mother's strange outbreak of anger. Was it what she was that had offended Richard? And what was she?

Mrs. Lister went a second time through the house to the kitchen door.

"Richard, you mustn't keep 'Manda any longer. She'll be all tired out to-morrow."

'Manda rose heavily and tremulously. She had seemed to herself for the last half-hour to be a very different person in a very different place. Now she was once again only an old, homely, and fat darkey.

"Yes'sum, Miss Mary Als'tis," said she.

Richard followed his mother into the house.

"The old girl's got a lot of queer tunes in her head. I've written some of them down. Something could be made of them."

Mrs. Lister's heart sank.

In the morning Richard went again for the mail. This afternoon his father would come home, and then there would be an end to this nonsense. His evening's course was planned. He would go straight to Eleanor and would tell her everything. His fancy, restrained for the last few days so that he might not make himself too miserable, now leaped all restraint. He recalled Eleanor in her seat in the classroom, sought her out in her pew in church, dwelt upon her at her piano, adored her on the little porch in the evening light. He basked in each remembered smile, he counted each clustering curl. It was only four days since he had seen her, but he paled with fear lest some ill might have befallen her, or that some change might have lessened her regard. He must have her promise to marry him before he could go on with his work. He felt sharply impatient with this interruption to his steady course. Shut into the house a year ago with a cold, he had read the accumulated chapters of a serial story at whose hero's failure he had laughed to Thomasina.

"No Christina Light could drive any steady man off his track like that!"

Thomasina had smiled and had said nothing. He remembered the story now with irritation. But it had no meaning for him; he was going to have his Eleanor, he had her already.

Coming back through the hot sunshine from the post-office, he handed his mother his father's letters and sat down in the hammock with the papers and magazines. He glanced at the headlines of the paper and threw it aside; it was not a period when the news was exciting. Then he stripped off the covers of the August magazines. As he opened the first, he started visibly. He glanced at his mother and saw that she was occupied and his eyes dropped once more to the "Table of Contents" and rested there, his cheeks reddening. Here was Eleanor's story "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class," and here was another story, "Bitter Bread," by Basil Everman!

Mrs. Lister, looking up, met his astonished eyes and took instant alarm.

"What is the matter, Richard?"

"Why, mother, here is a story written by my Uncle Basil and reprinted! It is called 'Bitter Bread.' It is very long." Richard turned page after page.

She neither moved nor spoke.

"And at the beginning there is a note, telling about it. Listen! 'In his small output, Basil Everman may be said to have equaled Edgar Allan Poe in originality and power. An essay "Roses of PÆstum," a vivid descriptive poem "Storm," and a single story "Bitter Bread," which we republish, were originally printed in this magazine. They prove the extraordinary genius of this young man, long since dead. Basil Everman was born in Waltonville, Pennsylvania, and died in Baltimore at the age of twenty-five. His productions surpass in quality, we believe, all other productions of their time.'

"Mother, how perfectly splendid! Aren't you pleased?" Richard waited for no answer. "He wasn't so very much older than I. Mother—" He meant to ask questions, but respect for his mother's silence was bred into him. His head bent lower. "There is another story here and another note. 'We print in this issue another story from Waltonville, a contribution very different in character, but also exhibiting the promise of talent of a high order, "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class, by Eleanor Bent."'

"Won't Scotty champ his bit?" demanded Richard as he looked up boldly. "I wonder what kind of a story Eleanor would write. I—" Richard meant to say that this was not the first knowledge he had had of her success, but he saw that his mother looked at him with fright and anger. "Mother, in the name of common sense, what is the matter with the people in this house?"

Mrs. Lister rose unsteadily.

"You have never before spoken to your mother in such a way, Richard!"

Mrs. Lister entered the door, ascended the steps, and lay down upon her couch. Richard, frightened and repentant, followed at once, and hung over her, begging to be allowed to wait upon her.

"Shall I darken the room, mother?"

"Yes, Richard, please."

"Shall I bring you a drink?"

"No, Richard, thank you."

"Shall I take myself downstairs?"

"Yes, Richard, please."

Richard ran down the steps.

"In six hours father will be here, then let us hope that sanity will return to this demented household."

Richard read "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" and smiled; then he read "Bitter Bread" and was filled with awe. It was English and it was prose, but it was like the old Greek stuff that he had pegged away over for so many years. It made him see for the first time sense and beauty in the old Greek stuff. Perhaps he had been up to this time very stupid. He felt, with all his good opinion of himself, that even after a second reading of "Bitter Bread" he could not understand it wholly. Humbled, he took from the long line of texts on his father's shelf a familiar and hated volume and looked into it. He had never expected to look into it again, but now as he read ideas for music came into his mind.

While he read, he held "Willard's Magazine" on his knee. It was overwhelming, ennobling, to be connected with so great a man. He longed to read the story to his mother, to make her see in it what he saw, to ask a hundred questions about Basil. He reviewed all the facts that he knew; the locked room which had been Basil's; the conviction, early impressed upon him, that it was not to be entered, was not, indeed, a place where one would wish to be.

"I hope, when I am dead, no one will treat my room that way," said Richard. To die with work undone, with life waiting! How cruel! He wondered whether Basil had known that he must die. Shivering, he went out of the cool study into the sunshine.

Dr. Lister returned, as was expected, at four o'clock. He looked white and tired. When Richard met him with the word that Mrs. Lister was not well, he went at once to her room. There, weeping, she told him about "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class." What he had to tell made her feel no better. She said that she did not wish any supper; she would stay where she was, and when he had told Richard he should come back.

"Tell him at once," said Mary Alcestis as she hid her face in the pillow.

Together Richard and his father had a quiet supper. The table shone with its array of old silver, and upon the meal 'Manda had done her best. Both men ate heartily. Richard gave his father an account of the few unimportant incidents of his absence, but Dr. Lister gave in return no account of his journey.

"Mother was sitting on the porch when suddenly she said she didn't feel well and went upstairs. She wouldn't let me do anything for her. I think it was Uncle Basil's story which made her feel badly. I hope nobody will ever bury me like that! I don't even know what he looked like!"

When supper was over the two went into the study and there Dr. Lister closed the door. He took the chair behind his desk, and then, as though dissatisfied with that magisterial position, crossed the room and sat down by one of the low windows. Richard waited, standing by the desk, impatient to be gone, and prepared for some unwelcome command. Had his father visited his acquaintances in Baltimore and was he to be ordered to Johns Hopkins? He rejected this as untenable. His father would not treat him like a baby. Was it an ultimatum, favorable or unfavorable, about music? He trembled.

Several seconds passed before Dr. Lister began to speak, and he had in that time exchanged twice the position of his knees. So long was the silence that Richard gave expression to his impatience.

"Father, the queerest air of mystery pervades this house. Mother is not ill; she is offended with me. She will scarcely speak to me. I made an entirely innocent remark, and off she went. If I have done anything to bring this about, I am sorry and I'll try to correct it. If my speaking about Uncle Basil hurt her feelings, I'll never do that again. But I can't be treated like a baby."

Dr. Lister blinked.

"Sit down, Richard. It is nothing that you have done that troubles your mother. It is a condition which has risen without your will entirely."

"I have an engagement this evening, father!"

"I'll not keep you long." Dr. Lister paused again, this time to steady his voice. He had had no knowledge of disappointed love from his own experience, Mary Alcestis having fallen like a ripe peach into his hand, but he could imagine the discomforts of the situation.

Richard found a seat in a corner of the sofa. His heart beat a little more rapidly and he was puzzled by his father's gravity. He seemed to see the edge of a cloud, as yet no larger than a man's hand, but none the less ominous.

"I must tell you about your Uncle Basil, Richard."

"Well," said Richard, "go ahead. He's a very mysterious person to me so far."

"Your grandfather had two children, your mother and Basil. Upon Basil he founded many hopes and began early in his youth a most careful system of training so that he should waste no time, but should become what Dr. Everman himself was, a careful and thorough student of Greek.

"A certain amount of instruction Basil listened to willingly, but his nature was not one which submitted itself to regular, long-continued training of any sort. He was a very handsome, talented lad, but a cruel disappointment to his father. He would not graduate from the college, refusing peremptorily to spend his time upon subjects in which he had no interest. He learned to read Greek fluently; indeed, he had a passionate admiration for the literary beauties of the language, but to his father's great chagrin he would go no deeper."

"Then he was not like Browning's grammarian who never got anything out of life but a funeral on a high mountain," said Richard gayly. Uncle Basil had nothing to do with him, the little cloud had disappeared.

"Finally, after some difficulty with his father, he left home."

"He was grown up, I suppose," said Richard. "There isn't much to do in Waltonville."

"He left home, as I have said, and after a year he died of malignant diphtheria in a lodging-house in Baltimore. His father's death followed close upon his. Thus your mother was in a short time bereft of father, only brother, and also of her home, since this house is the property of the college. I was elected to your grandfather's place, as it happened, and I brought her back."

Richard looked up at the picture of his grandfather. He was tempted to say, "Handsome old boy."

"Slowly your mother returned to a normal condition of mind, but she has never recovered from the death of your uncle. Her father and mother were old, she and Basil were born late in their lives, and to him she looked for companionship. His death away from home, waited upon by strangers, almost unhinged her mind.

"After you were born she sat less in Basil's room in the third story; she began to take an interest in life; she became wrapped up in you, in caring for you, in making plans for your future. You were to do what Basil was to have done, to—"

"But it's not safe to plan what children are to do!" cried Richard. "You don't know what their plans may be. I'm sorry for mother, but I should think she would have known that!"

"That is true to a certain point. Your mother has feared that you would show some of those traits which distressed her in Basil, that intense absorption in matters which are to her the least important in life, to the utter exclusion of those which seem to her to be more practical and valuable. She does not understand persons of a different temperament, especially the temperament to which regular meals"—here Dr. Lister smiled a little at Richard—"and neat clothes and the good opinion of the public are adiaphora."

"I have always done what she wanted me to do like a lamb," declared Richard in a hard tone. He moved now toward the edge of his chair.

"You have always been an obedient son."

"What does mother consider matters of no importance?"

"In Basil's case it was art, literature, and music which she thought he set above everything else."

"Was my Uncle Basil musical?"

"To a certain extent." Dr. Lister wondered uneasily how he would ever approach the point of his discourse. "To go on, Richard—"

"Why did mother ever let me take lessons?"

"She thought you would in that way exhaust in your childhood any enthusiasm you might have and you would then give your mind to other things."

"Glory!" said Richard. Then, "I am very sorry for my Uncle Basil."

"He deserved some sympathy. We all do in this contrary world. I—"

"I cannot see why Greek should seem any more practical than music to my mother."

"Greek is the language of the New Testament."

"I cannot see what this has to do with me, anyhow, father. I have been in this house or on the porch for three days."

Dr. Lister began to speak with nervous haste.

"The history of your Uncle Basil has recently been opened by this man Utterly, who came here to find out what he could about him. Your mother was willing to give him only the most meager information. In this she was justified, for the young man seemed bound to prove that no one could have written as Basil wrote without having had the terrible experiences about which he wrote.

"When I urged her to tell him what she knew, she told me that for a year before his death Basil had been estranged; that his father had died from the shock of his death; that Waltonville had never suspected the alienation; and that she had always had an intense dread of its being suspected.

"After that I could only send Mr. Utterly on his way with the surface facts of Basil's life, hoping that the matter would end there.

"But now a new element has entered into the situation. Your mother had not even then confided in me the whole of your uncle's story. Her affection for him and her pride in the good name of the family had kept her lips closed. A day or two ago she told me more. This has a relation to you, but not, I trust, Richard, a very vital relation. I wish she had told me long ago. I have hoped it would not be necessary to tell you—perhaps it isn't really necessary now."

Richard's face expressed a mild curiosity. His father seemed to be making a great deal of nothing.

"When you were in Baltimore, Mrs. Scott came to see your mother and told her, with all her impertinence, that you had been spending a good deal of time with Eleanor Bent. Your mother said in response that Eleanor was a bright, pretty girl and that it was your affair."

Richard felt that now his father was a very direct and satisfactory raconteur.

"That night, while we waited for you to come home, your mother told me the whole story of your uncle. He was attached, it seems, to Margie Ginter, the daughter of the tavern-keeper, and it was she whom he followed away. Your mother had come upon them in the twilight, and had overheard a conversation between them."

"Mother is suspicious," said Richard.

"From their conversation she had every reason to suspect a close intimacy. At any rate, they went away and Basil went away. Sometime after his death, this Margie returned with a little girl."

Richard's eyes darkened. The cloud had increased in size. His father regretted the orderly way in which he had presented the facts, one after the other. He wished that he had said abruptly, "Eleanor Bent is your first cousin, and if there is anything between you it must end."

"Here she stayed, Richard."

Richard seemed still more puzzled than alarmed.

"You mean Mrs. Bent? But she is a widow, her name is Bent. What an atrocious suspicion!"

Dr. Lister raised his hand.

"Quietly, Richard! Your mother will hear!"

Richard's blazing eyes said that that made little difference.

"I know that she calls herself Mrs. Bent and her name may be Mrs. Bent. The point is that her daughter is like Basil." He quoted unconsciously from Mrs. Lister's sentences. "She walks like him, her coloring is like his, her eyes are his, and she has begun to show talent like his."

"I should need better proof than that!" declared Richard.

"I needed more proof also, and so I went to the little town in Ohio where the Ginters were said to have gone. That is where I have been. The father and daughter and a tall young man who was superior to them are dimly remembered. They didn't stay long. Marysville, it seemed, could not endure Ginter. I talked to the Squire."

"My Uncle Basil may have married her and afterwards she may have married a second time!"

"It is possible," agreed Dr. Lister. "I hope that is the way of it."

"Well, then, what is all this fuss about?" demanded Richard rudely. "Nothing is Eleanor's fault! Nothing can make any difference in my feeling for her! When I am able I mean to marry her."

"Richard!"

"Well?"

Dr. Lister described briefly the consequences of such an alliance. His remarks were made to fill time, to give Richard an opportunity to get hold of himself.

Richard clasped and unclasped his hands, fitting his fingers neatly together. He did not lift his eyes, he wished only to get away, but he did not feel certain of his power of locomotion.

"Mother had no right to let this go on!"

"She didn't dream of such a thing. Be fair!"

"Not dream of it! Did she suppose I could associate day after day with a girl like Eleanor and not love her?"

"She didn't know you associated with her. I hope you have come to no sort of understanding."

Richard answered only with a setting of his jaw. What he had done was his business. They should pry no farther; his heart was bleeding, but they should not count the drops. As soon as he felt certain of his knees he would fly.

Dr. Lister gave his body a little comfort against the back of his chair.

"I have no objection to your following music as a career, Richard, and I am sure we can win your mother over also. We want to do what is best for you—that is our chief desire in life. We will give you every possible opportunity here and abroad. What did Mr. Faversham say about your playing?"

Richard had now got to his feet. It seemed to him that he kept on and on rising. Insult had been added to injury.

"I have nothing to tell," said he with dignity, and so got himself away.