Francis Hopkinson Smith

Sanford’s apartments were in gala-dress. Everywhere there was a suggestion of spring in all its brightness and promise. The divans of the salon were gay with new cushions of corn-yellow and pale green. The big table was resplendent in a new cloth,—a piece of richly colored Oriental stuff that had been packed away and forgotten in the Venetian wedding-chest that stood near the window. All the pipes, tobacco pouches, smoking-jackets, slippers, canes, Indian clubs, dumb-bells, and other bachelor belongings scattered about the rooms had been tucked out of sight, while books and magazines that had lain for weeks heaped up on chairs and low shelves, and unframed prints and photographs that had rested on the floor propped up against the wall and furniture, had been hidden in dark corners or hived in their several portfolios.

On the table stood a brown majolica jar taller than the lamp, holding a great mass of dogwood and apple blossoms, their perfume filling the room. Every vase, umbrella jar, jug, and bit of pottery that could be pressed into service, was doing duty as flower-holder, while over the mantel and along the tops of the bookcases, and even over the doors themselves, streamed festoons of blossoms intertwined with smilax and trailing vines.

Against the tapestries covering the walls of the dining-room hung big wreaths of laurel tied with ribbons. One of these was studded with violets, forming the initials H. S. The mantel was a bank of flowers. From the four antique silver church lamps suspended in the four corners of the room swung connecting festoons of smilax and blossoms. The dinner-table itself was set with the best silver, glass, and appointments that Sanford possessed. Some painted shades he had never seen before topped the tall wax candles.

Sanford smiled when he saw that covers had been laid for but five. That clever fellow Jack Hardy had carried his point,—all those delicate questions relating to the number and the selection of the guests had been left to Mrs. Leroy. She had proved her exquisite tact: Bock had been omitted, there were no superfluous women, and Jack could have his tÊte-À-tÊte with Helen undisturbed. It was just as well, Sanford thought. With these two young persons happy, the dinner was sure to be a success.

Upon entering his office, he found that the decorative raid had extended even to this his most private domain. The copper helmet of a diving-dress—one he sometimes used himself when necessity required—had been propped up over his desk, the face-plate unscrewed, and the hollow opening filled with blossoms, their leaves curling about the brass buttons of the collar. The very drawing-boards had been pushed against the wall, and the rows of shelves holding his charts and detailed plans had been screened from sight by a piece of Venetian silk exhumed from the capacious interior of the old chest.

The corners of Sam’s mouth touched his ears when Sanford looked at him, and every tooth was lined up with a broad grin.

“Doan’ ask me who done it, sah. I ain’t had nuffin to do wid it,—wid nuffin but de table. I sot dat.”

“Has Mrs. Leroy been here?” Sanford asked, coming into the dining-room, and looking again at the initials on the wall. He knew that Jack could never have perfected the delicate touch alone.

“Yaas ’r, an’ Major Slocomb an’ Mr. Hardy done come too. De gen’lemen bofe gone ober to de club. De major say he comin’ back soon’s ever you gets here. But I ain’t ter tell nuffin ’bout de flowers, sah. Massa Jack say ef I do he brek my neck, an’ I ’spec’s he will. But Lord, sah, dese ain’t no flowers. Look at dis,” he added, uncovering a great bunch of American Beauties,—“dat’s ter go ’longside de lady’s plate. An’ dat ain’t ha’f of ’em. I got mos’ a peck of dese yer rose-water roses in de pantry. Massa Jack gwine ter ask yer to sprinkle ’em all ober de table-cloth; says dat’s de way dey does in de fust famblies South.”

“Have the flowers I ordered come?” Sanford asked, as he turned towards the sideboard to fill his best decanter.

“Yaas ’r, got ’em in de ice-chest. But Massa Jack say dese yer rose-water roses on de table-cloth’s a extry touch; don’t hab dese high-toned South’n ladies ebery day, he say.”

Sanford reËntered the salon and looked about. Every trace of its winter dress too had gone. Even the heavy curtains at the windows had been replaced by some of a thin yellow silk.

“That’s so like Kate,” he said to himself. “She means that Helen and Jack shall be happy, at any rate. She’s missed it herself, poor girl. It’s an infernal shame. Bring in the roses, Sam: I’ll sprinkle them now before I dress. Any letters except these?” he added, looking through a package on the table, a shade of disappointment crossing his face as he pushed them back unopened.

“Yaas ’r, one on yo’ bureau dat’s jus’ come.”

Sanford forgot Jack’s roses, and with a quick movement of his hand drew the curtains of his bedroom and disappeared inside. The letter was there. He seldom came home from any journey without finding one of these little missives to greet him. He broke the seal and was about to read the contents when the major’s cheery, buoyant voice was heard in the outside room. The next instant he had pushed the curtains aside and peered in.

“Where is he, Sam? In here, did you say?”

Not to have been able to violate the seclusion of Sanford’s bedroom at all times, night or day, would have grievously wounded the sensibilities of the distinguished Pocomokian; it would have implied a reflection on the closeness of their friendship. It was true he had met Sanford but half a dozen times, and it was equally true that he had never before crossed the threshold of this particular room. But these trifling drawbacks, mere incidental stages in a rapidly growing friendship, were immaterial to him.

“My dear boy,” he cried, as he entered the room with arms wide open, “but it does my heart good to see you!” and he hugged Sanford enthusiastically, patting his host’s back with his fat hands over the spot where the suspenders crossed. Then he held him at arm’s length.

“Let me look at you. Splendid, by gravy! fresh as a rose, suh, handsome as a picture! Just a trace of care under the eyes, though. I see the nights of toil, the hours of suffering. I wonder the brain of man can stand it. But the building of a lighthouse, the illumining of a pathway in the sea for those buffeting with the waves,—it is gloriously humane, suh!”

Suddenly his manner changed, and in a tone as grave and serious as if he were full partner in the enterprise and responsible for its success, the major laid his hand, this time confidingly, on Sanford’s shirt-sleeve, and said, “How are we getting on at the Ledge, suh? Last time we talked it over, we were solving the problem of a colossal mass of—of—some stuff or other that”—

“Concrete,” suggested Sanford, with an air as serious as that of the major. He loved to humor him.

“That’s it,—concrete; the name had for the moment escaped me,—concrete, suh, that was to form the foundation of the lighthouse.”

Sanford assured the major that the concrete was being properly amalgamated, and discussed the laying of the mass in the same technical terms he would have used to a brother engineer, smiling meanwhile as the stream of the Pocomokian’s questions ran on. He liked the major’s glow and sparkle. He enjoyed most of all the never ending enthusiasm of the man,—that spontaneous outpouring which, like a bubbling spring, flows unceasingly, and always with the coolest and freshest water of the heart.

“And how is Miss Shirley?” asked the young engineer, throwing the inquiry into the shallows of the talk as a slight temporary dam.

“Like a moss rosebud, suh, with the dew on it. She and Jack have gone out for a drive in Jack’s cyart. He left me at the club, and I went over to his apartments to dress. I am staying with Jack, you know. Helen is with a school friend. I know, of co’se, that yo’r dinner is not until eight o’clock, but I could not wait longer to grasp yo’r hand. Do you know, Sanford,” with sudden animation and in a rising voice, “that the more I see of you, the more I”—

“And so you are coming to New York to live, major,” said Sanford, dropping another pebble at the right moment into the very middle of the current.

The major recovered, filled, and broke through in a fresh place. The new questions of his host only varied the outlet of his eloquence.

“Coming, suh? I have come. I have leased a po’tion of my estate to some capitalists from Philadelphia who are about embarking in a strawberry enterprise of very great magnitude. I want to talk to you about it later.” (He had rented one half of it—the dry half, the half a little higher than the salt-marsh—to a huckster from Philadelphia, who was trying to raise early vegetables, and whose cash advances upon the rent had paid the overdue interest on the mortgage, leaving a margin hardly more than sufficient to pay for the suit of clothes he stood in, and his traveling expenses.)

By this time the constantly increasing pressure of his caller’s enthusiasm had seriously endangered the possibility of Sanford’s dressing for dinner. He glanced several times uneasily at his watch, lying open on the bureau before him, and at last, with a hurried “Excuse me, major,” disappeared into his bathroom, and closed its flood-gate of a door, thus effectually shutting off the major’s overflow, now perilously near the danger-line.

The Pocomokian paused for a moment, looked wistfully at the blank door, and, recognizing the impossible, called to Sam and suggested a cocktail as a surprise for his master when he appeared again. Sam brought the ingredients on a tray, and stood by admiringly (Sam always regarded him as a superior being) while the major mixed two comforting concoctions,—the one already mentioned for Sanford, and the other designed for the especial sustenance and delectation of the distinguished Pocomokian himself.

This done he took his leave, having infused into the apartment, in ten short minutes, more sparkle, freshness, and life than it had known since his last visit.

Sanford saw the cocktail on his bureau when he entered the room again, but forgot it in his search for the letter he had laid aside on the major’s entrance. Sam found the invigorating compound when dinner was over, and immediately emptied it into his own person.

“Please don’t be cross, Henry, if you can’t find all your things,” the letter read. “Jack Hardy wanted me to come over and help him arrange the rooms as a surprise for the Maryland girl. He says there’s nothing between them, but I don’t believe him. The blossoms came from Newport. I hope you had time to go to Medford and find out about my dining-room, and that everything is going on well at the Ledge. I will see you to-night at eight. —K. P. L.”

Sanford, with a smile of pleasure, shut the letter in his bureau drawer, and entering the dining-room, picked up the basket of roses and began those little final touches about the room and table which he never neglected. He lighted the tapers in the antique lamps that hung from the ceiling, readjusting the ruby glass holders; he kindled the wicks in some quaint brackets over the sideboard; he moved the Venetian flagons and decanters nearer the centrepiece of flowers,—those he had himself ordered for his guests and their chaperon,—and cutting the stems from the rose-water roses sprinkled them over the snowy linen.

With the soft glow of the candles the room took on a mellow, subdued tone; the pink roses on the cloth, the rosebuds on the candle-shades, and the mass of Mermets in the centre being the distinctive features, and giving the key-note of color to the feast. To Sanford a dinner-table with its encircling guests was always a palette. He knew just where the stronger tones of black coats and white shirt-fronts placed beside the softer tints of fair shoulders and bright faces must be relieved by blossoms in perfect harmony, and he understood to a nicety the exact values of the minor shades in linen, glass, and silver, in the making of the picture.

The guests arrived within a few minutes of one another. Mrs. Leroy, in yellow satin with big black bows caught up on her shoulder, a string of pearls about her throat, came first: she generally did when dining at Sanford’s; it gave her an opportunity to have a chance word with him before the arrival of the other guests, and to give a supervising glance over the appointments of his table. And then Sanford always deferred to her in questions of taste. It was one of the nights when she looked barely twenty-five, and seemed the fresh, joyous girl Sanford had known before her marriage. The ever present sadness which her friends often read in her face had gone. To-night she was all gayety and happiness, and her eyes, under their long lashes, were purple as the violets which she wore. Helen Shirley was arrayed in white muslin,—not a jewel,—her fair cheeks rosy with excitement. Jack was immaculate in white tie and high collar, while the self-installed, presiding genial of the feast, the major, appeared in a costume that by its ill-fitting wrinkles betrayed its pedigree,—a velvet-collared swallow-tail coat that had lost its onetime freshness in the former service of some friend, a skin-tight pair of trousers, and a shoestring cravat that looked as if it had belonged to Major Talbot himself (his dead wife’s first husband), and that was now so loosely tied it had all it could do to keep its place.

“No one would have thought of all this but you, Kate,” said Sanford, lifting Mrs. Leroy’s cloak from her shoulders.

“Don’t thank me, Henry. All I did,” she answered, laughing, “was to put a few flowers about, and to have my maid poke a lot of man-things under the sofas and behind the chairs, and take away those horrid old covers and curtains. I know you’ll never forgive me when you want something to-morrow you can’t find, but Jack begged so hard I couldn’t help it. How did you like the candle-shades? I made them myself,” she added, tipping her head on one side like a wren.

“I knew you did, and I recognized your handiwork somewhere else,” Sanford answered, with a significant shrug of his shoulders towards the dining-room, where the initial wreath was hung.

“It is a bower of beauty, my dear madam!” exclaimed the major, bowing like a French dancing-master of the old school when Sanford presented him, one hand on his waistcoat buttons, the right foot turned slightly out. “I did not know when I walked through these rooms this afternoon whose fair hands had wrought the wondrous change. Madam, I salute you,” and he raised her hand to his lips.

“Helen ... in white muslin—not a jewel”

Mrs. Leroy looked first in astonishment as she drew back her fingers. Then as she saw his evident sincerity, she made him an equally old-fashioned curtsy, and broke into a peal of laughter.

While this bit of comedy was being enacted, Jack, eager to show Helen some of Sanford’s choicest bits, led her to the mantelpiece, over which hung a sketch by Smearly,—the original of his Academy picture; pointed out the famous wedding-chest and some of the accoutrements over the door; and led her into the private office, now lighted by half a dozen candles, one illuminating the copper diving-helmet with its face-plate of flowers. Helen, who had never been in a bachelor’s apartment before, thought it another and an enchanted world. Everything suggested a surprise and a mystery.

But it was when she entered the dining-room on Sanford’s arm that she gave way completely. “I never saw anything so charming!” she exclaimed. “And H. S. all in a lovely wreath—why, these are your initials, Mr. Sanford,” looking up innocently into his eyes.

Sanford smiled quizzically, and a shade of cruel disappointment crossed Jack’s face. Mrs. Leroy broke into another happy, contagious laugh, and her eyes, often so impenetrable in their sadness, danced with merriment.

The major watched them all with ill-disguised delight, and, beginning to understand the varying expressions flitting over his niece’s face, said, with genuine emotion, emphasizing his outburst by kissing her rapturously on the cheek, “You dear little girl, you, don’t you know your own name? H. S. stands for Helen Shirley, not Henry Sanford.”

Helen gave a little start, avoiding Jack’s gaze, and blushed scarlet. She might have known, she said to herself, that Jack would do something lovely, just to surprise her. Why did she betray herself so easily?

When, a moment later, in removing her glove, she brushed Jack’s hand, lying on the table-cloth beside her own, the slightest possible pressure of her little finger against his own conveyed her thanks.

Everybody was brimful of happiness: Helen radiant with the inspiration of new surroundings so unlike those of the simple home she had left the day before; Jack riding in a chariot of soap-bubbles, with butterflies for leaders, and drinking in every word that fell from Helen’s lips; the major suave and unctuous, with an old-time gallantry that delighted his admirers, boasting now of his ancestry, now of his horses, now of his rare old wines at home; Sanford leading the distinguished Pocomokian into still more airy flights, or engaging him in assumed serious conversation whenever that obtuse gentleman insisted on dragging Jack down from his butterfly heights with Helen, to discuss with him some prosaic features of the club-house at Crab Island; while Mrs. Leroy, happier than she had been in weeks, watched Helen and Jack with undisguised pleasure, or laughed at the major’s good-natured egotism, his wonderful reminiscences and harmless pretensions, listening between pauses to the young engineer by her side, whose heart was to her an open book.

Coffee was served on the balcony, the guests seating themselves in the easy-chairs. Mrs. Leroy selected a low camp-stool, resting her back against the railing, where the warm tones of the lamp fell upon her dainty figure. She was at her best to-night. Her prematurely gray hair, piled in fluffy waves upon her head and held in place by a long jewel-tipped pin, gave an indescribable softness and charm to the rosy tints of her skin. Her blue-gray eyes, now deep violet, flashed and dimmed under the moving shutters of the lids, as the light of her varying emotions stirred their depths. About her every movement was that air of distinction, and repose, and a certain exquisite grace which never left her, and which never ceased to have its fascination for her friends. Added to this were a sprightliness and a vivacity which, although often used as a mask to hide a heavy heart, were to-night inspired by her sincere enjoyment of the pleasure she and the others had given to the young Maryland girl and her lover.

When Sam brought the coffee-tray she insisted on filling the cups herself, dropping in the sugar with a dainty movement of her fingers that was bewitching, laughing as merrily as if there had never been a sorrow in her life. At no time was she more fascinating to her admirers than when at a task like this. The very cup she handled was instantly invested with a certain preciousness, and became a thing to be touched as delicately and as lightly as the fingers that had prepared it.

The only one who for the time was outside the spell of her influence was Jack Hardy. He had taken a seat on the floor of the balcony, next the wall—and Helen.

“Jack, you lazy fellow,” said Mrs. Leroy, with mock indignation, as she rose to her feet, “get out of my way, or I’ll spill the coffee. Miss Shirley, why don’t you make him go inside? He’s awfully in the way here.”

One of Jack’s favorite positions, when Helen was near, was at her feet. He had learned this one the summer before at her house on Crab Island, when they would sit for hours on the beach.

“I’m not in anybody’s way, my dear Mrs. Leroy. My feet are tied in a Chinese knot under me, and my back has grown fast to the rain-spout. Major, will you please say something nice to Mrs. Leroy and coax her inside?”

Sam had rolled a small table, holding a flagon of cognac and some crushed ice, beside the major, who sat half buried in the cushions of one of Sanford’s divans. The Pocomokian struggled to his feet.

“You mustn’t move, major,” Mrs. Leroy called. “I’m not coming in. I’m going to stay out here in this lovely moonlight, if one of these very polite young gentlemen will bring me an armchair.” With a look of pretended dignity at Jack and Sanford.

“Take my seat,” said Jack, with a laugh, springing to his feet, suddenly realizing Mrs. Leroy’s delicate but pointed rebuke. “Come, Miss Helen,” a better and more retired corner having at this moment suggested itself to him, “we won’t stay where we are abused. Let us join the major.” And with an arm to Miss Shirley and a sweeping bow to Mrs. Leroy, Jack walked straight to the divan nearest the curtains.

When Helen and Jack were out of hearing, Mrs. Leroy looked toward the major, and, reassured of his entire absorption in his own personal comfort, turned to Sanford, and said in low, earnest tones, in which there was not a trace of the gayety of a moment before, “Can the new sloop lay the stones, Henry? You haven’t told me a word yet of what you have been doing for the last few days at the Ledge.”

“I think so, Kate,” replied Sanford in an equally serious voice. “We laid one yesterday before the easterly gale caught us. You got my telegram, didn’t you?”

“Of course! but I was anxious for all that. Ever since I had that talk with General Barton I’ve felt nervous over the laying of those stones. He frightened me when he said no one of the Board at Washington believed you could do it. It would be so awful if your plan should fail.”

“But it’s not going to fail, Kate. I can do it, and will.” There was a decided tone in his voice, and his eyebrows were knitted in the way she loved: she read his determination in every word and look. “All I wanted was a proper boat, and I’ve got that. I watched her day before yesterday. I was a little nervous until I saw her lower the first stone. Her captain is a plucky fellow,—Captain Joe likes him immensely. I wish you could have been there to see how cool he was,—not a bit flustered when he saw the rocks under the bow of his sloop.”

Kate handed him her empty coffee-cup, and going to the edge of the balcony rested her elbows on the railing, a favorite gesture of hers, and looked down on the treetops of the square.

“Caleb West, of course, went down with the first stone, didn’t he?” she asked when he joined her again. She knew Caleb’s name as she did those of all the men in Sanford’s employ. There was no detail of the work he had not explained to her.

“And was the sea-bottom as you expected to find it?” she added.

“Even better,” he answered, eager to discuss his plans with her. “Caleb reports that as soon as he gets the first row of enrockment stones set, the others will lie up like bricks. And it’s all coming out exactly as we have planned it, too, Kate.”

He went over with her again, as he had done so many times before, all of his plans for carrying on the work and the difficulties that had threatened him. He talked of his hopes and fears, of his confidence in his men, his admiration for them, and his love for the work itself. To Sanford, as to many men, there were times when the sympathy and understanding of a woman, the generous faith and ready belief of one who listens only to encourage, became a necessity. To have talked to a man as he did to Kate would not only have bored his listener, but might have aroused a suspicion of his own professional ability.

“I wonder what General Barton will think when he finds your plan succeeds? He says everywhere that you cannot do it,” Kate continued, with a certain pride in her voice, after listening to some further details of Sanford’s plans for placing the enrockment blocks.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s hard to get these old-time engineers to believe in anything new, and this foundation is new. But all the same, I’d rather pin my faith to Captain Joe than to any one of them. What we are doing at the Ledge, Kate, requires mental pluck and brute grit,—nothing else. Scientific engineering won’t help us a bit.”

Sanford now stood erect, with face aglow and kindling eyes, his back to the balcony rail. Every inflection of his voice showed a keen interest in the subject.

“And yet, after all, Kate, I realize that my work is mere child’s play. Just see what other men have had to face. At Minot’s Ledge, you know,—the light off Boston,—they had to chisel down a submerged rock into steps, to get a footing for the tower. But three or four men could work at a time, and then at dead low water. They got only one hundred and thirty hours’ work the first year. The whole Atlantic rolled in on top of them, and there was no shelter from the wind. Until they got the bottom courses of their tower bolted to the steps they had cut in the rock, they had no footing at all, and had to do their work from a small boat. Our artificial island helps us immensely; we have something to stand on. And it was even worse at Tillamook Rock, on the Pacific coast. There the men were landed on a precipitous crag sticking up out of the sea, from breeches buoys slung to the masthead of a vessel. For weeks at a time the sea was so rough that no one could reach them. They were given up for dead once. All that time they were lying in canvas tents lashed down to the sides of the crag to keep them from being blown into rags. All they had to eat and drink for days was raw salt pork and the rain-water they caught from the tent covers. And yet those fellows stuck to it day and night until they had blasted off a place large enough to put a shanty on. Every bit of the material for that lighthouse, excepting in the stillest weather, was landed from the vessel that brought it, by a line rigged from the masthead to the top of the crag; and all this time, Kate, she was thrashing around under steam, keeping as close to the edge as she dared. Oh, I tell you, there is something stunning to me in such a battle with the elements!”

Kate’s cheeks burned as Sanford talked on. She was no longer the dainty woman over the coffee-cups, nor the woman of the world she had been a few moments before, eager for the pleasure of assembled guests.

Her eyes flashed with the intensity of her feelings. “When you tell me such things, Henry, I am all on fire,” she cried. Then she stopped as suddenly as if some unseen hand had been laid upon her, chilling and shriveling the hot burning words. “The world is full of such great things to be done,” she sighed, “and I lead such a mean little life.”

Sanford looked at her in undisguised admiration. Then, as he watched her, his heart smote him. He had not intended to wound her by his enthusiasm over his own work, nor to awaken in her any sense of her own disappointments; he had only tried to allay her anxieties over his affairs. He knew by the force of her outburst that he had unconsciously stirred those deeper emotions, the strength of which really made her the help she was to him. But he never wanted them to cause her suffering.

These sudden transitions in her moods were not new to him. She was an April day in her temperament, and would often laugh the sunniest of laughs when the rain of her tears was falling. These were really moods he loved.

It was the present frame of mind, however, that he dreaded, and from which he always tried to save her. It did not often show itself. She was too much a woman of the world to wear her heart upon her sleeve, and too good and tactful a friend to burden even Sanford with sorrows he could not lighten. He knew what had inspired the outburst, for he had known her for years. He had witnessed the long years of silent suffering which she had borne so sweetly,—even cheerfully at times,—had seen with what restraint and self-control she had cauterized by silence and patient endurance every fresh wound, and had watched day by day the slow coming of the scars that drew all the tighter the outside covering of her heart.

As he looked at her out of the corner of his eye,—she leaning over the balcony at his side,—he could see that the tears had gathered under her lashes. It was best to say nothing when she felt like this. He recognized that to have made her the more dissatisfied, even by that sympathy which he longed to give, would have hurt in her that which he loved and honored most,—her silence, and her patient loyalty to the man whose name she bore. “She’s had a letter from Leroy,” he said to himself, “and he’s done some other disgraceful thing, I suppose;” but to Kate he said nothing.

Gradually he led the talk back to Keyport, this time telling her of his men and their peculiarities and humors; of Caleb and his young and pretty wife; and of Aunty Bell’s watchful care over his comfort whenever he spent the night at Captain Joe’s.

Nothing had disturbed the other guests. The clink of the major’s glass and the intermittent gurgle of the rapidly ebbing decanter as Sam supplied his wants could still be heard from the softly lighted room. On the foreordained divan, half hidden by a curtain, sat Jack and Helen, their shoulders touching, studying the contents of a portfolio,—some of the drawings upside down, their low talk broken now and then by a happy, irrelevant laugh.

By this time the moon had risen over the treetops, the tall buildings far across the quadrangle breaking the sky-line. Below could be seen the night life of the Park: miniature figures strolling about under the trees, flashing in brilliant light or swallowed up in dense shadow, as they passed through the glare of the many lamps scattered among the budding foliage; a child romping with a dog, or a belated woman wheeling a baby carriage home. The night was still, the air soft and balmy; only the hum of the busy street a block away could be heard where they stood.

Suddenly the figure of a boy darted across the white patch of pavement below them. Sanford leaned far over the railing, a strange, unreasoning dread in his heart.

“What is it, Henry?” asked Mrs. Leroy.

“Looks like a messenger,” Sanford answered.

Mrs. Leroy bent over the railing, and watched the boy spring up the low steps of the street door, ring the bell violently, and beat an impatient tattoo with his foot.

“Whom do you want?” Sanford called gently.

The boy looked up, and, seeing the two figures on the balcony, answered, “Mr. Henry Sanford. Got a death message.”

“A death message, did he say?” gasped Mrs. Leroy. Her voice was almost a whisper.

“Yes; don’t move.” He laid a hand on her arm and pointed toward the group inside. A quick, sharp contraction rose in his throat. “Sam,” he called in a lowered tone.

“Yaas ’r,—comin’ direc’ly.”

“Sam, there’s a boy at the outside door with a telegram. He says it’s a death message. Get it, and tell the boy to wait. Go quietly, now, and let no one know. You will find me here.”

Mrs. Leroy sank into a chair, her face in her hands. Sanford bent over her, his voice still calm.

“Don’t give way, Kate; we shall know in a moment.”

She grasped his hand and held on. “Oh, who do you suppose it is, Henry? Will Sam never come?”

While he was comforting her, urging her to be patient and not to let Helen hear, Sam reËntered the room,—his breath gone with the dash down and up three flights of stairs,—walked slowly toward the balcony, and handed Sanford a yellow envelope. Its contents were as follows:—

Sanford looked hurriedly at his watch, forgetting, in the shock, to hand Mrs. Leroy the telegram.

Mrs. Leroy caught his arm. “Tell me quick! Who is it?”

“Forgive me, dear Kate, but I was so knocked out. It is no one who belongs to you. It is the boiler of the Screamer that has burst. Three men are hurt,” reading the dispatch again mechanically. “I wonder who they are?” as if he expected to see their names added to its brief lines.

For a moment he leaned back against the balcony, absorbed in deep thought.

“Twenty-three minutes left,” he said to himself, consulting his watch again. “I must go at once; they will need me.”

She took the telegram from his hand. “Oh, Henry, I am so sorry,—and the boat, too, you counted upon. Oh, how much trouble you have had over this work! I wish you had never touched it!” she exclaimed, with the momentary weakness of the woman. “But look! read it again.” Her voice rose with a new hope in it. “Do you see? Captain Joe signs it,—he’s not hurt!”

Sanford patted her hand abstractedly, and said, “Dear Kate,” but without looking at her or replying further. He was calculating whether it would be possible for him to catch the midnight train and go to the relief of the men.

“Yes, I can just make it,” he said, half aloud, to himself. Then he turned to Sam, who stood trembling before him, looking first at Mrs. Leroy and then at his master, and said in an undertone, “Sam, send that boy for a cab, and get my bag ready. I will change these clothes on the train. Ask Mr. Hardy to step here; not a word, remember, about this telegram.”

Jack came out laughing, and was about to break into some raillery, when he saw Mrs. Leroy’s face.

Sanford touched his shoulder, and drew him one side out of sight of the inmates of the room. “Jack, there has been an explosion at the work, and some of the men are badly hurt. Say nothing to Helen until she gets home. I leave immediately for Keyport. Will you and the major please look after Mrs. Leroy?”

Sanford’s guests followed him to the door of the corridor: Helen radiant, her eyes still dancing; the major bland and courteous, his face without a ruffle; Jack and Mrs. Leroy apparently unmoved.

“Oh, I’m so sorry you must go!” exclaimed Helen, holding out her hands. “Mr. Hardy says you do nothing but live on the train. Thank you ever so much, dear Mr. Sanford; I’ve had such a lovely time.”

“My dear suh,” said the major, “this is positively cruel! This Hennessy”—he was holding his glass—“is like a nosegay; I hoped you would enjoy it with me. Let me go back and pour you out a drop before you go.”

“Why not wait until to-morrow?” said Jack in perfunctory tones, the sympathetic pressure of his hand in Sanford’s belying their sincerity. “This night traveling will kill you, old man.”

Sanford smiled as he returned the pressure, and, with his eyes resting on Helen’s joyous face, replied meaningly, “Thank you, Jack; it’s all right, I see. Not a word until she gets home.”

Helen’s evening had not been spoiled, at all events.

Once outside in the corridor,—Sam down one flight of steps with Sanford’s bag and coat,—Mrs. Leroy half closed the door, and laying her hand on Sanford’s shoulder said, with a force and an earnestness that carried the keenest comfort straight to his heart, “I’ve seen you in worse places than this, Henry; you always get through, and you will now. I shall not worry, and neither will you. I know it looks dark to you, but it will be brighter when you reach Keyport and get all the facts. I will come up myself on the early morning train, and see what can be done for the men.”