At the close of the service she eluded her mother, and caught up with him as he walked with slackened step and drooping shoulders along the road. It was a thing she could not have done for herself, but she was doing this for him. Nothing else could have given her courage to make that advance under the critical, watching eyes of the congregation. Gasping, and a little hesitant, she reached his side, but the sight of his despondent face spurred her afresh, and she cried with well simulated derision: "Heard ye ever such singin'! A lot o' women squeakin' like mice in a trap, an' no' a man's voice among the lot!" He braced up at her approach, and the gloom lifted from his face at her words, but settled back again as he answered doubtfully: "I was jealous o' yer voice, jealous o' yer breath bein' longer than mine." With those words she retired forever, leaving the stage to him. She would never compete with him again. His step was jaunty now, and his face beamed with gratification. "Aye, my breath is a lot longer than yours," he replied. Jean's heart faltered a little at his reply. It was true that his breath was longer than hers, it was true that his voice was louder, but he might have said something kind about her voice, even if he did n't believe it. She could tell any lie to make him feel better; it hurt that he did n't care to lie for her. Now that his spirits were restored and he no longer needed her, Jean lost her courage. A dull ache assailed her heart, and sharp tears forced their way into her eyes. She "Skilly an' the minister were sing- continued to walk beside him only in'." because she could not do otherwise, with all Drumorty looking on. Her brimming tears were about to fall despite her struggle to keep them back, "They're no' so bad," he said, in- but the tailor saved her this humiliaviting her to fresh protest. She laughed shrilly. tion. His momentary exhilaration was passing away, and shadows were "Ye ken fine we never had a proper gathering over him again. man's voice till ye came." The swing was coming back to his shoulders again, and he was taking bigger strides. "Think ye that?" he questioned anxiously. "I had a notion ye did na like my singin'." He would never know what her next words cost her. For a moment the old For a moment the old rivalry came to life and pride strove with love. In that swift space she was a singer again, proud of her voice and contemptuous of his, but only for a moment. Then came her admission from quiet lips: "I missed the singin'," he sighed dolefully. "I like to sing. It seems like as if I had to sing something out o' me on the Sabbath to get a fresh start for the next week.” "I ken what ye mean," Jean cried, with ready sympathy, blinking away her unseen tears. "That's the way I feel-bottled up, like." "Aye," he agreed. A daring thought came to Jean, a very daring thought. Quivering with excitement at her own temerity, she said: "I hae a harmonium. Would ye like to step in by wi' me for an hour an' sing the hymns?" He looked full at her for the first, and there was admiration in his eyes. "Ye can play?" he questioned eagerly. "I'd like it fine, if-if-" Jean knew what he meant. "My father likes music," she answered. She was fluttering inside like a nest of young birds, half with joy, and half with fear of her father. But she would go through with it if the heavens were to fall. As they reached the door, Mistress MacFarlane caught up with them. Being a true woman, she had already decided that Jean's wedding-veil would be at least half a yard longer than the veil of that high-handed lassie of the druggist's had been. "I'm goin' to play the hymns for Mr. Magregor," Jean explained. "Aye, aye," said Mistress MacFarlane, with a comfortable, round, pink smile, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Aye, aye, that will be fine." With an elaborate wink to Jean, she slipped in and up the stairs. Understanding her manœuver, Jean lingered below until she heard the kitchen door shut quickly, then, knowing that her father was safely imprisoned, she followed, leading the tailor into the heavycurtained, musk-scented parlor. § 5 It was well that Mistress MacFarlane went first and pushed the enraged Perney backward into the kitchen, for he had seen Jean ap "What mean ye, woman?" he said. "Man, hae a little sense," she urged, as if speaking to an unreasoning, but lovable, child. "It 's high time that Jean was married-an' there's no room for twa tailors in Drumorty." So that was it! It was a staggering thought. He sat down in his chair the better to support it. He might have known that she had some bee in her bonnet. She was not a woman to act without a purpose. And she was right. She was quite right. It would be a blessing to have a partner instead "Nae in my hoose! Step aside, of a competitor. He would give him woman!" "Sit doon, man, an' stop yer haverin'," she answered, with easy contempt. "Do ye expect yer bairn to go to her grave a maiden?" "What's that?" cried Perney, with fresh fury. "He wants to marry Jean! He would dare!" Mistress MacFarlane snorted and elbowed him out of the way with a pitying superiority. "No," was her cryptic reply, "he has no' dared yet, but he'll dare, come time." Perney was bewildered. It was hard to maintain his indignation in the face of his wife's dispassionate assurance. She was his rock of strength. He followed in the course she steered, for her steering was always for his betterment. But now she seemed to have turned traitor, and he felt lost. If she would only speak up and tell him her mind! He could always bear her lectures better than her silences. She was stepping about the room quietly, as if it were no concern of hers that his rival was here, under his roof. The tailor's voice rose lustily, singing, "Oh, come all ye faithful." It was more than Perney could bear in silence. the collars to do! That would be a great relief. The thought made him light-hearted, and he was just about to show her that he saw some reason in her plans, when she said, "Ye can give him the collars to do." At that he straightened in his chair, on the defensive again. So she knew! She had known all the time! She had lain beside him for thirty years with that secret knowledge in her heart. Despising him, perhaps; yes, despising him. It was n't for Jean she wanted the new tailor; it was because she knew that he could make better collars. She put her trust in the “TattieDoolie," in a stranger, an enemy, and she had turned against him, who had sheltered and loved her for thirty years. She despised him, did she? Laughed at him? Well, he'd let her know that there were others that could laugh. He would tell her about the Fraser broth. He would lay her pride in the dust. There would be more than one humble heart in the house this day! He turned toward her to launch his arrow of revenge. All innocent of her blunder, she was lifting the lid of the broth-pot and sniffing ecstatically, a Fraser worshiping at the shrine of the Fraser broth. He could n't do it. Never, if she trod him in the dust, never could he hurt her like that. He turned away, his heart sick and lonely, his soul bereft and bitter. She was no longer his. No longer the woman who believed in him. But there would be no more hiding behind a wall. He would speak to her about the collars. He would have it out with her. He turned back and asked in a voice sharp-edged, because it was so near to breaking: did n't know. The foolish woman did n't know! She thought a collar was an "easy bit." She had always believed in him. believed in him. In face of every thing, she still believed that he was right. Oh, she was a foolish, feckless woman, with her blindness about collars and her folly about broth. But he loved her. The very pattern of his soul was woven with the threads of hers, dear, blind, trusting woman that she was. She did n't know. And now she would never know. Her feet as she stepped about setting the table made a happy, homelike "Why say ye I can give him the music in his heart. How he loved her! collars to do?" A flicker of alarm came into her eyes, but she finished the sip of broth she had in the spoon before answering, and then her voice came with easy as surance: "Weel, ye 'll never be able to trust him wi' trousers; so ye can give him the coats and waistcoats to do." "An' the collars," he said bitingly. "Aye, an' the collars, an' other easy bits," she answered, with lazy ease. Collars and other easy bits! So she She paused at the table with an extra plate and spoon, and looked toward him questioningly. He had been so silent, she was not sure that she had won him over yet, so her voice was timorous and a little pleading: "Could I ask him, Perney?" "Aye, lass, ask him," he agreed. Then, searching in his flowing heart for words to tell her how he loved her, he said, "An' I 'm thinkin' he has never tasted the like o' the broth he 'll taste this day." Tired BY SARA TEASDALE If I shall make no poems any more, The year will turn for me; I shall delight in Smith in Search of a Majority BY CARL VAN DOREN M EN like Smith must be considered in a democracy. I never knew what town or county bred him and lent him to Manhattan, where during our entire acquaintance he carried on his singular researches. He was not, I now guess, from New England, since he lacked any instinct whatever, when he suddenly discovered he had grown too confidential, to draw an iron curtain of reserve down over his face with the awkward haste of a true Yankee. Neither had he the tempered insolence of a New-Yorker nor the archaic touches of speech and manner which might have assigned him to the older South. Hardly expansive enough to have come from the Far West, hardly energetic enough to have been born in the Mississippi valley, he possibly sprang-if that is not too violent a term for Smith—from some such characterless region as I have always imagined to exist between the Hudson and the Great Lakes. But no matter what the mere locality of his origin, he had, before I met him, shaken its peculiar dust from his feet in his quest for a moral or intellectual neighborhood where he could feel unmistakably at home. That he could not find this congenial neighborhood was his grief and, indeed, his tragedy. Yet his associates, most of them, either understood his plight as comic or else did not understand it at all. I remember that I was bored with him before I began to be interested. And before I began to be bored, I could barely remember him at all from one meeting to another. Indeed, the first definite item of my recollection is not a thing Smith did or said, but a remark I heard addressed to him. I was sitting in the lounge of Livingston Hall, not quite sure how to spend the evening, when a robust voice behind me said: "Smith, the trouble with you is that every wind of doctrine blows you over. And then when you get up again, you are pointed the wrong way." Turning, I saw Smith hunched eagerly on the edge of a chair into which probably any other man in the university would have sunk down, relaxed, though disputative. His large, serious face, larger and more serious than usual, was tormented in its effort to bring forth some answer which should be sufficient to meet what he evidently regarded as a painful accusation. I remember thinking, while he struggled, that so impressive a brow and chin as he had ought to go with a more impressive nose and mouth. "No," he said, "it is n't that. I can stand all the winds that blow. What worries me is that I can't find any great causes any more." |