THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS

THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS

There is no use in making any pretences about it. It was no dark and splendid young pirate fascinated by a rosy rustic maiden. It was no foreign prince in disguise attracted by the grace of an unfettered shape balancing water-pails at the spring, and ready to override all the conventions of society and make the girl his wife. It was Binns, the butcher-boy.

A scrap of a fellow he was; so short, so slight, so pale, so insignificant, that it seemed as if, should he take off his long blue blouse, there would really be nothing left of him—but his freckles. And Roxy, she was half again his height, and buxom and blooming, not to say blowsy, deep-colored, and altogether with a great deal of her.

If Roxy were not Roxy, the cook, talking at the kitchen storm-door with Binns, whose scraggy horse dropped his head so low with the dropping of the reins that he looked as if he would drop in the street altogether if the authorities did not interfere—if Roxy were not Roxy, but were Gladys tossing a rose over the drawing-room balcony to the gallant young cavalry officer on his prancing Abdallah that had carried him through the terrific skirmishes of an Indian campaign, then I will admit that more entertainment and much finer company might be had out of the affair. The dinners which we might attend together in the course of our acquaintance would be very different from the surreptitious turnovers and custards with which Roxy regaled Binns; the music we might hear would have far other charms than those strains which Roxy, in her hours of leisure, called out from a bit of comb wound with a bit of paper; the dresses, too, would be far more satisfactory to the soul and the soul’s eye than Roxy’s dirt-colored calicoes, bought to wash and hide the dirt as long previously as might be; and we will say nothing of the diamonds, the pictures, the operas, and all the rest that we might arrive at in our experiences; for Roxy had no diamonds but her tears, and very few of them in the beginning; no pictures but cuttings from the comic weeklies, which she pinned up about the kitchen; and as for the dinners, again, I doubt if we should bring better appetites to our sumptuous banquet, with terrapin and canvas-back and champagne frappé, than Binns had when grinning over his apple turnover, wiping his mouth on his blue sleeve after it, and giving Roxy a resounding smack, to receive in return as resounding a slap. “She’s a clipper, I say,” Binns would chuckle, as if it were a love-pat after his own heart. Meanwhile not an opera of all the list is to be heard with more satisfaction than that wont to be evinced by Binns as he sat, during his evenings “on,” while Roxy, after her voluntary upon the comb and paper, which she kept in the drawer of the kitchen table with the nutmegs and allspice, sang in her loud and clear, if somewhat nasal, voice the simple ballad of “Whoa, Emma!” or

or reverted to older tunes—“Oh, where have you been, Lord Ronald, my son?” and “Drownded, drownded, in the middle of the sea,” with other like tearful selections. To be sure, Binns’s delight was chiefly manifested by a frequent use of his coat-sleeve in the manner of lachrymose individuals without a handkerchief, in a very luxury of woe; for if the comb and paper tickled the cockles of his heart, as some mellow flute or honeyed violin might do, the enjoyment was just as ecstatic which made the tears pour forth over the sad fate of the lovers “’Way down in Salem town,” while he thought nothing of an unprotected outright boohoo, with his face twisted into all sorts of a coil, over the last words of the wretched person who implores,

Nevertheless, it was not of love, at any rate not of love of Roxy, that Binns would ever die. Roxy’s turnovers and gingersnaps and five-fingered doughnuts, her liberal bowls of coffee and secret draughts of mineral water, were very agreeable variations in his daily fare. When Roxy asked him to come in and spend an evening with some friends of hers and have a game of forty-five, he saw visions of the same run of dainties, and was much pleased by the rosy apples and tingling cider and roasted chestnuts of the regale. Come again? Of course he would come again—one did not need to be asked twice to things of that sort. He came again, and this time the nuts were butternuts, and there were cookies as nearly pound-cake as it is the nature of cookies to approach, and Binns munched and cracked and picked and sipped, and thought that Roxy was a mighty cute body to be able to have the kitchen to herself at this hour, and to have whatever she chose in it, moreover. And so he came again.

Was it Roxy’s cakes and ale alone, then, that allured Binns? Was not the face reflected in the pewter platter she scoured, as she sang her doleful ditties, as fair to him as the face of Gladys thrown up from a golden salver would have been to the cavalry officer? Sooth, I know not. I only know that a cosey kitchen, with a hot stove and bright tins, is a pleasant place, and a capacious rocking-chair with long rockers, in which you are allowed to travel all about the kitchen, is a comfortable thing, and that hands never look more kindly than when pressing toothsome dainties upon you, and that if one has nothing better to do one is rather inclined to repeat such experiences than not. If, then, it is suggested, very palpably suggested, to one, in return, that the old butcher’s nag should be hitched into the pung, with the horse-blanket for a robe, and a sleigh-ride should be given the generous purveyor of doughnuts and peanuts, could one do less? And as for scaring Roxy from any repetition of the suggestion by tipping her over into a crusty snow-drift, one’s mind would have to move a great deal more quickly than what answered Binns for a mind was able to do in order to be up to such an opportunity.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Roxy. “The next time, Binns, I’ll take the big red comforter off my bed for an extra robe, and a couple of hot flat-irons—or bricks would be better, wouldn’t they?—wrapped in newspapers, and we’ll be as warm as toast. Say Friday. There’ll be a first-rate moon. And we’ll have a real egg-and-cider flip with the hot stove-lifter in it when we get back.”

“If—if—he’ll let me have the horse,” said Binns, doubtfully, and not with radiating pleasure.

“Oh, of course he will. Now you put the blanket on him and come in, and we’ll have some hot hash—I’ve got some left over all ready to warm up—and a little taste of sangaree.”

If I should say that Roxy’s sangaree was made of vinegar and hot water and brown sugar and nutmeg and other like substances, you would not believe how Binns smacked his lips over it; so what is the use of saying anything of the sort? But it is true that Binns went away repeating to himself, “Well, for getting sunthin outer northing, she’s a beater!” And so I am sure—in view of Binns—she was.

When—hardly knowing how to help it, Roxy having taken it so for granted, feeling that he was driven by an inexorable fate when Roxy said that on Monday the moon would be good, as if the moon wasn’t always good—Binns asked for the horse the third time, his master slapped him on the back with a force that sent him half across the shop. “Well, Binns,” said he, “so you’ve got a girl, you sly dog! I never thought you’d muster face enough for that. Have the old horse and welcome, there’s no danger of fast driving when two folks are in love.” During this kindly if not altogether delicate address, Binns was pink and purple, yellow, green, blue, and white, by turns, with fright, with shame, with gratified vanity, with a sense of manly power, but, above everything else, with a prevailing awe and terror of it all, anyway, as the full meaning of his master’s words overcame him, and the gulfs of the future yawned before him. To eat Roxy’s turnovers was one thing—to marry her was quite another. The possibility had not occurred to him before, only a vague consciousness of the impossibility of anything else was beginning to oppress him—all the more vaguely, perhaps, because of his extreme unwillingness to utter anything of the sort even to himself.

If Binns had not had to stop at the house for the dinner order, it is doubtful if he would have seen Roxy that day. But “there was no going back on the shop,” he said to himself, and, looking like a sheep, he went prepared to take the order for beef.

“Roxy!” the old gardener called, opening the door—for Binns, on the idea of getting it over with, was a little earlier than common, and Roxy was not upon the outposts as usual—“here’s your young man!”

“Roxy!” cried the mischievous and vulgar Kitty, “here’s your feller!”

“You go along!” said Roxy, making her appearance, and wiping her hands on her pink print apron. And there stood Binns, as pink as the apron; and he stammered something about to-night at half-past seven sharp, and hurried off, forgetting all about the order. He had to come back, of course, and he found Roxy sitting on the edge of a water-pail inside the storm-door, with her pink apron thrown over her pink face, sobbing fit to break her heart.

“Why—why—Roxy—why, what’s the matter, Roxy?” he exclaimed. But Roxy only sobbed, the sob none the less affecting to a tender-hearted hearer because broken by a hiccough. “Why, Roxy—why, what on earth—has anybody been a-hurting of you? Why don’t you tell me?”

But Roxy’s sobs still preserved the secret.

Mr. Binns really began to feel bad himself. What man unmoved can see lovely woman shed tears? “Come now, Roxy, don’t you be a-fretting,” he urged. “You just wipe your eyes and tell me all about it.”

“Oh! No! I—I can’t.”

“Oh, come now, Roxy.”

“It’s—it’s—that hateful—that—oh, I can’t—that spiteful Kitty—a-calling you my feller.”

“Well,” said Binns, “ain’t I?”

Wretched Binns! To have taken pains not to call Roxy dear, to tell her to wipe her eyes, not her bright eyes, and to be caught in this unguarded way by three chance words! It was all over now; he was in for it, he saw plainly; he might as well give up handsomely. And yet—he couldn’t. All that he could do was to take to his heels and clip down the steps and into the pung and drive away as if Wild Ladies—or something else—were after him. It was Roxy’s voice that was after him, shrill as a view-halloo: “Oh, Binns! A tenderloin roast! First cut! Don’t forget—ten pounds—”

But Binns had to face the music that night or else Mr. McMasters would have to get another butcher-boy, as otherwise he would not dare face Roxy to-morrow, and there had been too much trouble from people needing employment in those overcrowded days for him to give up his place for a trifle. Well, he would go. And he would say, “Roxy, now let’s be friends, two friends, two fellers together, two folks bound to have a good sleigh-ride, with no sparking about it, no nonsense, no—you know—no spooning. You’re a first-rate girl, and I don’t know such a hand at turnovers in all the kitchens I see; but that’s no reason we should be a couple of fools with nothing to be fools on. If I was in the marrying way, there’s nobody I wouldn’t marry quicker ’n you,” and here he knew his conscience would twinge him, but he would say it. “But I ain’t, and you ain’t, and so we’ll just continue the services as we were going on before.”

And did he say it? Did Binns say it? Not a word of it! Roxy was at the gate, all alert, peering out, with the bright red comforter over her arm; and running back for the hot bricks, she had whisked into that pung, and tucked the comforter about them, and chirruped to the old nag, all in a moment, and Binns found himself slipping along the road without a word, but—I am ashamed to tell it—with a shrewd suspicion that somehow he had better not lean back, for that was Roxy’s arm behind him.

“I declare!” said Roxy. “Splendid sleighing, splendid moonlight, warm as toast, and your—your—you know who—beside you, a-driving as if he could turn round on the point of a pin—I don’t know as any one needs to be any happier.”

Perhaps the compliment on his driving was soothing to Binns’s perturbed soul; but he was naturally reticent, and at that moment he did not commit himself. One thing was safe—music; and presently he had piped up a warlike song:

followed by another effort indicative of the leadings of his fancy, whose refrain rang:

“Pride of the pirate’s heart!”

This failure of Binns to improve his opportunity evidently struck no chill to Roxy’s ardor. They were approaching Trimble’s Hollow, where a bridge crossed the frozen mill-stream, and Binns leaned forward for the whip in order to accelerate their motion—one could not say speed—when suddenly Roxy flung herself a little on one side, crying out, “No, no, now, you mustn’t begin that!”

“Mustn’t begin what?” said Binns, gruffly.

“Kissing me at every bridge we come to, just as all the other boys do. It’s something I never did approve of.”

“Nor I nuther,” said Binns. But what if you don’t approve of a thing—when a rosy cup of wine is held to your lips, and the fire tingles there, and the color sparkles, and the aroma is that of a garden of flowers under your nose, do you always have the strength of mind to set that cup down instantly? Instantly; for the man as well as the woman who hesitates is lost. And Binns, with those sparkling eyes sparkling into his, that rosy cheek close beside his own, those wholesome rosy lips—I am sure that neither you nor I would have done the like—but Binns was only Binns. And what you have done once it is so easy to do again. Before they reached home, that wicked Binns—the poor guileless little fellow—felt himself quite on the way to become what, in his ignorance of the existence of Don Giovanni, stood for the same thing. But as for Roxy, she felt very well satisfied with herself and her excursion. Binns was hers; he himself had said it that morning; and on the sleigh-ride that evening he had conducted very much as, in her imagination and belief, all lovers should conduct. The horse was blanketed at the hitching-post, and Binns was brought in whether he would or no, and some sequestered turkey-bones were grilled, and a flip was made, and there had been daring possession taken of a mince-pie, the goodly share of which transformed into a part of Binns might have caused a procession of the ghosts of all his grandmothers since the Flood to walk across his counterpane that night. And Binns ate and drank, and actually made several little jokes, and apropos of the pastry he sang:

appearing to Roxy as he sang as delightful a personage as an end man. And when he went away Roxy bent and put her arms about his neck, and gave him a good fair kiss on his mouth, as any girl should kiss her sweetheart.

It was not in these days Binns dealt Roxy the hearty smack, and received the no less hearty slap in return; that was when smacks and slaps meant nothing, and in the innocence of his heart Binns was treating Roxy as he did most of the other kitchen girls upon his rounds. Later on, when the nature of Roxy’s attentions, and of her intentions too, became more pointed, these little occurrences were susceptible of misconstruction; and Binns had even been embarrassed as to the return he should make for her tarts and jellies, without, however, being able to forego the dainties offered by the assiduous charmer. But now—well, if one must be kissed, Roxy’s was a sweet and wholesome mouth, and that whip of frothy cream with plum preserve at the bottom of it was sweet and wholesome too.

It was generally understood in the household now that Roxy and Binns were “keeping company,” and no one was surprised to see Roxy always, in the afternoon hours, with a piece of white cloth in her hand, sometimes a part of what appeared to be an elaborate trousseau made chiefly of tucks and insertings and edgings, sometimes a table-cloth she was hemming, or towels she was fringing, with a pride of possession that needed no bashful concealment. She had a sewing-machine of her own in her attic chamber, and who would have had the heart to stop its low melodious thunder, long after every soul in the house was in bed? If it were Gladys, softly stitching folds of lace on sheer lawn, and you saw the light in her lattice, she would indeed have been a subject of romantic interest.

It was not exactly a pleasant thing, all this unreserve of Roxy’s. And it was really a relief to know that it had its side of maidenly delicacy and diffidence. This was exhibited in some faint degree when one afternoon Binns, who had been belated, stopped at the door, with a cargo of up-country calves, to take the order for next day’s provision, and suddenly there was a hurrying and scurrying, and Roxy was hiding something white and bunchy under her apron, and then throwing it under the table, very red in the face herself, half giggling, half crying, and Kitty, making a dive, was drawing the article from its temporary refuge, and holding it up in the face of all creation.

“What’s that?” said Binns.

“Oh my, Kitty! Oh, don’t! How can you, Kitty? Ain’t you ’shamed?” cried Roxy. And up went the apron across the hair, making a muss of all the crimps that had cost her an hour over kerosene lamp and slate-pencil when the kitchen work was done.

“Why, what’s all the fuss about that?” said Binns, good-naturedly, with Kitty’s contagious laugh.

“As if you didn’t know!” said Kitty.

“I don’t see anything particular in a cotton bag,” said Binns.

“It’s house-keeping goods, you stupid!” cried Kitty. “Isn’t it, Roxy?”

“Well, what if it is?”

“Oh, Binns!” cried Roxy, pulling down the apron and showing a face where the mismated eyes were full of liquid brightness, and the ruddy cheeks were redder still with blushes. “It’s—it’s ours!”

“Ours!”

“And I’ve got a dozen of them!”

“A dozen—”

“I’ve a dozen of everything,” cried Roxy, exultantly, all barriers burned away, “except towels, and I’ve six dozen of them. I sent up to the great sale where Rivers is running linen goods against Black’s running of gloves, and got ’em for ninepence apiece. Think of that!”

A long whistle escaped from Binns’s pursed-up lips, round as which his eyes had opened, and then, without another syllable, the astonished bridegroom and prospective householder darted down the back steps and into his cart, and galloped away, looking as nearly like one of the calves inside the rack as a human being could.

It must have been a rather tremendous moment for Binns. Up to that interview with one of the dozen of them he had been comparatively a free man, with nothing definitely pledged, with everything that was really decisive so far away that he could look at it without shutting his eyes, and with all the contingencies of time and space between. But now—house-keeping goods! Bought and paid for! Every article of them was like a winding-sheet that bound him hand and foot. He felt himself fettered, with all the world for witness; and even if he could have escaped otherwise, here in some mysterious manner, a complication of moral forces, were the great firm of Rivers and the great firm of Black, in the great metropolis, brought in as restraining influences. Something like this must have wrought on Binns’s inner consciousness as nothing ever did before, for he wound himself up to the pitch of coming that very evening for a voluntary and unappointed call upon Roxy, who, sitting on the back steps—for it was late in the spring—had just put the last thread that she could see into her hemstitching.

“Roxy,” said Binns, after a preliminary skirmish, “you’re a great seamstress. But don’t you think, say—that—that this is a little previous?”

“I’m so glad you feel so, Binns,” said Roxy, demurely, taking only the latest usage of the word. And then, looking up with her happiest smile, she added, “I think it’s a little previous myself.”

“Then what in the world are you doing it for?” blurted out Binns.

“Doing it for?” said Roxy, in amazement. “Why, for our house—for us.”

“Don’t you think we’re a couple of fools, Roxy?” he said, in a tremulous voice, looking in the direction of Europe or Africa, or anything but Roxy.

“A—couple—of—fools?”

“Not to let well enough alone,” he contrived to add before his voice failed and went out.

“I don’t know what you mean, Binns,” said Roxy.

“Well,” said Binns, moistening his lips in order to articulate, “I mean—you’re very well off as you be, and so’m I at home. And how are we going—to live—with nothing—to live on? And where? And what’s the use of all your house-keeping goods?”

“Binns!” cried Roxy. And there was ominous silence for a moment before the flood-gates of her eloquence were opened. “When we only want three rooms!” she cried. “And can hire them in your own mother’s house. And I’ve money enough put by for a carpet and a cooking-stove and a rocking-chair. And I’ve got a chamber-set of my own, and a sewing-machine, and a dozen napkins, and six table-cloths, and a dozen sheets, and a dozen pillow cases, and six dozen towels, and four blankets, and a comforter I made myself, and patchwork quilts enough to make a circus tent, and two worked motters, and no end of braided mats—for I’ve always, always been getting ready! And there’s all the wedding presents yet, and clothes enough to last me a couple of years and more, and I’ll never come upon you for any. And you with six dollars a week and some hens, and I able to run a kitchen-garden myself while you’re at the shop, and raise all the vegetables we’ll use, and the ladies of the house here going to give me their clear-starching to do, anyway, and you to have your clothes mended and your washing done with no expense, and no board to pay—”

“I don’t pay board now,” stammered Binns, his words a straw upon the flood.

“And after a little we could take a couple of boarders, you know, or I would have shoes to bind from the shop, or we could do both, and have the cheerfulest kind of evenings, and you could get your butcher’s meat first cost, of course.”

“How many turnovers and whips and jellies and sangarees and hearts and rounds and doughnuts do you think we could get on six dollars a week?” asked Binns, with courageous sarcasm.

“Well, I guess we sha’n’t go without doughnuts,” answered Roxy, scornfully. “And as for turnovers, there’s apple-trees right in your mother’s yard.”

“But they’re mother’s.”

“What if they are?”

“I guess you’d find out if you went to picking mother’s apples for your sauce.”

“Well, then, we can set some out ourselves. And as for sangarees, I rather think I know how to make them as cheap as the next. And maybe we can keep a cow after a little. I’ll milk her, Binns. And I’m sure I mean to have a couple of little black pigs. And by-and-by, if we can manage to raise turkeys, it will be money in our pockets. Yes, Binns, there isn’t any doubt about it—it will be money in our pockets to go to house-keeping right away, and I make no question I will have silver spoons given me here, and money and everything. And then, Binns, you’re nothing now but McMasters’s butcher-boy—but then you’ll be a married man—McMasters’s man; and they won’t be calling you by your given name, and ordering you round. You’ll be somebody, and receive consideration; and I think the sooner we set the day the better, on account of getting the garden started. What do you say to this day fortnight? That’ll give me time for the cake.”

“I—I’ll see,” cried the agonized Binns, who may have felt as if an anaconda had swallowed him. And he stood up and listened to a lad whistling as he went up the road unseen behind the high garden wall, his hands in his pockets, a free spirit, while he—

He turned and looked at Roxy. She was not attractive-looking, she was only good-natured; her teeth were uneven, although her mouth was wholesome, her skin was rough and red, her hair was frowsy, her snapping eyes were not a pair. He sat down upon the steps again, and hid his face in his hands, and groaned aloud. “I—I don’t see how I can leave my mother,” he said.

Poor Binns. He was no beauty himself, with his red head and his freckles, his pale eyes and lips, and his dwarfish stature; and it is doubtful if another girl in town would have thought of him as lover and husband. But what did he care for that? He had not thought of another girl. Nor of this one either. And how it had all come about he was sure he did not know. It seemed to him as if he were in a dreadful dream, where one thing happens and another follows without any relation, till it all becomes a nightmare.

The next day no Binns arrived to take the dinner order. And on the following day a tall, thin fellow, who looked like Binns pulled out and flattened, appeared at the storm-door in his place; and on the third day we learned that Binns was sick in bed at home.

Anything like Roxy’s importance and bustle now was seldom seen in the house. At first her reddish hue waned, and then she went about her work with one tear trickling after another along her nose and glittering suspended on its tip. At last, however, nature gave way, and Roxy sat down in a corner of the kitchen and gave way too.

“Well, if ever!” said Kitty. “If you ain’t as big a baby as Binns is!”

“I guess you’d cry,” whimpered Roxy, “if—if—your—”

“Well? My—”

“Your—sweetheart was—suffering—at home—and he might as well be in Egypt, with that mother of his—and you didn’t know—”

“As if ’twas worse for Binns than for the rest of us to have a toothache or his head hurt him! What on earth are you worrying about it for, anyway?”

“Because it’s my duty to,” said Roxy, severely. And it being her afternoon out, she put on her things and stalked up the road to Binns’s home, where she made herself and her errand known, and remained till after nightfall; to everybody’s surprise Binns himself returning with her.

Binns and Roxy, however, did not occupy the whole attention of the family, and after the first glance it was not observed whether they came into the kitchen or went strolling down the vegetable garden together. But some time after the house should have been closed and Roxy should have been reposing by Kitty’s side, it was found that she had not come in, and the hat and feather with which she exaggerated her stature were seen conspicuously touched by the ray of the late-rising moon outside the high street fence. Needless to say that Binns was not seen at all.

But Binns was present all the same, as in the active conversation going on out there, in answer to Roxy’s shrill expostulations, a gruff little growl seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth—the voice of Binns.

“But I’m all ready, Binns. I’ve got everything except the carpet and the cooking-stove, and I haven’t asked you to get a thing, and I’ve spent all the money, except enough for them, that I’ve laid up since I’ve been having my wages myself.”

“You needn’t,” said the unseen owner of the growl. “Nobody asked you to.”

“I didn’t wait for anybody to ask me. It isn’t my way. I like to be generous. I meant to surprise you and please you, and show you that I came to you pretty forehanded.” And here Roxy’s voice was apparently drowned in tears.

“I can’t help it,” muttered Binns, in the pause. “Mother says it’s ridic’lous; she says side by side we look like a clothes-pin and a clothes-pole, and we’ll have everybody laughing at us.”

“I’ll have everybody laughing at me,” sobbed Roxy, her voice rising to the surface again. “They’ll say—I don’t know what they won’t say! And that spiteful Kitty! And oh, Binns, when I’d counted on such a happy home!”

“Mother says there never was such a tall woman in the family,” growled the bass tones again.

“As if tallth made any difference in hearts!” cried Roxy, very reasonably.

“And I ain’t old enough to go and be married. And I don’t want to be, either. I never said yes, hi, or no about it. And when I don’t want to be, I don’t see—”

“Binns,” said Roxy, solemnly, “I could sue you for breach of promise to-morrow”—as she paused an inarticulate rumble spoke for Binns’s shudder—“if I was so mean as some folks,” she added.

“Then you ain’t going to,” he said. “And besides, what good ’d it do you? I ’ain’t got nothing.”

“Your mother has,” answered Roxy, with repeated solemnity, as became the implied and dreadful threat, which again gave Binns pause. “But I’d scorn it,” said Roxy, after letting the idea work a moment. “I don’t hold my affections so slight that any money—Oh, Binns! If you feel too young to settle yet, and want to have your fling out, I’ll wait—”

“There’s no use in waiting,” ejaculated Binns.

“That’s just what I say,” cried Roxy, in a sudden flush of hope and misinterpretation. But the dead silence told her mistake. “Do you mean to say it’s all off?” she cried, in despair.

“It’s all off,” growled Binns, in the boldness of desperation. “My mother says—”

“Oh, bother your mother!” exclaimed Roxy.

Perhaps Binns looked aghast at such a proposition, for she added at once, “I mean—I don’t mean—any disrespect to her. But I never knew that mothers could—”

“Mine can,” said Binns, comprehending the hiatus, and still under the impulse of his last access of courage. “My mother stood by me when I couldn’t stand alone. And now I’m going to stand by her.”

“I never asked you not to!” cried out Roxy. “I’d be as good a daughter to her as any she’s got. I know she’d like my short-cake. And oh, Binns, it would have been so nice and cosey for you when you came home, and I had onions all smothering in the spider, and there’s nobody can fry the rind any crisper than I can.” And at this juncture a rush, a stumble, a quick patter of footsteps, might have been heard, and Binns had resorted to his last refuge, as usual, and was running away up the street and out of sight as fast as his little legs could carry him. And Roxy came into the house, and sat down by the kitchen window in the moonlight, and cried as if she were doing the weeping for all the disconsolate damsels in the world, and got up and found herself some tarts, and ate them with a relish, feeling in every mouthful that Binns would never have those tarts to-morrow, and went to bed and to sleep.

The next day an air of expectation kept Roxy all alert, and her hope that possibly Binns had run home to ask his mother, after all, alternated with her despairing certainty that she should never see him again. Occasionally she burst forth in a song that showed the drift of her thoughts:

the quickly following tears obscuring the rest of the words that had once come home with her from a circus. But the despairing certainty became a fixed one when a week passed, and the long, thin young man still came to take the orders. She made no attempt at pride or concealment. She tried to do her work, and she failed. And she went away at last, saying her heart was broken, and she could live no longer in a place full of cruel associations.

A year afterwards, Roxy having been heard of as established in another home, and paying her attentions to another object, it was presumed that the old wound was healed; and her former mistress, happening to meet her one day in the street-car, was pleased with the smiling face that towered over her under its tall hat and scarlet feather. This lady had what she called a warm interest in humanity, but what her husband was daring enough to call an intense curiosity, and the unexpected meeting with Roxy inspired her with a keen desire to know something further of the tragic story of Binns. But she could not bring herself to the fateful point, and was spared the trouble by Roxy herself asking her if Binns came for the dinner orders nowadays, and closing the brief conversation that ensued by turning a melancholy eye upon her former mistress, and sighing, as she left the car,

“Oh, it hurts there still!”

And so one year passed and another, and the world rolled over on its sunny side, and rolled over again on its dark one, and the clouds of sorrow broke in their sad deluge, and the sun burst forth again, filling the horizon with transformation, and new points in every landscape rose in brilliancy or sank into shadow, and Roxy was one of the points that sank into shadow—the shadow of forgetfulness.

It is a singular liability we have, after losing sight of any in whom we have had interest, to feel as if they remained exactly where we left them, heedless of the way in which the forces of the universe are building up and tearing down, and of the fact that fate and fortune never let us remain at rest. If any of the old household thought of Roxy, it was still as some one’s kitchen-girl laying her sieges and approaches to an unwilling heart. Is not Gladys, in our memory, still at her lattice gazing after the cavalry officer? But fate and fortune, despite our indifference, were conscious of Roxy as an integral atom of the great cosmos, and in the interval of forgetfulness were as busy with her as with any other of the lovers whose loves give the raison d’être to the universe.

It was late one summer afternoon, a few years after that eventful night when Binns’s footsteps had been heard pattering up the street, that Roxy’s former mistress, having been taken by her liege lord on a little tour of their native county, passed slowly along a rural lane, some dozen miles away from home, and held the reins while her husband paused to throw back the top of the phaeton, looking about the soft afternoon landscape meanwhile. On one side, a thick woodland shut off the view and the easterly winds, but on the other was a rolling hill-country broken by farms and orchards, and just at hand was a tiny cottage, with open windows and blowing curtains that allowed sight of the interior and its various mottoes framed upon the walls. A cow grazed in the grass-plot beyond; there were symptoms of a pig-sty, and a decided hennery in the rear; and there were lines of cabbages like great green roses, and potatoes and onions and beans and blushing beet-tops, and a honeysuckle and a rose-bush, and a bed of sweet-peas and a beehive, and a gigantic elm-tree overtopping everything. What a picture of content and comfort it was! “What a country this is,” said the lady in the phaeton, “where the poorest can have such a peaceful home as this, where some happy young farmer has brought home his timid little wife, and their cares are few, and they have nothing to regret, and little left to wish for!”

Somebody was bustling about inside the pretty nest, a white cloth was spread upon the table, there was a clatter of dishes, and then there stole forth an odor—an odor of nectar and ambrosia to the hungry travellers a dozen miles from home—an odor of onions smothering in the spider. Suddenly a figure appeared at the side window beckoning some one, a tall, an immensely tall and gaunt young woman, and on her face, her reddish face, with its snapping, unpaired brown eyes, surmounted by a wilderness of slate-pencil crimps, a smile that could only be the habitual smile of perfect satisfaction. “Stop a moment,” said the lady in the phaeton—“one moment. Surely—that must be—it is—” Just then the young woman sat down by the window, and began to beguile the tedium of her waiting with music—nasal, to be sure, but still a familiar tune. “Hark!” said the gentleman. “Did I hear a bagpipe?”

“A comb and paper,” said the lady. “I wonder if she keeps it still in the drawer with the nutmegs?”

I don’t know why neither of that guilty couple cared at that crisis to leave the phaeton. It would seem natural to have delayed a little, to have asked some questions, to have tasted, perchance, the contents of that redolent dish, to have learned if there are any in the world to whom their very wishes give them not their wish, to have learned if cruel fate were as cruel to any in the fact as in the fear. But the lady shrank into her corner, and the gentleman laid an urgent hand upon the reins, and they went on and up the winding road. Who is it cares to see the struggle of the fly in the web? For at the moment that they started up, as if for the capping race at Coulterlee, there appeared, coming slowly round the row of pole-beans, the person who had been beckoned—a little scrap of a fellow, stout and stocky in his long blue blouse, pale-eyed, red-headed, freckled, holding in his arms a teething baby, which he soothed with a monotonous melody as he sang, half under his breath,

Unmistakably it was Binns.