BOOK THREE: MR PETERSEN IS BROUGHT LOW

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I

Mr. Petersen had remained faithful to the memory of Minnie for five years. It cannot be said that he had grieved, or suffered; his attachment had not been a very passionate one; yet Minnie had not misread him. He really had wanted to marry her, had felt for her a mild and kindly sort of love.

He had not, however, been over-anxious for marriage. He cared little for women; in all these five years his heart had never been touched, and he had formed no ties. Nor was he lonely, except very rarely, perhaps in a Spring twilight, or while listening to certain beloved pieces of music. He had the most admirable sort of reputation. Temperate, honest, thrifty, his life was without a secret; he didn’t talk about his affairs, but he was perfectly willing that others should find out about them. In his own sober way, he cherished a terrific pride, not so much for his achievements, as for his spotless honour. He was the Socialist of the world’s dream, the man who harmed no one, who was always just, always open to argument, always generous. As far as was humanly and sensibly possible he put into practice his convictions. He fraternised with the workmen—the intelligent ones—asked them to dinner on Sunday. He admitted making and keeping a considerable sum of money, and was always ready and willing to explain this course.

“The only valuable Socialist,” said he, “is the one who works for the advancement of all. How do you wish me to so work then if I strip myself of power? Money, in our modern world, is power. The Socialists must first of all concentrate money in their own hands.”

He quite satisfied his comrades. He was respected everywhere, because he was without arrogance or ostentation, and yet had so admirable a balance in the bank. He had made most of his money through a “development park,” which he had planned and executed; scores of little houses along orderly streets, planted with saplings; each house with its lawn, its tiny back garden, all neat, bright and prosperous. They were built for the factory workers, and Mr. Petersen had included a number of what he called “built-in features”; little bookcases, china closets, window seats, and so on. He knew what the comrades wanted, and he gave them honest and generous measure for their money. How could he not succeed?

He lived in the same solid, modest house in the village, with the same Swede and his wife serving him in Socialistic fashion. In appearance too he was quite unchanged; immense, red-faced, fair-haired, blonde-moustached; slow, good-tempered, rather silent. Within himself, however, he was conscious of those profound changes we all experience and which the world ignores. He had read, had thought, had seen; he had grown. He believed himself in every way a better and a stronger man. Although he had felt very little.

Minnie’s abrupt disappearance had distressed him and worried him; he had made many enquiries about her, but her sister was surprisingly curt and discouraged him.

“She’s gone to New York,” she told him. “She has a position there. I don’t hear from her often.”

There came a day when she even said, biting her lip:

“I’d rather not talk about Minnie. She—we’re not on very good terms.”

This had caused him a pang, for he surmised that it meant a man. He had said he was sorry, and he was. He pitied that bright, lovely Frances, condemned to lonely drudgery. He wished to be nice to her; to help her; he attempted to make little friendly visits now and then, very patient with her growing irritability. He saw how things were; she didn’t get on with the old lady as Minnie had, relations were strained. He watched the four years pass, crushing her, embittering her, ageing her. Her youth died, she became severe, still beautiful but no longer charming. She managed the moribund old house better than her sister ever had done, but it had lost its old air of homeliness. It was deserted, it was desolate. She earned a bit of money by baking cakes for the Woman’s Exchange, and embroidering tablecloths. Like her grandmother, she “managed,” never able, of course, to pay the accumulating debts, never a penny the richer at the end of a year than at the beginning; simply keeping her head above water, procuring food for them to eat, clothes for them to wear, maintaining an appearance not too humiliating for a Defoe. It was touching and horrible. Mr. Petersen urged her to come back into his office again, but she refused.

“You could get some young girl from the village to look after your grandmother,” he said, but she stopped him.

“Not at any price could I get anyone to do what I do.”

It was quite true. A servant would have required lunch, which Frankie didn’t; would have expected to be warm in winter, to rest in the terrible heat which overwhelmed the river valley in mid-summer.

Mr. Petersen waived the question of rent. After a time it was mentioned no more. The two women didn’t thank him; it seemed not only proper but essential that Defoes should live in the Defoe house. Mr. Petersen, after all, was a stranger, an intruder, a Swede. And he didn’t need the money, either. So he didn’t get it.

In the middle of a terrible winter the old lady died of pneumonia, and, as soon as the funeral had taken place, conducted in a seemly manner, Frankie went off. He heard nothing more of her. She never wrote to him, or to anyone he knew.

He remodelled the house. With what curious, painful feelings did he watch its dismantlement, walk into that gloomy room Minnie had so long inhabited and see for the first time its poverty. All the furniture was left there; doubtless it belonged to the creditors, but none of them troubled to claim it. All old, shabby, ugly. There were lots of closets, cupboards, a big attic, filled with astounding rubbish, clothes, old papers, broken furniture, pictures. Whatever was worth saving, Mr. Petersen removed to his own house, the rest he burned in a sort of sacrificial bonfire. He saw the sagging old bed, the little rocking chair, the lame bureau from Minnie’s room go up in smoke and all the while he thought with profound melancholy of the brisk, pleasant little woman. He sighed over her, wished with all his heart that he could find her again and put her into his own orderly and comfortable home. Solemnly he led the silly old horse, more provoking than ever in its senility, back to his own stable, while his housekeeper carried the cats.

The house, because of its size, was destined for a boarding-house. That too put him in mind of intrepid Minnie and her venture.

“Poor girl!” he thought. “A brave little soul! What’s become of her, I wonder?”

II

This day he was not thinking about her; he was busy in his office, dictating letters to his spinster stenographer, the sound of his drawling, hesitating voice filling the little room. A window was open to let in the sweet May air, and a breeze ruffled his hair. As usual he was in his shirt sleeves.

The door was open, and in she came; said, gently:

“Mr. Petersen!”

“Miss Minnie!” he cried, jumping up, and according to his custom, hurrying into his respectable dark coat. “Well, well, Miss Minnie!”

She shook her head.

“Mrs. Naylor,” she corrected him, with a smile; the very same pleasant, kindly smile. He stared at her, smiling himself, and shaking his head.

“Well, well!” he repeated.

She hadn’t changed much; she was stouter and a trifle more serious, that was all. He observed that she was in mourning, wearing a black blouse and skirt somewhat like his housekeeper but dowdier and cheaper. Nevertheless, she didn’t look poor; somehow you didn’t pity her.

“Mrs. Naylor,” he repeated.

“I’m a widow,” she said, simply. He answered, in very much the same simple and friendly way—

“I’m sorry.”

Then she said, smiling again, but with a hint of melancholy:

“I’ve come to you for advice again. I look on you as an old friend, Mr. Petersen.”

“I am!” he assured her.

“I know it!”

He held out a huge hand.

“Sit down,” he said. “Miss Layne, you shall have a holiday in honour of Mrs. Naylor’s return.”

The spinster stenographer, disapproving, suspicious, with a comically false smile, put on a pinched little jacket and a hat and jerked out, nodding in duty bound to this odious widow.

“Now!” said Mr. Petersen.

Without too much emphasis, in just the quiet, well-bred way he admired, she told him her little story.

“My husband had a great deal of trouble ... in business, and so on. He was English, and I don’t think he understood our ways very well. So ... when he ... died, there wasn’t anything. Nothing at all. And I have a little girl.... I sold everything I could, and then—somehow—I wanted to come back here—where father was born.... And I remembered all your kindness and I thought perhaps you’d help me—advise me.”

“To the very best of my ability,” he said, soberly.

“I thought of a boarding-house. Would there be a good chance for one here?”

Still the same idea; perhaps it is an obsession with the womanly woman.

Mr. Petersen suggested a thorough discussion of her problem from every side.

“Do you mind, then, if I bring little Sandra in?” Minnie asked. “I didn’t want to bother you——”

“By all means. Where is she? I’ll fetch her.”

“Downstairs,” said Minnie. “Just inside the door.”

She was standing there with a patience that touched his heart, a thin, tall, little girl-baby, with limpid grey eyes and straight black hair. One of those indescribably appealing children, filled with a divine pathos, a soul-stirring beauty. She was very quiet, too subdued, he thought, and too fragile. She took his hand willingly and toiled up the stairs at his side; she said nothing, except:

“Is Mother there?”

“Yes, pet,” he answered.

He knew at that instant that he was going to marry Minnie and take care of her and of this little creature too. He looked down upon its dark head with a new and poignant tenderness. He would be its father.

The child ran up to Minnie and stood beside her, looking up into her face calmly. And she looked back at it with an expression he had never conceived her capable of: rapturous, idolatrous passion. Her proud eyes questioned him, and he willingly responded.

“She is beautiful,” he said.

“I can’t help thinking so,” said Minnie.

Their business discussion amounted to very little. No one could discuss business with Minnie, anyway. It was an absurd idea.

Simply, Mr. Petersen asked if he couldn’t lend her a bit until she had “looked round,” and without demur Minnie accepted. In some intangible but perfectly plain way she suggested that she accepted only because of her little Sandra and that accordingly the acceptance was justified, if not sanctified. Mr. Petersen was ready to believe this.

“And now,” he said, when the money had changed hands, “there’s the problem of finding a place for you to live.”

He suggested several places for her to telephone, and she did so. The extreme propriety of both of them forbade his appearing in any such transaction. There was nothing suitable to be had; as a very last resort he proposed the Eagle House, and there she was obliged to go.

“I’ll call this evening, if I may,” he said, “to see if you’re all right.”

III

The Eagle House was little changed from the days when Frankie had lunched there, the same four-story, brown brick building with awnings, much the worse for wear, boldly marked “Eagle House.” It still derived its support from the “Pool Room and Café,” reached by a separate entrance, but something had been done for the comfort of the “guest,” as well—a sun-baked, uneven little tennis court now appeared on the hitherto vacant lot beside the hotel. Inside it was just as sordid, as fly-blown, as horribly gloomy.

But Minnie was not fastidious. She discovered that there was at least one other lady stopping there, the wife of a visiting cotton-mill magnate, and that satisfied her. With her child by the hand she walked sedately through the lobby, thick with tobacco smoke, crowded with the travelling salesmen and the village loafers who composed the clientele of the Eagle House, and went upstairs to take possession of a tiny bedroom with a single bed for both of them. It was very cheap and that was what she required. She unpacked their very few belongings quite cheerfully and washed the little girl’s face.

“Shan’t we be happy here!” she said.

They were rather late in coming down, and the dining room was full of men, the waitresses flying round, exchanging sallies with the guests, a brilliant glare pouring down from an electrolier high overhead. Minnie stood in the doorway, still holding the child’s hand, a little bewildered by the noise and bustle and by the frankness with which everyone turned to regard them. Unassailably respectable, she met and countered the general regard and with dignity advanced to a little table in a corner. A book was brought for the little girl to sit on and an interested waitress presented a grease-spotted menu. They ate their meal composedly; once in a while the clear voice of the child could be heard asking a question. It behaved wonderfully well. It ate what its mother ate, without regard for any silly modern ideas as to what was suitable to its little wants—and it ate mighty little.

They finished and went upstairs to what was known as the “Ladies’ Sitting Room,” a big room, unseparated from the hall, furnished with a mouldering “set” in mahogany and obliterated brocade; a most desolating room, with one naked electric light. But how respectable, situated as it was, directly at the head of the stairs, baldly open to the gaze of each and every one of the guests, passing by on the way to his room! There was a table piled with magazines years and years old; Minnie and the child sat down by this and began looking them over in silence. So Mr. Petersen found them, and wondered at and pitied the precocious sobriety of the tiny girl. He took her on his knee and lifted up her face.

“A beautiful child!” he said again.

Again Minnie beamed.

“And so good!” she said. “Never a bit of trouble! Mother’s comfort, aren’t you, Sandra?”

“I are,” said the baby, seriously.

“When does she go to bed?” he enquired. He thought the little face looked pale and tired.

“Whenever I do,” Minnie answered, and then and there expressed her unalterable opposition to all these silly, high-flown ideas that women got out of books. (Mr. Petersen fancied he recognised this antagonism to book learning.) She brought up her Sandra according to her own common-sense and the dictates of a mother’s heart, and not according to doctors and books. In a natural way.

Mr. Petersen had nothing to say on that dangerous subject. He had come to ask Minnie if she would like to go to work in his office.

“But I don’t know anything. I can’t do anything!”

“You’ll learn easily.”

“And what could I do with Sandra?”

“I thought of that. My housekeeper’s a very fine woman; I spoke to her; she says she’d be glad to take care of the little girl all day.”

Thus it was arranged.

“I might as well stop here,” said Minnie, “until I’m more settled, anyway.”

Mr. Petersen agreed, and as he didn’t think it proper that his visit should be a long one, rose to take leave. He clasped Minnie’s hand over the head of her child.

“A brave, fine, sensible woman!” he thought.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I

As an office worker Minnie was not so successful as Mr. Petersen had anticipated. Not by any means. She tried; she was very earnest and, in a way, painstaking, but it was extremely difficult to teach her anything. Within a week Mr. Petersen was bitterly regretting Miss Layne, whom he had ruthlessly, although generously, discharged. He was obliged to admit that Minnie was not bright or quick, and neither was she accurate. She learned to typewrite, but how badly! At figures she was hopeless. She always made mistakes.

“But I know you’ll go over them,” she would say, in regard to her crooked and erroneous columns. “You’re sure to find any mistakes there are.”

He remembered Frances, her capability and intelligence. He asked after her.

“She’s gone out to the Coast,” Minnie told him. “She’s settled out there. I never hear from her.”

Evidently a serious breach. He regretted it; he thought what a help Frances might be to her poor sister.

Somehow it distressed him to see the poor plump little soul working away, poring over his books. He got Miss Layne back again, and she did all the work that really mattered, and left the rest for her abhorred colleague. She detested and despised and feared Minnie. She had seen at once that the artful widow was sure to hoodwink Mr. Petersen.

He saw strange things going on, which amused while they troubled him. He saw Minnie putting pencils and erasers and sheets and sheets of folded paper into her coat pocket. For her child, no doubt: but though he smiled at her maternal obsession, he was growing convinced that the womanly woman is out of place in a business office....

Her conduct toward Miss Layne he could not admire. She was so unnecessarily haughty, so frigid. And insisted so upon this being her first experience of “work.”

“Of course you’re used to it,” she would say, whenever she had made a glaring mistake, “but I’ve never been outside my own home before.”

She liked to bring her lunch with her, sandwiches and so on which the hotel put up for her—as well as fruit and cake which she purloined from the dinner table—and she made a great ceremony of spreading out a little embroidered doily on the desk, on which to lay her food.

“I do love to make things a little bit dainty and homelike,” she told Mr. Petersen. “You don’t mind, do you?”

But the doily was soon very far from dainty. Mr. Petersen thought he would not care to eat anything that had lain on it. He felt sorrier than ever for the poor little woman when he saw her sitting before it, so daintily eating thick ham sandwiches, and adding new bits of butter and strings of fat to her homelike tablecloth. In the course of time, the rats ate it, lace and all, and she had nothing daintier than several sheets of his best type-writing paper, fresh every day, on which to lay out her repast.

It began to dawn upon her before very long that she was not altogether indispensable; that Mr. Petersen and Miss Layne could manage the office very well without her. So she began entreating them to teach her, anything and everything. The books, especially. And, as she wrote a good enough hand, and apparently took great pains, Mr. Petersen allowed her to post certain items, providing she didn’t try to write in any of her own totals. She enjoyed doing this; she used to ask Mr. Petersen for “the books” as early in the morning as possible, because she liked to see him open the safe and hand these precious volumes to her.

But she was detected in an awful deed. He saw her, with his own eyes, carefully tearing out one of the numbered pages.

“Mrs. Naylor!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

She looked up, blushing crimson.

“I was going to copy it all again,” she explained pitifully. “I hadn’t written it very nicely. I didn’t have a proper pen. And I did take such pride in having it all look nice!”

The books went back to Miss Layne again, while Mr. Petersen invented tasks for Minnie.

She took her work with the utmost seriousness. One day Mr. Petersen surprised her wiping away a surreptitious tear.

“Now, then!” he said kindly, “What’s the matter?”

She tried to answer cheerfully, but her voice failed.

“Sandra doesn’t seem well,” she said, “I don’t know—her throat——”

“But, my dear Mrs. Naylor, why didn’t you stay home? You mustn’t worry yourself like this!”

“I didn’t want to neglect my work,” she said.

And she meant it; she had, in Minnie-fashion, made herself believe that she was essential, that her absence would cause trouble. She had to believe this; her vanity would have suffered too cruelly otherwise.

Mr. Petersen assured her and reassured her, almost begged her to go home, even appealed to Miss Layne, who answered, in what a tone, that she thought she could manage alone.

So Minnie put on her poor little coat and hat and hurried off to Mr. Petersen’s house. She had never been in it before. Mrs. Hansen, the housekeeper, observed her coming up the front steps with deep misgivings. She knew her well by sight; had often seen her in the old days, driving by with her sister, and even then had been inordinately irritated.... The idea of Mr. Petersen, king of men, learned, just, endowed with every virtue, forever picking his choicest flowers and fruits for those “beggars,” as she called them! Living there all those years without paying him a penny, and then, if you please, walking off without so much as thank you! Ungrateful creatures, owing everyone, and turning up their noses at honest people ten times better than themselves. And this one was the worst of the lot.

However, with a manner absolutely correct, Mrs. Hansen opened the door, and even smiled.

“I am Mrs. Naylor,” said Minnie, pleasantly.

“I know who you are, and all about you!” thought Mrs. Hansen, though aloud she said, “Yes, ma’am.” Although her husband was a Socialist, and her revered Mr. Petersen as well, Mrs. Hansen had no patience with such ideas. She knew herself to be a housekeeper, and as a housekeeper, socially obliged to call this widow “ma’am.”

“I came for my little girl,” Minnie went on. “I felt worried about her this morning. She didn’t seem well.”

Mrs. Hansen had her private opinion about the cause of the child’s listlessness, which she had confided to her husband, but not, of course, to Mr. Petersen, whom she looked upon as already lost.

“The child’s up till all hours of the night,” she said to Hansen, “and eats all sorts of trash. What could you expect?”

“I think she’s better now,” she said to Minnie, “she’s taken two glasses of milk.”

“You do take such wonderful care of her,” Minnie returned; “she tells me at night of so many things you’ve done for her.”

“She’s a lovely, good child,” Mrs. Hansen answered, quite unmoved by the flattery.

She led Minnie through a narrow red-carpeted passage into her kitchen, pride and joy of her life, filled with sun and sweet air, utterly clean, gleaming and neat. From the window she pointed out the quiet baby, sitting on the back steps, leaning her head against a post, languid, thoughtful, quite contented. Beside her sat an immense cat.

“Why!” cried Minnie. “That—can it possibly be Michael?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s your cat. Mr. Petersen took it after your sister left.”

Minnie looked down with tears in her eyes at her long-lost darling, sleek and fat still, but old; his buccaneer swagger gone, his insolent eyes dim. She touched his head, with the furry skin so tightly drawn over the round little skull; but he never stirred. He didn’t know her, didn’t care for her.

Then she took Sandra by the hand and led her off, out of the fresh air and the quiet garden, back to the hotel, where she got her into bed in their hot little room and read to her, hovered over her, flooded her with sympathy.

“You just needed Mother, didn’t you, baby?” she said. “Mother knows what her little girl wants!”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I

After a decorous interval, Mr. Petersen began discreetly to woo. He had considered the matter very thoroughly, and he was sure that his happiness lay in marrying Minnie. He did not deceive himself, he realised that she had faults, but they were faults he didn’t mind, lovable feminine faults. And her virtues were sublime. He knew that she would make his home an earthly paradise, with her contented, thoroughly domestic disposition and her good-temper. It never occurred to him that the lack of accuracy and method she had shown in the office might be transported to this other realm; he felt sure she would be a marvellous housekeeper. He considered her practical, perhaps because she confined her attention solely to petty things, never bothered with the ideal, the theoretical....

He also admired her dowdiness, thought it showed that she made no unworthy effort to attract his sex. He didn’t know that Minnie was far beyond that, that she had weapons infinitely more deadly. She didn’t need to look charming; she was instinct with an allurement irresistible and fatal. She was all woman, nothing but woman. She had no ambition; her mission was simply to exist. Her power lay in the fact that no man would ever be able to understand her.

Mr. Petersen knew that she wouldn’t be the comrade and equal he had longed for in his younger days; she would never comprehend his ideas and theories, he was sure. She would never become a Socialist—although she might become a parrot—or know what a Socialist was. She would remain unalterably Minnie. And that was what he wanted now.

Not even the shyest man could have dreaded proposing to Minnie. She was certain not to laugh or to be capricious. One might have said that her nature presupposed proposals. What is more, he felt sure that she knew his intention, and he had seen no hint of discouragement in her manner toward him. That counted for much with Mr. Petersen, the proud, who couldn’t bear to be laughed at.

It came about easily and naturally, in the office one Saturday afternoon; of course when they were alone. So easily and naturally that one might have imagined—

Minnie said something about the future, how black it looked for a lonely woman with a dependent child.

“I can’t go on like this,” she said, “and be separated from Sandra most of the time. You’re awfully good and kind—I’ll never forget it—but of course I can’t stay here forever. I know I’m not very useful to you. You could find plenty of others who would do as well, or better.”

He was silent, a portentous sort of silence, marshalling his forces, bringing his somewhat slow mind to bear on this subject.

“Do you think I could get a place as a housekeeper?” she asked earnestly, “where I could have Sandra with me?”

A broad smile overspread his face.

“I think so,” he said.

“Oh! Do you know of anyone?”

“Yes, if it will suit you.”

“Please tell me!”

Never in life had he so enjoyed a joke.

“It’s a nice place,” he went on slowly, “in this town.”

“With a good salary, do you think?”

“Well, yes, over ten thousand a year, I should say.”

“Oh, you’re joking, Mr. Petersen,” she cried, in such a disappointed voice that he stopped smiling and took her warm little hand.

“Minnie!” he said. “It’s I ... I want you. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy and your child too. I’ve got on well; you’ll be comfortable. If you—if you would care to marry me?”

For one instant a terrible look crossed her face—a sort of horror. She grew so white that he thought she would faint.

“You’re so kind——” she faltered.

“You mean you will?”

“I’ll have to think,” she answered. That was the answer he liked, modest, and prudent.

II

She altered strangely after that talk. Before his eyes she grew thinner and paler, looked really ill. A shadow lay over her, a trouble she could scarcely support. It distressed the good man very much in more ways than one, for he imagined she was struggling against her loyalty to her dead husband, and he was not only sorry for her, but jealous as well. She avoided him noticeably, and he was too proud and too kind to trouble her. In the office she was formal, almost hostile. All this hurt him and puzzled him; it was not until long, long after that he realised what a terrible thing was taking place in her queer little soul.

She didn’t want her child out of her sight. In the evening, when he came now and then to see her, she would sit with the little creature on her lap, pressed against her heart, sleepy and patient.

He began to fancy that he was in some way offensive to her, and little by little tried to resume his old manner, to be kind but quite impersonal. A faint resentment aided him; he called her Mrs. Naylor, and ceased to call on her at the hotel.

And, directly he began to draw back, she advanced. He permitted it. He wouldn’t see her hints; he waited until she actually asked him to call. She had tried to dress up a little, with a lace collar on her rusty old black blouse, and she had left Sandra upstairs, with a bag of candy and some new paper dolls. She was waiting in the Ladies’ Sitting Room, with the naked light illuming her sallow, anxious face; not pretty, not very young, not fresh, and in a decidedly disadvantageous situation. But fully able to cope with it.

“Mr. Petersen,” she said, very, very gravely, “some time ago you made me an offer. I have reason to believe that you regret it now. I want to tell you that you are quite free.”

“I don’t regret it. If it were of any use, I should be only too glad to repeat it.”

“You’d better not,” she said.

He enquired why.

“Because,” she said, with her charming smile, “I should accept it.”

Thus were they betrothed.

And now she was still more surprising. She wanted to be married without delay.

“We don’t want any fuss or bother,” she said. “There aren’t any preparations to make.”

“It can’t be too soon for me,” he said.

“Why not next week?” she suggested.

He professed himself delighted.

“And—Chris——” she added, with a blush, “I’d like ever so much to get a new dress for Sandra and a few little things——”

He gave her a cheque for five hundred dollars, which he thought would be ample. So that he was surprised, on the wedding day, to find her wearing a grey suit he was sure he had seen on her before. She was waiting in the “Ladies’ Sitting Room,” with little Sandra beside her, dressed in a lace frock trimmed with ribbon and a flopping beflowered hat which almost hid her grave little face. He complimented Minnie upon her appearance, although he was deeply disappointed, and then began to praise Sandra, when Minnie burst into tears.

“Oh, my poor, poor baby!” she sobbed. “My poor innocent little lamb! She doesn’t realise one bit—— Oh, you will be nice to her, won’t you?”

“Come, come! You know I will. She loves me already, don’t you, pet?”

To his chagrin and surprise, the child answered clearly:

“I don’t love you. I like you. I only love my daddy.”

He knew quite well that she had been taught to say that. It wasn’t a child’s thought. He turned redder than ever, but held his peace.

“I’m doing wrong!” cried Minnie. “You see!”

“But surely.... Little Sandra, you like old Uncle Chris a lot, don’t you?”

Sandra looked at her weeping mother, then at Mr. Petersen’s distressed face, and herself began to cry. Minnie caught her in her arms and tried to comfort her.

“Don’t cry, dear. Mother wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Minnie!” he protested.

“Oh, do stop!” she cried. “You don’t know anything about children. Don’t cry, sweetheart! You’re going to live right in the house with dear old Michael! Isn’t that nice!”

Mr. Petersen suspected at this time and at future times, that Minnie didn’t do all she might to make the child fond of him. In the course of time she dried her eyes, her mother, red-eyed and pale, straightened her hat, and the festive wedding party set off for the church.

It was evidently a terrible ordeal for Minnie. And for poor Mr. Petersen. He looked at her haggard and tormented face, and suffered from many new doubts. Was she marrying him for money, for a home for her child, for safety?

“She doesn’t love me,” he said to himself, and added, with deeper unhappiness, “She doesn’t even like me.”

They went out, man and wife, back to Mr. Petersen’s house, where Mrs. Hansen waited to salute them. She knew her days there were numbered, but the occasion called for a smile and a cheerful demeanour, and she complied.

III

“Shall we put it in the papers?” asked Mr. Petersen.

“No!” cried Minnie, “I hate that!”

They were at supper, their first meal together. And how different from what he had imagined! There was still daylight in the room, even a last gleam of sun striking across the table. It looked so charming and so peaceful that Mr. Petersen couldn’t help expecting some comment. Surely she would notice his linen and the fine old silver? Or at least Mrs. Hansen’s cooking? How could she not be delighted at finding such a home for herself and her child? He had proudly led her from room to room, each one so exquisitely clean and neat, furnished so well and substantially, and she hadn’t made a single remark about the comfort or the beauty of any of them. Just followed him and asked, idiotically, “And this is the sitting-room?” and so on. He was too even-tempered and too fond of Minnie to be angry, but he was deeply disappointed. Without showing it in any way.

Quite in his usual way, he resumed:

“Would you like to send out a few announcements? To your sister, perhaps?”

She sprang to her feet to answer him.

“No, no, no!” she cried, in an odd, hysterical voice. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you let things be as they are? Can’t you let me alone? I hate that vulgar, nasty display. I won’t have it! I’ll deny it! I’ll deny it!”

She stamped her foot and began to cry furiously, so that in the end he had to call in Mrs. Hansen, and between them they did their best to soothe her, and persuade her to go directly to bed, where a tray was brought her, so that she could finish her supper in peace. They arranged a good light, and found a cheerful book for her.

Mr. Petersen lingered a minute after Mrs. Hansen had gone downstairs. He looked down at the worn and wretched Minnie.

“My dear,” he said gently, “don’t worry, please—about anything. I don’t want you even to shake hands with me, if you don’t wish. I should be very glad if I could make you understand—that I am not that sort of man. I hope you will never have cause to regret——”

“Chris,” she answered soberly, “I’m sorry, very sorry I’ve acted like this. But I’m overwrought, not myself. After all, it’s a terribly important step for a woman. Especially when there’s a child to be considered.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Well,” said Mr. Petersen to himself, “I’m not the first nor the last!”

He was standing on the back porch, looking into the kitchen formerly Mrs. Hansen’s immaculate kingdom. How changed, how sadly altered now! As if a huge maddened bumblebee had been flying about in it, knocking down everything, making all sorts of stupid mischief. Dirty pots and pans on the stove, the sink, even, unaccountably, on the chairs. And extraordinary things, which interested him, on the floor, egg-shells, toys, a pair of gloves.

Without the least trouble he could remember just how it had been nine or ten months ago, when Mrs. Hansen had ruled, when he had been a bachelor. Sighed, but not with bitterness. Order-loving and systematic as he was, he was not exasperated by the turmoil in his home, or by the dreadful meals. He had toward Minnie an absolutely boundless tenderness. For one thing, he could see that she always tried; her failure came not from laziness but from—he hesitated even to think it—from lack of intelligence, from a sort of obstinate stupidity.

Servants were hard to procure and Minnie never got on well with them. There were always scenes, in which Minnie was the perfect Defoe and the servant very impudent. She seemed to have an absolute talent for provoking impudence from the most unexpected sources. Furthermore, she would not pay good wages. She resented the very idea of a servant profiting by her work. It was one of her queer little parsimonies. So she was compelled to do most of the work of the house alone. When she became quite submerged in the torrent of disorder, she called upon Mrs. Hansen, but grudgingly and ungraciously.

It was after six, and she hadn’t begun even to consider dinner. He went upstairs and found her sweeping the big bedroom with frantic haste.

“Oh, Chris,” she said, with a worried frown, “I know I’m awfully late. But I had a terrible headache, and I had to lie down almost all afternoon.”

He put his arm about her shoulders.

“Oh, leave this!” he said. “You poor little soul! If you’re well enough to get dressed, we’ll go and have dinner at the Eagle House.”

“But, Chris, the house! The kitchen!”

“Nonsense! I’ll get Mrs. Hansen——”

“No, not that odious woman!”

“Someone else then. Come on, little Minnie! Put on your nice new dress! I’ll find Sandra.”

Finding Sandra was a recognised preliminary. Her mother never knew where she was. She roamed about the neighbourhood, dirty and beautiful, playing with whatever children she encountered, or, oftener, went quite alone on her expeditions. She was never hungry, and hadn’t the least regard for meal times. Sometimes it sufficed to call her, sometimes Petersen went making enquiries.

He found her this time in the garden next door, talking with the old lady who lived there. As soon as she saw his kindly face she rushed up to him and sprang into his arms with the warm and silent affection she had developed for him, and which so enraptured him. He smiled apologetically over her head at the old lady, and carried her off. She was five now, and tall for her age, thinner than ever, and lovelier. She had lost the softness of babyhood, her little face was pointed, her features clearer. Mr. Petersen looked upon her with an admiration that was almost awe. His feeling for this child was more than he could express, more than he could comprehend; something beyond any paternal affection. Minnie loved her, with a violent and undiscriminating passion, but he was privately convinced that Minnie didn’t quite understand her, or quite appreciate her rareness. She would, he fancied, have loved any child she had borne with the same fervour.

“Well, Sandra!” he said, “are you hungry?”

“No, Uncle Chris.”

So she always answered, and it always worried him. He had been disturbed to learn from Minnie that the child never drank milk, didn’t like it. He found a very particular sort of cow out in the country and arranged with its owner to deliver daily a quart of its milk, and, with bribes and cajolery, got her to drink it.

“How much milk to-day?” he asked, as he did every evening.

“None. Because Michael tipped over the bottle just when Mother opened it, and he drank it all up, from the floor, like this.”

She illustrated with a small tongue.

“Now then, that will never do! We shall have Michael growing bigger than you!”

That amused her, and together they constructed imaginary scenes with an enormous Michael.

“We’re going out to dinner to-night,” he said. “Uncle Chris will make you pretty, eh?”

So he carefully washed the little face, and combed her hair, talking to her all the while.

“What did the little girl do to-day?” he asked.

“I writed a letter to my daddy. I writes to my daddy every day.”

He felt a great pity for her, and a generous pity for the man who had had to leave her forever. She often spoke about her father, and in honour bound, Mr. Petersen encouraged it, although it wasn’t altogether pleasant for him. He didn’t like to be reminded of the dead Englishman whom he had supplanted.

“That’s right,” he said. “Remember your daddy.”

The little girl was sitting on his knee while he buttoned her frock; she rubbed her silky head against his face and rested for a moment against him. He could hear Minnie in the next room, opening bureau drawers in a vain search for some of her perpetually lost belongings.

“Mother wroted too, to daddy,” Sandra went on, “and I did post it in the high box.”

He wondered casually whom Minnie had been writing to, then in an instant forgot all about it, for he heard her calling him in a queer, desperate voice:

“Chris! Chris!”

He hurried in to her. She had apparently begun to dress and then stopped; she was standing, leaning against the bureau, in a petticoat and a cheap little flannel dressing sack, her hair down.

“Chris!” she cried again.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill? Shall I send for the doctor? Speak! What’s the matter?”

“I know I’m going to die!” she whispered.

He was appalled.

“Die! Minnie, my dear, what is it!”

She collapsed in his arms; not in a faint, simply gave way, in a sort of dreadful limpness. He carried her to the bed and covered her up with a blanket, and stood looking down at her in helpless alarm.

“Shall I telephone the doctor?” he asked.

She nodded feebly, and he ran downstairs to do so. Then sat down by the bedside to wait. He would very much have liked to tidy the room a bit before the doctor came, but Minnie had clutched his hand tightly, lying with closed eyes and rigid face. He felt himself disgustingly petty to be troubled by details, by corsets on the bureau, an underskirt dangling on the gas bracket, a window curtain secured only by a pin.... Nothing better should be expected from a woman in her condition. And what did it matter? He tried to concentrate his attention on Minnie, but unhappily his eye fell upon a sort of waste tract under the bed, where in a tangle lay fluffy bits of hair, mouse-like rolls of dust, torn letters, stockings, toys of Sandra’s.

The doctor came and Petersen went downstairs to Sandra.

“Mother’s not well to-night,” he told her. “We’ll see if Uncle Chris can’t fix up some supper for his little girl.”

Resolutely denying the emotions that were assailing him, disgust, impatience and despair, he went into the awful kitchen.

“It can’t go on this way,” he said, half-aloud. “Ill or not, she could surely.... We’d better give up housekeeping if she can’t find a servant. We’d better board.”

And the emotions suddenly mastered him.

“This is filthy!” he cried. “This is horrible! You’d lose your soul in a mess like this! There isn’t, there can’t be any excuse for such a state of things!”

He came out of the awful kitchen, banging the door, and, in a whisper, telephoned for Mrs. Hansen.

Presently the doctor came down.

“She’s in a very nervous state,” he said, “but there’s nothing physically wrong, as far as I can see. Morbid. Thinks she can’t live through it. That she’s going to die. Not unusual in her condition. If I were you, I’d see she didn’t over-exert herself. Persuade her to rest more. Get a good servant, Mr. Petersen; you can afford it. Try to interest the little lady in sewing, books, that sort of thing.”

Mr. Petersen went upstairs again, to find Minnie in tears. He told her what the doctor had said.

“But I don’t want a servant!” she cried. “No, Chris! I’d far rather have the extra money.”

“I’ll give you the extra money beside,” he assured her, in surprise. “You know, my dear, you only need mention——”

It wasn’t the first time he had reflected on the subject of Minnie and income. He allowed her considerably more for housekeeping than Mrs. Hansen had had, and yet she couldn’t manage. They had cheaper food, and not too much of it. She bought no clothes for herself, and only what was essential for Sandra. The entire tone of his life was lowered; broken articles were always replaced by something cheaper. It had more than once occurred to him that Minnie must be saving, laying up a little hoard on her own account, and it rather hurt him. She knew he had left her everything in his will, and he felt that she might certainly trust him while he was living. He was very generous with her, and never asked a question, once he had given her any money; but he hated waste and extravagance, and he had no intention of giving her too free a rein. His former idea of a wife who should be a comrade, to share equally in all he had, to be consulted and apprised of everything, had gone. Minnie was not a comrade, whatever else she was. Business could never be discussed with her. He couldn’t even say, “We’ll spend so much of our profits,” or tell her what proportion he wished to save or to reinvest. He simply had to tell her, “I can afford so much and so much,” and she would take it without comment. Her share of his money, as a woman, was all that she could get hold of; she didn’t consider it a right or a privilege, but an opportunity.

He didn’t resent that attitude; he was strong enough and large-minded enough to admit the exorbitant claims of the weak. The only thing he did resent a little was her secretiveness. Her ruling instinct was to hide everything, to conceal her true thoughts, to distort her actions. She didn’t like even to tell him what she had eaten for lunch. Her age remained forever dubious. She had curious reticences about different phases of her childhood. Her little prevarications he didn’t so much mind; was rather amused by them. If she wanted to hurry him she ingenuously told him the time a half hour in advance of the truth. She gave him milk with his coffee and declared that it was cream. She told him things cost twice as much as they did, so that she could pocket the difference. And he, with a fatuousness by no means rare in this world, felt that there was no harm in these naïve little deceptions, was sure that in anything important she was quite to be trusted. If only she had talked more, confided in him more fully, he would have been entirely satisfied. Suspiciousness was utterly foreign to his kindly heart.

Although doubts were beginning to trouble him.... This “attack” for instance. He could not stifle a feeling that she had some object to gain by it. He wanted, of course, to be sympathetic, but it was not easy. After Mrs. Hansen had come, calm, polite but outraged, and had bathed and fed Sandra and got her to sleep, he went upstairs to sit with Minnie and found her lying flat on her back, her black eyes wide and troubled.

She turned to him sombrely.

“Chris,” she said, “suppose I were to die?”

“I won’t suppose it,” he answered. “You mustn’t allow yourself to be morbid.”

“I’m not. Only there’s always a risk. And I can’t help thinking of Sandra. She hasn’t anyone but me——”

“Don’t you trust me, Minnie? Don’t you know how fond I am of the child?”

“I know,” she said, with a frown. “But I’ve seen so much of that sort of love.... You might die yourself.”

“I’ve provided for that, as you know.”

“Or,—I might as well be frank, Chris. When this other child comes, you’ll feel very differently toward Sandra. You’ll lose interest in her.”

He was seriously annoyed.

“You ought to know me better——”

“I’m not blaming you. But a child of your own—it’s altogether another thing. Oh, you’ll see!”

Slow tears were running down her face.

“How can I help worrying? My poor little girl!”

“What would you like me to do?” he asked kindly. “I tell you I’ve provided for her in any event.”

“I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” she answered. She turned her face to the wall and lay perfectly still. He waited until he believed her to be asleep and then went softly out. But he was amazed and horrified when, from the darkness of the hall, he saw her sit up in bed and fling her hands above her head, and whisper, with a ferocious distinctness he could not misunderstand:

“Oh, I hate your baby! I hate it! I hate it! I hope and pray it will die before it comes to rob my little girl! I hate your baby!”

He crept downstairs and into his study.

“It’s her condition,” he told himself. “She’s not normal, hardly sane.... She didn’t realise....”

But his joy and pride in the child they were expecting had quite gone. Her distorted passion had tainted his healthy common-sense. A hated, unwanted child! In spite of himself, he began to see it as a monster, began to dread it....

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I

It took a countless number of small details finally to arouse distrust in Mr. Petersen.

In the beginning, there was the roast chicken. Mrs. Hansen, who once more ruled the kitchen, came to him in great distress.

“Mr. Petersen!” she cried, “It’s gone! The whole thing! A beautiful whole roast chicken I put into the ice chest with my own hands this very morning.”

“Tramps,” he suggested, “or Michael. Don’t worry. Go and buy another.”

And that marked the beginning. After that she missed something almost every day, and it nearly made her insane. She never talked of anything else; to Mr. Petersen, to Mrs. Petersen, to her own husband, or even to Sandra.

“It isn’t tramps,” she insisted. “There I’ve never stirred out of my kitchen the whole morning, and that loaf of bread’s gone!”

She could not make anyone realise the magnitude of it, the hair-raising mystery. Minnie took the attitude that Mrs. Hansen must be and was mistaken; Mr. Petersen suspected Michael. The poor woman was desperate.

“All the years I’ve been here!” she moaned, “and never a bit of trouble like this!”

She was not superstitious, but the mystery began to terrify her; bread, meat, fruit, all sorts of things, vanished utterly, and with regularity. She considered Minnie grossly careless to take so little interest; the more she saw of her, the more she despised her, anyway. On her return, Minnie had turned everything over to her, never so much as ordered a meal. She offended further by always sitting upstairs, just rocking or embroidering there in the bedroom, in a bedraggled wrapper, with her hair in an untidy knot, until late in the afternoon, when she made a supreme effort, dressed herself and went out for a walk.

Her appearance shocked Mrs. Hansen immeasurably, her brazen disregard for her “condition,” her unsuitable clothes. Her treatment of Sandra, too. Such unwisdom she had never seen. The child was ailing half the time with colds and coughs; she was forever getting her poor little feet wet, and going about for hours in that way; she ate nothing, she moped, she was badly dressed, her hair was never taken care of, but fell over her face in a silky tangle, she didn’t get nearly enough sleep. Mrs. Hansen did what she could for her, incurring Minnie’s relentless hatred.

“I can’t see how you stood that odious, interfering woman so long,” she said to Petersen. “As soon as I’m well, she’ll go, I can promise you!”

He tried to defend Mrs. Hansen, but with no success. And she, on her part, made as many veiled insinuations against her mistress as she dared. Mr. Petersen was not comfortable.

One evening he was sitting reading in his library while Minnie lay on the sofa with closed eyes and little Sandra was playing at his feet, talking in a low voice to her dolls. It was after nine; Mrs. Hansen had long ago cleared up and gone home to the new cottage—one of Mr. Petersen’s—which her husband had bought upon Minnie’s arrival. The house was quiet; there was for the moment a little peace, and Mr. Petersen was enjoying it. Then came a rap at the back door. He was surprised to see Hansen.

“Could I have maybe one, two minutes?” he asked solemnly.

“Of course!” said Mr. Petersen. “Come in! We’ll sit down in the kitchen, not to disturb Mrs. Petersen. Now! What’s wrong?”

Hansen took a chair in a manner combining Socialistic equality with the politeness due to a much richer man.

“It’s this way,” he said, “my wife she is badly upset about this business.”

“What business?” Mr. Petersen enquired with a sinking heart, surmising another miserable disturbance between the two women, an unusually bad one if their men had to be dragged into it.

“Losing all these things. She thinks maybe you begin to suspect her.”

Mr. Petersen’s face flushed.

“Nonsense, Hansen!”

“Nonsense all right,” said Hansen, with slow obstinacy. “But that’s what she thinks. First one thing, then another is every day going.”

His English grew more and more halting, but he wouldn’t for worlds have used his and Mr. Petersen’s native tongue. They must under all circumstances preserve the illusion of being Americans.

“For ten, twelve years you know us now, Mr. Petersen,” he went on. “All the same, this is a queer business and my old woman she doesn’t like it. She thinks maybe very soon you begin to suspect her.”

“But I tell you I’d never suspect her,” Mr. Petersen insisted.

“The Missis could.”

“Nonsense!” he said again, but he made no impression upon the stolid Swede—nor upon himself.

“Anyway, Mr. Petersen, I want to pay you any time you are thinking my wife is taking something. Any time you would think she got a chicken or what, you just tell me, Mr. Petersen, and I pay you.”

“But I tell you I’d never think so.”

“Maybe sometime you could, Mr. Petersen.”

Mr. Petersen understood what he meant.

“Here you are with a new wife, and what she thinks you’re going to think before long,” was what Hansen’s tone implied, and he resented the implication. They talked a long time about it; neither gave an inch. Hansen’s parting words were:

“Remember, I pay you any time, Mr. Petersen!”

And Mr. Petersen’s:

“Nonsense!”

Nevertheless, he felt obliged now to consider this thing seriously. He sat alone in the kitchen and reflected until bed time, but couldn’t reach any sort of conclusion. Mrs. Hansen was absolutely above suspicion, unless she had suddenly gone mad, and that he couldn’t accept. Sandra never wanted food, and anyway, she would have been discovered. Michael had no opportunities, tramps couldn’t remain invisible, stray dogs wouldn’t rifle the apple barrel, wouldn’t and couldn’t be so nicely discriminating. His mind dwelt upon Minnie, he remembered things he had read or heard about morbid cravings for certain things to eat, about temporary mental derangements.... But that idea filled him with such alarm and uneasiness that he refused to consider it. He evolved a diabolic dog, actually invented excuses for it....

II

The very next day he found out, quite by accident. He was going to lunch at the Eagle House with a rather important client and he hurried home to put on a clean collar and his cherished white flannel trousers, worn only on semi-official occasions. Minnie was taking a bath, so he didn’t even call out to ask her where his things were. She wouldn’t have known anyway. He was accustomed to searching patiently for every article when it was required.

He went through his own bureau drawers and his own closet in vain; then he went to look in Minnie’s appalling wardrobe.

On the shelf there, lying on a piece of newspaper, behind her best hat, lay half a cold leg of lamb.

A corpse could scarcely have terrified him more. In a panic he seized his cap and rushed out of the house as he was; and Minnie never knew he had been home at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I

It may be said with perfect truth that Mr. Petersen was haunted by the leg of lamb; it gave him sleepless nights. He couldn’t imagine why it was there. He would stop in the middle of serious work in his office, and contemplate the mystery. Could it be connected with her peculiar efforts at economy? Or a plot against Mrs. Hansen? Or absolute madness?

It was significant—more so than he realised—that he didn’t dare to ask Minnie about it. At the bottom of his heart, in spite of his affection and admiration for her, he was perfectly aware that Minnie was a woman capable of anything and everything. There was nothing she wouldn’t do. He went about for days, with the leg of lamb on his conscience, miserably imagining that he had in some way wronged Minnie by finding it.

The losses continued. But he never looked in the closet again. Imagination balked at the prospect. When Mrs. Hansen reported a dish of apple sauce and three pork chops missing, a dreadful vision of them behind Minnie’s hat flashed across his brain. He tried his best to mollify Mrs. Hansen, to assure her that he knew she had no hand in the business. He felt intolerably guilty before that honest woman. He was a changed man, and he knew it. He had fallen into a sort of daze of astonishment, like a man who has undeniably seen a ghost.

An impossible situation, and ended by a still more incredible revelation. Quite by accident he learned where the leg of lamb and all its associates had gone.

Minnie’s health was causing him a great deal of anxiety. She was in a perpetual state of exhaustion and worry, and refused to be relieved. It was one of her most sacred principles that it was not only meritorious but absolutely a duty for a domestic house-loving woman to tire herself out every day. In addition to doing a great many tasks which Mrs. Hansen had plenty of time and ability to do, she would take a walk every afternoon, even if it rained. The doctor said it was too much for her, advised her resting more, but although she listened to him sweetly, she said afterward to Mr. Petersen that she knew what was good for herself better than all the doctors on earth. She wouldn’t even take Sandra with her on these walks; she said she had to be alone, for her nerves. Mr. Petersen warned her of rough characters from the brick yards and solemnly cautioned her to guard against being frightened; certain roads she was never to take, and she said she wouldn’t.

So that he was alarmed and annoyed one day to see her crossing the railway tracks and starting off down the very worst of all the forbidden ways. He had happened to go over in that direction himself to see one of the comrades who wanted to build a house. At first he didn’t believe his eyes; it couldn’t be Minnie, in the dusk of a raw October day, deliberately and unnecessarily walking through that wretched quarter of drunken Slavs. But it was surely her hat ...! He hurried after her. She was a long way in advance, and before he had caught her up she had turned off the main road where the wretched hovels were, and entered a little wood.

It was quite dark there, under the trees, and very still; there was a faintly marked path, which the workmen sometimes used as a short cut to the brickyards in summer, but quite deserted at this time of the year. A mat of sodden leaves underfoot, and a damp reek of decay. He was really angry at her morbid folly; such a place might well be dangerous. But just as he was on the point of speaking to her, gently, so that she shouldn’t be startled, she rushed up to the dim form of a man who had materialised from the twilight. She kissed him several times.

Mr. Petersen was near enough to hear every word, although he could not distinguish the man. It was Minnie’s voice which most astounded him—it was not her voice; it had tones he had never before heard, never imagined; it was gay, tender, full of a beautiful bravery.

“My darling boy!” she said, “I’ve only an instant. Is your cold clearing up at all?”

“How’s Sandra?” he asked curtly. His voice was hoarse and weak.

“Splendid! I’ve brought you a little something to eat, dear. You must do all you can to keep up your strength. For just a little while longer.”

“Oh, my God! Minnie!” he groaned, “I wish I were dead! And you too. And Sandra. It’s too much for me——”

“Don’t, don’t, my dearest! Just a little while longer. I ought to go now, really.... But I can’t leave you like this. Say one word to comfort me, dear. Tell me you’ll be brave, just a little while longer.”

“I am brave,” he answered grimly. “If I weren’t, I shouldn’t be here.”

Once more she kissed him.

“Good-bye, my dearest!” she said. “Keep up your courage! God bless you! I’ll see you to-morrow as usual. And eat that nice beef, won’t you? You need it so!”

She turned away and retraced her steps, through the wood and through the settlement. She was hurrying and breathing painfully, and Mr. Petersen heard a gasping little sob now and then.

He was afraid of startling her too much by speaking just then. He waited until she was slowly climbing the hill above the tracks before he came up with her.

“Minnie!” he said as gently as possible, “Who was that?”

She looked at him wildly; her eyes made him think of a terrified horse, and she quivered like one.

“Chris!” she cried. “You didn’t——!” And abruptly and mechanically began to scream, shriek after shriek.

“Stop! Stop!” he implored, in dreadful anxiety. “Calm yourself! Never mind! Don’t tell me; only stop! Stop! Please, Minnie!”

She couldn’t now. There in the road, where the Slav colony could hear her and coming rushing to witness, she had a frightful hysterical attack. Mr. Petersen sent someone after one of the old station hacks, and got her home at last. He was dripping with perspiration and altogether in a bad state when the doctor came; he was sure he had killed Minnie.

She was not allowed to talk that night; a trained nurse came and took charge of her, and kept Petersen out of the room. He didn’t go to bed at all; he sat in his study, in dreadful anguish.

In the morning the nurse came down and told him he might see his wife for a few minutes. He tried to compose himself; he soaked his great yellow head in cold water until his hair lay sleek as a seal; he swallowed a glass of brandy, but nothing helped him. He so dreaded what he might hear.

Minnie loved that man. No matter what she said, she couldn’t make him doubt that. Her words, above all, her voice.... She must have been meeting that incredible, that unimaginable lover for weeks, feeding him.... He was not in the least angry at her. On the contrary he felt very, very sorry for her. But he did not want to see her, or to hear what she was going to say. If it were only possible for her to be restored to health and then to vanish!

He couldn’t speak. He went over to her bedside and stood looking down at her. She was worn, pale, more troubled than ever. But she met his glance; she had not the look of a guilty woman.

“You’ll have to be told now,” she said. “I wanted to wait—but I suppose you wouldn’t consent——?”

“You needn’t tell me anything——” he began.

She closed her eyes wearily.

“You’d never trust me.... He’s my brother. We’ve never spoken of him ... he’s caused us a great deal of sorrow—disgrace, poor fellow. Through drinking. Father wouldn’t let us see him, or mention him. And Grandma was just as harsh. Even Frankie turned against him....”

She paused a moment and feebly wiped the tears from her closed eyes.

“But I’ve always seen so much good in him. I’ve always been so fond of him, poor fellow!... So much good—going to waste!”

“But, Minnie, if you’d only spoken to me——”

“I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair to him. He’s very proud, in his way.”

Mr. Petersen sat down beside her, and tried, in a long silence, to adjust himself to this. He was conscious of a great relief, a terrible burden being lifted from him. And a feeling of guilt in the presence of the poor little woman. How could he for an instant have suspected Minnie, respectable, conscientious, maternal Minnie, of having a lover! Filthy, vile, preposterous idea!

“We’ll find a way to help your brother, my dear,” he said.

She reached out a calloused and hot little hand and put it into his.

“Chris,” she said, “what I want is to have him here. Under my eye. Where I can look after him. May I?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“But, Chris, I want you to understand it all. It’s such a difficult situation. For a man like him—brought up in the best schools in England——”

“In England!” exclaimed Mr. Petersen.

“Yes; Father liked the English schools best for boys. Alec’s lived in England for years,” she explained, a little impatient at the interruption. “He’s quite an Englishman. But, listen carefully, Chris, please. It’s going to be very hard to get him here.”

“Why? Can’t——?”

“You see, I didn’t tell him I was married. He wouldn’t have taken anything from me if he hadn’t believed it was all mine. I told him I had a position.... It will be a great shock to him, and he’s far from well. If you’ll only promise to do just exactly as I tell you, please, Chris!”

He was rather amused at her solemnity.

“Whatever you think is necessary,” he said, indulgently.

“It is—very necessary. I’ve written a note, and I want you to take it to him in that same place in the wood this afternoon at five. And, Chris, don’t talk to him, don’t tell him anything—any single thing—until he’s read it. Not anything. It’s very important for him to learn it all from me—from the note. Promise!”

“Very well, my dear.”

“You see, I know just how to manage him, so that he won’t be too much shocked. And you’d better take your pocket flashlight, or you’ll be giving the letter to the wrong person.”

II

Privately Mr. Petersen considered it a preposterous errand. He set off at half-past four with the note and made his way through the windy twilight to the wood. At first he couldn’t find the fellow; at last he discovered him sitting on a fallen log a few feet from the path, sunk in apathy.

“Is your name Defoe?” he asked.

The man jumped up.

“What is it?” he asked. “Have you a message from her?”

Mr. Petersen handed him the note and the flashlight by which to read it, and with no little curiosity, tried to study his appearance in the little spot of light. But couldn’t; could see no more than a thin, long hand clutching the letter. It seemed a long one.

Presently the flashlight was extinguished and the little wood was very dark, and still. Mr. Petersen respected the feelings of the sensitive brother for a long time, but he couldn’t wait there all night.

“Shall we be getting along?” he said, pleasantly.

Out of the dark came that hoarse and pitiful voice.

“Who are you?” it asked.

“Petersen,” he answered.

“The man—the man that Minnie——?”

“Her husband; yes. Are you ready?”

The man came abreast of him, and began walking by his side with weary and heavy steps.

“Is she so very ill?” he asked.

“No-oo,” said Petersen. “Not very. Can’t look for perfect health, I suppose, in her condition.”

“What condition?”

“There’s a baby coming in a few weeks, you know.”

He was surprised her brother hadn’t noticed; then reflected that he had only seen her in the dark.

“The doctor tells me there’s no cause for worry,” he went on. He was curiously anxious to reassure the fellow; he was moved by a great pity for him which he could not have explained. Simply that his voice, his manner, the very atmosphere about him, seemed tragic and terrible.

They went on toward the house, Petersen talking cheerfully, neither exacting nor expecting replies from his companion. They entered the hall, and he turned, for the first time, to look at him.

Like a madman, like a ghost, so deadly pale and haggard and ruined.... He couldn’t bear to look at him. He turned away, but found the image still in his eyes, the tall, lean fellow with his fine-featured face, his great grey eyes, so sunken and luminous, his straggling beard, his ruffled hair, all his shabbiness and wretchedness.

He wanted to propose a bath and a shave before going in to Minnie; the poor devil wasn’t a fit object for her gaze. But he divined the morbid sensitiveness of the famished creature, and was afraid of hurting him. As he hesitated, little Sandra came in from the kitchen.

He caught her violently in his arms.

“Sandra!” he cried. “Don’t you know me?”

She looked up into his face.

“No,” she whimpered, frightened. “Put me down!”

III

His interview with Minnie was very brief, for the nurse sent him out without ceremony, and followed him downstairs.

“Mr. Petersen,” she said, “I’m going to telephone for the doctor.”

The two men looked at her in alarm.

“Is she worse?” asked Mr. Petersen.

“She’ll soon be better,” answered the nurse, with a smile.

Mr. Petersen caught her arm as she was going.

“You don’t mean—it’s beginning now?” he asked. “I thought—three weeks more at least——?”

The nurse smiled again.

“I shouldn’t be surprised!” she said.

Mr. Petersen felt utterly frightened and helpless. He looked about in vain for comfort, saw only the very professional nurse, and Alec, more alarmed than himself.

“Will it be—bad?” he asked the nurse, but she went hurrying upstairs again. He followed her, but wasn’t allowed to come into the room.

“You’ll only make her nervous,” the nurse told him, severely. “You must be sensible now, Mr. Petersen, and not worry me. I’ve got my hands full!”

So he went down again and met the doctor coming in. He, too, had the professional cheerfulness so difficult to endure.

“Take a drink,” he advised, “and go out for a walk. We don’t need you!”

He went back into his study once more, and was surprised to see the brother still there. He had forgotten all about him. He poured out a drink for him, too, and sat down, very glad to have someone with him. He became fictitiously cheerful to hide his anguish. And every time he heard a footstep overhead, his heart bounded horribly.

He poured out a second glass of brandy for each of them, and was sorry to see the misery on the face of the other, not to be dispelled by many drinks. He tried to console him, said, after all, it was a perfectly natural thing—a beautiful thing. But didn’t believe it himself. There wasn’t—there couldn’t be beauty in the bestial agony of a poor little woman. It was natural enough, natural as an owl crunching the bones of a rabbit....

Suddenly there was a long, horrible groan from upstairs. Mr. Petersen turned pale, and reached blindly for the brandy.

“My God!” he muttered. “This is——” But was cut short by a frantic clutch at his arm. The brother stood swaying like a reed; suddenly collapsed and fell at his feet unconscious.

IV

He was fully occupied with this other sufferer for a long time. He did all the proper things, threw water over him, slapped his hands, forced brandy down his throat, until he revived. Then he fetched Mrs. Hansen and she made him drink hot soup and eat bread and butter. There wasn’t a sound upstairs. Resolutely Mr. Petersen kept his mind away from Minnie, and clung to Mrs. Hansen, followed her wherever she went. Her calmness, her ordinariness solaced, as well as the fact that she was a woman. He questioned her minutely about Alec and what she thought he needed, without listening to her replies. It was only her reassuring voice he needed.

“There now!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Petersen, the doctor’s coming down.”

“She’s dead!” he thought.

But the doctor was smiling.

“A fine boy!” he said.

V

Presently, as dawn was breaking, the nurse came running downstairs to Mr. Petersen.

“You may go in for just a minute!” she said.

She was looking worn and jaded, and, for the first time, not immaculately neat. She was human now.

Mr. Petersen took it upon himself to invite Alec to come with him.

“It will do you good, my boy,” he said.

So they entered the room together, together had their first glimpse of the newly-born little man. He was asleep, his red, wizened little face screwed up into a look of comical misery, his tiny dark-red claws stretched up. The nurse assured them that he was large and that he was healthy.

Minnie was lying flat on her back, with a long braid of hair over each shoulder, framing a very pale and grave face. She was exhausted and ill, but proudly victorious, aware that she had accomplished a masterly thing. Thus had she replied to all doubts or questions whatever that might arise within Mr. Petersen. She was the mother of his son; she had established a claim upon his heart and upon his conscience which he could never deny. He not only loved her, he reverenced her. A deep conviction, belonging to a somewhat old-fashioned brand of Socialism, of the “sacredness of motherhood,” lay in him. Minnie had heard a great deal of it from him. It made her more than ever conscious of what a remarkable and praiseworthy thing she had accomplished. She looked at the two men with a worn yet sublime smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I

The days that followed were the golden days of Mr. Petersen’s life, the happiest he was ever to have.

Minnie was angelic. Her worry, her preoccupied air had gone; she was gentle, gay, affectionate. She didn’t get well very fast and had to stay in bed for some weeks, but that was no burden; she liked it. With her tiny son beside her and little Sandra quietly playing nearby, she was contented and blissful for hour after hour.

She developed a great fondness for being read aloud to; all evening and part of the afternoon one of the two men could be seen sitting by the bed with a book. Her taste was astoundingly catholic; as a matter of fact, she didn’t care in the least what was read, or pay much heed to it, so long as she could secure the uninterrupted companionship of one of her men. She only wanted to see them there, safe and happy.

Mrs. Hansen managed the house and Sandra to perfection. There wasn’t a bother or an annoyance from one day’s end to another. Except that Mr. Petersen felt a bit disturbed about the brother’s state of health. He had taken a great liking to the fellow, and he hated to see him so despondent.

Theirs was a most curious companionship. He realised how curious some time later. Mr. Petersen had never before met a man of this class and type; he had been wont to despise them, to look upon them as hindrances to the Socialist scheme, and useless from any point of view. Now he revised his ideas, in his open-minded fashion. Alec’s education he couldn’t admire; he really knew nothing at all, nor was he particularly intelligent. But his ideas were fine. They were not personal to him, they were nothing more than traditions, and yet Mr. Petersen was forced to admit that such traditions were quite as good, if not a great deal better, than anything which most men would have been able to work out originally. Principles of honour, of fidelity, of endurance. No matter that he didn’t live up to his principles very well; who did, anyway? Mr. Petersen himself was aware of many betrayals of his own faith. The thing was to aspire.

What is more, he liked the personality of the fellow; his simplicity, his infinite gentleness with Sandra. Certainly he would have liked to see him more cheerful, still, he could very well understand this depression in a man well over thirty who had failed to make a living for himself. He proposed looking about for some opening for him, but Alec said, no thanks, he was going away in a day or so. He was reserved to the point of mysteriousness. Mr. Petersen used to discuss him with Minnie and ask her advice.

“You know him better than I do,” he said. “What do you think would suit him?”

Minnie, as always incapable of answering a question, would say:

“But let’s keep him here, anyway, Chris. It’s the best place for him.”

She had the greatest devotion for her brother, a devotion which Mr. Petersen fancied was not quite appreciated. He was so formal with the affectionate little soul. If she succeeded in kissing him good-night or good-morning, he would turn scarlet and actually frown at her. He never returned a caress, never spoke a tender word to her. He seemed rather to avoid her. He was willing enough to read aloud, but if she interrupted him, and wanted to chat a bit, he lost his temper.

“Do you want me to read or not?” he would ask, menacingly.

Sombre and inscrutable, he withdrew into himself, disregarding even Mr. Petersen’s always renewed offers of friendship. He treated Mr. Petersen with a respectful deference which would have been grotesque if he had not been so obviously sincere.

Sandra he loved passionately. It surprised Mr. Petersen to hear him upbraiding Minnie for her carelessness with the child. Her food, her clothes, her manners. He was always saying that she should be taken to church, and taught what he called “decent ideas,” and Minnie always promised to comply when she grew stronger. She was invariably propitiating toward her brother, as toward someone she had wronged....

II

The War broke out. With very little effect upon Brownsville Landing. “Let them fight it out,” was the prevailing opinion; it was also stated positively that none of the nations had any clear idea of its aims or why it was involved. Even the Belgians were fools, who had rushed into war for no reason. There was a certain amount of awfully sentimental sympathy for the “Belgian babies,” but it wasn’t very effective. The Brownsville Landing natives looked upon the whole affair as a colossal folly, in which all the participants were equally guilty; the British perhaps a bit more reprehensible than the others. The old families, brought up on flamboyant traditions of “1776,” looked upon the British with scorn and dislike, the Irish element with positive hatred, and the great mass of aliens, with their obscure and vague affiliations, swallowed docilely the German propaganda fed to them. There was a wide-spread conviction that the Germans were invincible, if not superhuman, with amazing scientific devices impossible to resist. A sort of laboratory witchcraft, “secrets” and “discoveries” without limit. France was degenerate and vitiated; England gross, slothful, devoid of patriotism, Russia a farce; the whole affair wouldn’t last long.

To Mr. Petersen, the European, the outbreak was of immense significance; it was the falling of Damocles’ sword. He read the papers avidly. He was not partisan; he felt nothing but the passionate interest of an onlooker observing a mortal struggle between equally unpleasant adversaries. A struggle among capitalists. With the poor man dying, bleeding, suffering, whether victor or conqueror. He shook his head over the fate of the Continent.

It surprised him that Minnie’s feelings were so vehement. She was absolutely furious that there should be a war. All those men should have known better. She didn’t know or care what it was about; she declared it was shameful and wicked for so many people to be killed. She went so far as to weep over it. He knew Minnie well enough to guess at something personal in this fervour; an abstract interest was not possible for her.

Sure enough, it was a personal matter. It concerned her adored brother. He had evidently been telling her that he wanted to enlist, for one morning Mr. Petersen heard them at it, taking it up again with incredible obstinacy and indirectness on both sides.

“I won’t let you!” cried Minnie. “I won’t have it!”

“Good God! What do you want to make of me? Can’t you see, even you, that it’s the only way to rehabilitate myself? My only chance. I shan’t lose it, no fear!”

“Don’t you dare!” she cried hysterically. “I’ll die! It would kill me!”

Mr. Petersen entered after Alec had gone out angrily, banging the door.

“Minnie, my dear,” he said, mildly, “don’t you think you’re wrong to try to influence your brother in such a——”

“Oh, do stop!” she interrupted rudely. “You don’t understand.” And suddenly grew angry with him. “I should think you could see he’s not fit for a military life. So thin and sensitive. How can you be so heartless.”

Mr. Petersen remarked that if he weren’t fit for a military life, he wouldn’t be accepted, but Minnie said she knew all about that; they’d take anyone they could get hold of, even in a dying condition.

This marked the end of her period of sweetness. With her characteristic scorn for doctor’s orders, she refused to stay in bed any longer. In a wrapper, thinner, pallid, and untidy, she pervaded the house, for the sole purpose of keeping her eye on Alec. She followed him about, scolding him, crying, tormenting him. He stopped arguing, he absolutely refused to answer her. He would sit, with a cigarette in his mouth, quite unmoved by her tirades.

It was undoubtedly a unique opportunity for the poor fellow to “rehabilitate” himself, as he put it, and Mr. Petersen couldn’t understand why he hesitated. Surely no man owed so immoderate a duty to a sister. If he wanted to go, if he saw it as his duty to go, why in Heaven’s name, didn’t he go, and at once?

All of poor Minnie’s loves were so inordinate. She was to Alec as she was to her children, utterly and blindly devoted, without the least discretion or scruple. He knew that she didn’t love him in that way, but he felt it was because he was independent, didn’t need her so. Her whole life consisted in service for those weaker ones. The most superfluous services, that instead of helping hindered. She annoyed Alec by her futile and insistent attentions, by counting his cigarettes and deploring their number, by bringing him special dishes which were intended to fatten him. She denied Sandra nothing, no matter how injurious and stupid. She served her little son by carrying him in her arms continually, never let him alone in peace. Only to Mr. Petersen she did nothing but her duty, and not always that, though she didn’t realise it.

The old disorder was re-established, on account of trouble with Mrs. Hansen.

Minnie came into his little room one morning, frowning.

“Chris,” she said. “You’ll have to tell that woman to go at once!”

“Who, my dear?”

“You know very well! That Hansen woman! This time she’s surpassed herself. I never heard of such impudence. Never! There she was, the old—creature—snooping round in Alec’s room. Snooping!”

Now Mr. Petersen had long been aware of this sole failing in an otherwise classically lofty character. He knew that Mrs. Hansen snooped. But, having no secrets, her snooping hadn’t particularly disturbed him. He realised, too, that for one of Minnie’s secretive nature, snooping must seem a crime; he knew by this time that she had plenty of things to hide, queer little magpie stores, money she imagined she was saving, clothes she had ruined in the making, bills she didn’t wish seen. He thought it rather humorous.

“That’s too bad,” he said, soothingly. “Still—perhaps if you speak to her——”

“Indeed I shan’t. You engaged her and you can get rid of her. I will not have her in the house. Poking her nose into everyone’s affairs. She’s got to go at once!”

She heard the baby crying and turned to go.

“I never did trust that woman,” she said, turning back at the door. “I always felt there was something queer when we missed all that food last autumn.”

Mr. Petersen was stricken dumb. To accuse poor Mrs. Hansen of that!

And such was the plausibility, the fatal assurance of Minnie’s manner, that he was almost inclined to disbelieve the evidence of his own eyes, to deny the facts known to him, and to put his faith in her words....

She got another servant, a silly young girl, and between them they produced a masterpiece of discomfort and disorder. They quarrelled, too, in a distressing way; but were nevertheless conscious of a sort of bond. Mr. Petersen would hear Minnie in the kitchen preparing food for the baby and talking to Addie with interest, with animation, as she had never talked to Mrs. Hansen, who was so much more worth talking to. And Addie would reply as one woman to another. They used to discuss the war sometimes with deep indignation. Their opinions were identical. Addie’s young man, who was a German with American citizenship, hankered after the Fatherland, and wanted to go home and fight, but Addie had told him firmly that if he did, she was done with him. He could find one of those fat German girls.

Minnie’s housekeeping annoyed her brother very much. In fact, Mr. Petersen thought him unnecessarily fault-finding with the anxious little woman. She used to cry sometimes but she never resented anything he said. She would excuse herself by saying that the baby took up so much of her time. And that was a new cause of offense. He accused her bitterly of favouritism, and even Mr. Petersen was obliged to admit a basis of truth in the accusation. She had an absolutely frantic passion for her little son; she was ready enough to be sharp and unjust to Sandra if she disturbed his inordinate demands for quiet slumber.

It was a beautiful, a wonderful baby, a lusty, blonde little Petersen with serene blue eyes and a sort of debonair quality; a baby no woman could be blamed for adoring. But she was so immoderate, so inordinately proud of having a son anyway. And when, combined with its superior sex, it possessed the attractions of this son, how withstand it? She expected Sandra to worship as she did, and Sandra refused. Sandra was annoyed with this superfluous child. As far as she was concerned it was useless, too young for a playmate and not docile enough for a toy. Moreover it received attentions which properly belonged to her. Uncle Alec alone confined his devotion to her.

He didn’t want the little girl out of his sight. He spent many hours walking through the garden, holding her hand, listening to her, touching her misty hair. He couldn’t play with her or amuse her as Mr. Petersen did, but she was able to love him even more. They had between them a rare and touching sympathy.

Mr. Petersen thought it charming. He often watched the grave little girl, sitting on the sofa beside the wretched man, reading aloud to him from her funny little books, which she knew by heart, sometimes stopping to run her little hand over his cheeks, or his beard, which amused her.

“Isn’t that a nice one?” she would ask, ending some story about bears or wolves or fairies.

“Rather!” he would answer. “You’re a very clever, good kid to read to me like that.”

III

Mr. Petersen came home one day at noon, and found no trace of lunch. Addie was not in the kitchen, nor Minnie. The latter he could always trace by means of his son’s voice, and he went up to the bedroom, to find her lying on the bed, exhausted, sobbing, while Addie bathed her forehead with cold water while she dandled the baby.

“Well, well!” he asked. “What’s wrong now?”

“He will enlist!” cried Minnie wildly. “You’ve got to stop him! I won’t have it. I’ll die!”

“Pshaw!” said Mr. Petersen mildly. “This won’t do!”

He was a little annoyed.

“You must let a man do as he thinks right,” he said.

“Right!” cried Minnie. “He’s not thinking of that! He wants to get away—— He’s made up his mind to get away from me!”

“Come, come! This isn’t very sensible, my dear!”

“Neither are you!” she answered, unexpectedly. “You’re the biggest fool in the world, Christian Petersen!” And began to laugh.

In the course of time she was calmed, and Mr. Petersen went downstairs to look for a bite to eat. He discovered Alec in the kitchen with Sandra, boiling eggs.

“Minnie been at you?” he asked.

Mr. Petersen admitted that she had.

“She’ll have to get over it, that’s all,” said Alec. “I’m going! About Sandra—I’ve got something ... a small income.... It isn’t clear now; I’ve drawn against it for some time to come ... but what there is, is for her. I.... You’ll look out for her, won’t you, in case I——? She’s—Minnie doesn’t altogether understand her. Not so well as you do.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Mr. Petersen, who was too kindly even to hint that he didn’t need to be shown his duty toward Sandra by this poor failure. “You’ve really made up your mind then?”

“All the mind she’s left in me!” he answered with sudden passion. “Good God! What does the woman want! She wants to own a man, body and soul. Wants me to hang about here a disgraced, ruined man, not even trying to—stand alone—— The most disgusting, despicable object under the sun—so that she won’t be separated from me. Good God! If I’d ever thought I’d come to this, Petersen ...!”

“Now then, my boy,” said Mr. Petersen gently, “don’t blame your sister too harshly. She’s too much a woman to understand these things. And don’t be bitter. You’re a young man yet. You can——”

“No!” said Alec, “It’s too late. You’ve only to look at me to see I’m done for. In every way. Physical as well as—moral. No good. Rotten all the way through. My only chance is to get into the army. If they won’t have me, I’m finished.”

He was so obviously excited that Mr. Petersen did not remonstrate.

“If I can help you,” he said, “with your outfit, for instance, let me know. I’d be very glad. Or ... if you need ready money——?”

Alec looked at him sombrely.

“Petersen,” he said, “some day you’ll understand. And I hope you’ll—— But I can’t expect it.... Only, before I go, I’d like you to know that—I’m not so bad as I seem.—I—I realise.... I hope I’m going to be killed. Perhaps that’ll wipe out—this. You might—in that case—not judge me so—you might—have mercy....”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I

Mr. Petersen was thankful to escape from the house the next morning. After what a night! No sleep for anyone; even the baby had been awake and crying half a dozen times.

Minnie had opened her attack on Alec. Mr. Petersen heard her, hour after hour, raging, crying, pleading with him in his room. Time after time he had tried to go out, but she would spring in front of him and bar the door.

“You’ve got to listen to me!” she shrieked.

At last, very reluctantly, Mr. Petersen felt obliged to intervene. He knocked on the door two or three times unheard, for the storm was raging wildly. Then he turned the knob and walked in. Minnie was on her knees, clasping Alexander tightly, while he stood, white and cold, not even looking at her.

Mr. Petersen was shocked and for the first time angry at Minnie.

“Get up!” he commanded. “This is disgusting!”

She turned her face, blistered with tears, to him.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t let him go!” she cried, “Chris, for Heaven’s sake——!”

He made the fatal mistake of trying to argue with her. He was quiet and reasonable, and she aped his manner to perfection. Argued with him, the distorted and plausible arguments of a madwoman, became quiet, scornful. She involved him in a maze, bewildered and confounded him, and made it more and more difficult for him to keep his temper.

Alec gave him sound advice.

“It’s no use talking to her,” he said. “She never listens.”

They all became violent and rude. Sandra waked up and came running in, barefooted, wide-eyed, pale, stood listening for a long time. Then the baby began to cry again and Minnie hurried to it, but when Alec tried to escape downstairs, she flew after him, baby in arms, and again barred his way.

An awful night! Mr. Petersen unlocked his office and sat down with a great sigh. Never suspecting the far more awful night that was drawing in upon him. The climax, which so strangely and regularly occurs in human affairs, the definite point of departure, of division between the old days and the new, was approaching. His doom drew near.

He had just begun to lose himself in his business papers when there was a rap at the door. It was too early for Miss Layne; he was rather surprised; he called out “Come in!” and the instrument of fate entered.

It was Frances.

He was astonished and pleased. He had always admired Frances. He brought forward a chair.

“Miss Defoe!” he exclaimed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you!”

“Five years, nearly,” she answered with a sigh and a smile. “But you haven’t changed a bit!”

She had, he thought; she had improved. She looked older; no longer a girl, but straighter, more vigorous, more nobly honest than ever. Her face was a little cold in its severe, composed beauty, but not at all hard. A woman who expected a great deal, but who also forgave a great deal. She was dressed very plainly but with distinction, with pride. He could see no sort of resemblance to Minnie.