University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THEY TURN UP.

ONE morning, a month after the Allens had
gone into poverty's exile, Gus Elliot lounged
into Mr. Van Dam's luxurious apartments. There
was everything around him to gratify the eye of
sense, that is, such sense as Gus Elliot had cultivated,
though an angel might have hidden his face.
We will not describe these rooms—we had better
not. It is sufficient to say that in their decorations,
pictures, bacchanal ornaments, and general suggestion,
they were a reflex of Mr. Van Dam's character,
in the more refined and æsthetic phase which
he presented to society. Indeed, in the name of
art, whose mantle is broader than that of charity,
if at times rather flimsy, not a few would have admired
the exhibitions of Mr. Van Dam's taste,
which, though not severe, were bare in a bad sense.
We are a little skeptical in regard to these enthusiasts
for nude art.

But concerning Gus Elliot, no doubt exists in
our mind. The atmosphere of Mr. Van Dam's room
was entirely congenial and adapted to his chosen
direction of development. He was a young man
of leisure and fashion and was therefore what even
the fashionable would be horrified at their daughters

ever becoming. This nice distinction between
son and daughter does not result well. It leaves men
in the midst of society unbranded as vile, unmarked
so that good women might shrink in disgust from
them. It gives them a chance to prey upon the
weak, as Mr. Van Dam purposed to do, and as he
intended to induce Gus Elliot to do, and as multitudes
of exquisitely dressed scoundrels are doing daily.

If Mr. and Mrs. Allen had done their duty as
parents, they would have kept the wolf (I beg the
wolf's pardon) the jackal, Mr. Van Dam, with his
thin disguise of society polish, from entering their
fold. Gus Elliot was one of those mean curs that
never lead, and could always be drawn into any evil
that satisfied the one question of his life, “Will it
give me what I want.”

Gus was such an exquisite that the smell of
garlic made him sick, and the sight of blood made
him faint, and the thought of coarse working hands
was an abomination, but in worse than idleness he
could see his old father wearing himself out, he
could get “gentlemanly drunk,” and commit any
wrong in vogue among the fast young men with
whom he associated. And now Mephistophiles
Van Dam easily induces him to seek to drag down
beautiful Edith Allen, the woman he meant to
marry, to a life compared with which the city
gutters are cleanly.

Van Dam in slippers and silken robe was smoking
his meerschaum after a late breakfast and reading
a French novel.

“What is the matter?” he said, noting Gus'
expression of ennui and discontent.

“There is not another girl left in the city to be
mentioned the same day with Edith Allen,” said
Gus, with the pettishness of a child from whom
something had been taken.

“Well spooney, what are you going to do about
it?” asked Mr. Van Dam coolly.

“What is there to do about it? you know well
enough that I can't afford to marry her. I suppose
it's the best thing for me that she has gone
off to the backwoods somewhere, for while she
was here I could not help seeing her, and after all
it was only an aggravation.”

“I can't afford to marry Zell,” replied Van
Dam, “but I am going up to see her to-morrow.
After being out there by themselves for a month,
I think they will be glad to see some one from the
civilized world.” The most honest thing about Van
Dam was his sincere commiseration for those compelled
to live in quiet country places, without
experience in the highly spiced pleasures and excitements
of the metropolis. In his mind they were
associated with oxen—innocent, rural and heavy,
these terms being almost synonymous to him, and
suggestive of such a forlorn tame condition, that
it seemed only vegetating, not living. Mr. Van
Dam believed in a life, like his favorite dishes, that
abounded in cayenne. Zell's letters had confirmed
this opinion, and he saw that she was half desperate
with ennui and disgust with their loneliness.

“I imagine we have staid away long enough,”
he continued. “They have had sufficient of the
miseries of mud, rain, and exile, not to be very
nice about the conditions of return to old haunts
and life. Of course I can't afford to marry Zell
any more than you can Edith, but for all that I
expect to have her here with me before many
months pass, and perhaps weeks.”

“Look here, Van Dam, you are going too far.
Remember how high the Allens once stood in society,”
said Gus, a little startled.

“`Once stood;' where do they stand now?
Who in society has, or will lift a finger for them,
and they seem to have no near relatives to stand
by them. I tell you they are at our mercy. Luxury
is a necessity, and yet they are not able to earn
their bare bread.

“Let me inform you,” he continued, speaking
with the confidence of a hunter, who from long
experience knows just where the game is most easily
captured, “that there is no class more helpless
than the very rich when reduced to sudden poverty.
They are usually too proud to work, in the first
place, and in the second, they don't know how to
do anything. What does a fashionable education
fit a girl for, I would like to know, if, as it often occurs,
they have to make their own way in the world?
—a smattering of everything, mistress of nothing.”

“Well Van Dam,” said Gus, “according to your
showing, it fits them for little schemes like the one
you are broaching.”

“Precisely, girls who know how to work and
who are accustomed to it, will snap their fingers in
your face, and tell you they can take care of themselves,
but the class to which the Allens belong,
unless kept up by some rich relations, are soon almost
desperate from want. I have kept up a correspondence
with Zell. They seem to have no
near relatives or friends who are doing much for
them. They are doing nothing for themselves,
save spend what little there is left, and their monotonous
country life has half-murdered them
already. So I conclude I have waited long enough
and will go up to-morrow. Instead of pouting like
a spoiled child, over your lost Edith, you had better
go up and get her. It may take a little time and
management. Of course they must be made to
think we intend to marry them, but if they once
elope with us, we can find a priest at our leisure.'

“I will go up to-morrow with you any way,”
said Gus, who, like so many others, never made a
square bargain with the devil, but was easily “led
captive” from one wrong and villany to another.

It was the last day of April—one on which the
rawness and harshness of early spring was melting
into the mildness of May. The buds on the trees
had perceptibly swollen. The flowering maple was
still aflame, the sweet centre of attraction to innumerable
bees, the hum of whose industry rose
and fell on the languid breeze. The grass had the
delicate green and exquisite odor belonging to its
first growth, and was rapidly turning the brown,

withered sward of winter into emerald. The sun
shone through a slight haze, but shone warmly.
The birds had opened the day with full orchestra,
but at noon there was little more than chirp and
twitter, they seeming to feel something of Edith's
languor, as she leaned on the railing of the porch,
and watched for the coming of Malcom. She
sighed as she looked at the bare brown earth of the
large space that she purposed for strawberries, and
work there and every where seemed repulsive.
The sudden heat was enervating and gave her the
feeling of luxurious languor that she longed to enjoy
with the sense of security and freedom from care.
But even as her eyelids drooped with momentary
drowsiness, there was a consciousness, like a dull
half recognized pain, of insecurity, of impending
trouble and danger, and of a need for exertion
that would lead to something more certain than
anything her mother's policy promised.

She was startled from her heaviness by the
sharp click of the gate latch, and Malcom entered
with two large baskets of strawberry plants. He
had said to her,—

“Wait a bit. The plants will do weel, put oot
the last o' the moonth. An ye wait I'll gie ye the
plants I ha' left oover and canna sell the season.
But dinna be troobled, I'll keepit enoof for ye ony
way.”

By this means Edith obtained half her plants
without cost, save for Malcom's labor of transplanting
them.

The weather had little influence on Malcom's
wiry frame, and his spirit of energetic, cheerful industry
was contagious. Once aroused and interested,
Edith lost all sense of time, and the afternoon
passed happily away.

At her request Malcom had brought her a pair
of pruning nippers, such as she had seen him use,
and she kept up a delicate show of work, trimming
the rose bushes and shrubs, while she watched
him. She could not bring her mind to anything
that looked like real work as yet, but she had a
feeling that it must come. She saw that it would
help Malcom very much if she went before and
dropped the plants for him, but some one might
see her, and speak of her doing useful work. The
aristocratically inclined in Pushton would frown on
the young lady so employed, but she could snip at
roses and twine vines, and that would look pretty
and rural from the road.

But it so happened that the one who caught a
glimpse of her spring day beauty and saw the
pretty rural scene she crowned, was not the critical
occupant of some family carriage; for when, while
near the road, she was reaching up to clip off
the topmost spray of a bush, her attention was
drawn by the rattle of a wagon, and in this picturesque
attitude her eyes met those of Arden Lacey.
The sudden remembrance of the unkind return
made to him, and the fact that she had therefore
dreaded meeting him, caused her to blush deeply.
Her feminine quickness caught his expression, a timid

questioning look, that seemed to ask if she would
act the part of the others. Edith was a society
and city girl, and her confusion lasted but a second.
Policy whispered, “you can still keep him as
a useful friend, though you must keep him at a
distance, and you may need him.” Some sense
of gratitude and of the wrong done him and his,
also mingled with these thoughts, passing with the
marvellous rapidity with which a lady's mind acts
in social emergencies. She also remembered that
they were alone, and that none of the Pushton
notables could see that she was acquainted with
the “drunken Laceys.” Therefore before the diffident
Arden could turn away, she bowed and
smiled to him in a genial, conciliatory manner.
His face brightened into instant sunshine and to
her surprise he lifted his old weather-stained felt
hat like a gentleman. Though he had received no
lessons in etiquette, he was inclined to be a little
courtly and stately in manner, when he noticed a
lady at all, from unconscious imitation of the high
bred characters in the romances he read. He said
to himself in glad exultation,—

“She is different from the rest. She is as
divinely good as she is divinely beautiful,” and
away he rattled toward Pushton as happy as if his
old box wagon were a golden chariot, and he a
caliph of Arabian story on whom had just shone
the lustrous eyes of the Queen of the East. Then
as the tumult in his mind subsided, questioning
thoughts as to the cause of her blush came trooping

through his mind, and at once there arose a
long vista of airy castles tipped with hope as with
sunlight. Poor Arden! What a wild uncurbed
imagination had mastered his morbid nature, as he
lived a hermit's life among the practical people of
Pushton! If he had known that Edith, had she
seen him the village, would have crossed the street
rather than have met, or recognized him, it would
have plunged him into still bitterer misanthropy.
She and his mother only stood between him and
utter contempt and hatred of his kind, as they existed
in reality, and not in his books and dreams.

She forgot all about him before his wagon turned
the corner of the road, and chatted away to
Malcom, questioning and nipping with increasing
zest. As the day grew cooler, her spirits rose under
the best of all stimulants, agreeable occupation.
The birds ceased at last their nest-building,
and from orchard and grove came many an
inspiring song. Edith listened with keen enjoyment,
and country life and work looked differently
from what it had in the sultry noon. She
saw the long rows of strawberry vines increasing
under Malcom's labors with deep satisfaction. In
the still humid air the plants scarcely wilted and
stood up with the bright look of those well started
in life.

As it grew towards evening and no carriage of
note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting
trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing
her flower roots that she might put them

elsewhere. She became so interested in her work
that she was positively happy, and soft hearted
Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was
getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring
glances toward her as she went to and fro.

The sun was low in the west and shone in crimson
through the soft haze. But the color in her cheeks
was richer as she rose from the ground, her little
right hand lost in the scraggly earth-covered roots
of some hardy phlox, and turned to meet exquisite
Gus Elliot, dressed with finished care, and
hands encased in immaculate gloves. Her broad
rimmed hat was pushed back, her dress looped up,
and she made a picture in the evening glow that
would have driven a true artist half wild with admiration;
but poor Gus was quite shocked. The
idea of Edith Allen, the girl he meant to marry,
grubbing in the dirt and soiling her hands in that
style! It was his impression that only Dutch
women worked in a garden, and for all he knew of
its products she might be setting out a potato
plant. Quick Edith caught his expression, and
while she crimsoned with vexation at her plight,
felt a new and sudden sense of contempt for the
semblance of a man before her.

But with the readiness of a society girl she
smoothed her way out of the dilemma, saying with
vivacity,—

“Why Mr. Elliot, where did you drop from?
you have surprised me among my flowers, you see.”

“Indeed, Miss Edith,” said Gus, in rather unhappily

phrased gallantry, “to see you thus employed
makes me feel as if we both had dropped
into some new and strange sphere. You seem the
lovely shepherdess of this rural scene, but where is
your flock?”

Shrewd Malcom, near by, watched this scene
as the terrier he resembled might, and took instant
and instinctive dislike to the new comer. With a
contemptuous sniff he thought to himself, “There's
mateerial enoof in ye for so mooch toward a flock
as a calf and a donkey.”

“A truce to your lame compliments,” she said,
concealing her vexation under badinage. “I do
not live by hook and crook yet, whatever I may
come to, and I remember that you only appreciate
artificial flowers made by pretty shop girls, and
these are not in the country. But come in; mother
and my sisters will be glad to see you.”

Gus was not blind to her beauty, and while the
idea of marriage seemed more impossible than ever,
now that he had seen her hands soiled, the evil
suggestion of Van Dam gained attractiveness with
every glance.

Edith found Mr. Van Dam on the porch with
Zell, who had welcomed him in a manner that
meant much to the wily man. He saw how necessary
he was to her, and how she had been living
on the hope of seeing him, and the baseness of his
nature was shown that instead of being stirred to
one noble kindly impulse toward her, he simply exulted
in his power.

“Oh,” said she, as with both hands she greeted
him, her eyes half filling with tears, “we have been
living like poor exiles in a distant land, and you
seem as if just from home, bringing the best part
of it with you.”

“And I shall carry you back to it ere long,” he
whispered.

Her face grew bright and rosy with the deepest
happiness she had ever known. He had never
spoken so plainly before. “Edith can never taunt
me again with his silence,” she thought. Though
sounding well enough to the ear, how false were
his words! When Satan would do work that will
sink to lowest perdition, he must commence as an
angel of light. Zell was giving the best love of
which her heart was capable in view of her defective
education and character. In a sincere and
deep affection there are great possibilities of good.
Her passion, so frank and strong, in the hands of a
true man, was a lever that might have lifted her
up into the noblest life. Van Dam sought to use
it only to force her down. He purposed to cause
one of God's little ones to offend.

Edith soon appeared, dressed with the taste
and style of a Fifth Avenue belle of the more
sensible sort, and Gus was comforted. Her picturesque
natural beauty in the garden was quite lost
on him, but now that he saw the familiar touches
of the artificial in her general aspect, she seemed
to him the peerless Edith of old. And yet his
nice eye noted that even a month of absence from

the fashionable centre, had left her ignorant of
some of the shadings off of one mode into another,
and the thought passed over the polished surface
of his mind (all Gus' thoughts were on the surface,
there being no other accommodation for them)
“why, a year in this out of the world life, and she
would be only a country, girl.”

But all detracting thoughts of each other, all
mean, vile, and deadly purposes, were hidden
under smiling exteriors. Mrs. Allen was the
gracious, elegant matron who would not for the
world let her daughters soil their hands, but
schemed to marry one to a weak apology for a
man, and another to a villain out and out, and the
fashionable world would cordially approve and
sustain Mrs. Allen's tactics if she succeeded.

Laura brightened up more than she had since
her father's death. Anything that gave hope of
return to the city, and the possibility of again
meeting and withering Mr. Goulden with her scorn,
was welcome.

And Edith, while she half despised Gus, found
it very pleasant to meet those of her old set again,
and repeat a bit of the past. The young crave
companionship, and in spite of all his weakness,
she half liked Elliot. With youth's hopefulness
she believed that he might become a man if he
only would. At any rate, she half-consciously
formed the reckless purpose to shut her eyes to all
presentiments of coming trouble and enjoy the
evening to the utmost.

Hannibal was enjoined to get up as fine a supper
as possible, regardless of cost, with Mrs. Allen's
maid to assist.

In the long purple twilight, Edith and Zell, on
the arms of their pseudo lovers, strolled up and
down the paths of the little garden and dooryard.
As Edith and Gus were passing along the walk
that skirted the road, she heard the heavy rumble
of a wagon that she knew to be Arden Lacey's.
She did not look up or recognize him, but appeared
so intent on what Gus was saying, as to be oblivious
to all else, and yet through her long lashes, she
glanced toward him in a rapid flash, as he sat in
his rough working garb on the old board where
she, on the rainy night of her advent to Pushton,
had clung to his arm in the jolting wagon. Momentary
as the glance was, the pained, startled
expression of his face as he bent his eyes full upon
her, caught her attention and remained with
her.

His manner and appearance secured the attention
of Gus also, and with a contemptuous laugh,
he said loud enough for Arden to partially hear,—

“That native comes from pretty far back, I imagine.
He looks as if he never saw a lady and
gentleman before. The idea of living like such a
cabbage head as that.”

If Gus had not been with Edith, his good
clothes and good looks would have been spoiled
within the next five minutes.

Edith glanced the other way and pointed to

her strawberry bed as if not noticing his remark or
its object, saying,—

“If you will come and see us a year from next
June, I can give you a dainty treat from these
plants.”

“You will not be here next June,” said Gus
tenderly. “Do you imagine we can spare you
from New York? The city has seemed dull since
robbed of the light of your bright eyes.”

Edith rather liked sugar plums of such make,
even from Gus, and she, as it were, held out her
hand again by the rather sentimental remark,—

“Absent ones are soon forgotten.”

Gus, from much experience, knew how to flirt
beautifully, and so with some aptness and show of
feeling, replied,—

“From my thoughts you are never absent.”

Edith gave him a quick questioning look.
What did he mean? He had avoided everything
tending to commit him to a penniless girl after her
father's death. Was this mere flirtation? Or had
he, in absence, learned his need of her for happiness,
and was now willing to marry her even
though poor.

“If he is man enough to do this, he is capable
of doing more,” she thought quickly, and circumstances
pleaded for him. She felt so troubled
about the future, so helpless and lonely, and he
seemed so inseparably associated with her old
bright life, that she was tempted to lean on such a
swaying reed as she knew Gus to be. She did not

reply, but he could see the color deepen in her
cheeks even in the fading twilight, her bosom rose
and fell more quickly, and her hand rested upon
his arm with a more confiding pressure. What
more could he ask? and he exulted.

But before he could speak again they were
summoned to supper. Van Dam touched Gus'
elbow as they passed in and whispered,—

“Don't be precipitate. Say nothing definite
to-night. I gather from Zell that a little more of
their country purgatory will render them wholly
desperate.”

Edith noticed the momentary detention and
whispering, and the thought there was some understanding
between the two occurred to her.
For some undefined reason she was always inclined
to be suspicious and on the alert when Mr. Van
Dam was present. And yet it was but a passing
thought, soon forgotten in the enjoyment of
the evening, after so long and dull an experience.
Zell was radiant, and there was a glimmer of color
in Laura's pale cheeks.

After supper they sat down to cards. The
decanter was placed on the side table, and heavy
inroads were made on Mrs. Allen's limited stock of
wine, for the gentlemen, feeling that they were off
on a lark, were little inclined to self-control. They
also insisted on the ladies drinking health with
them, which foolish Zell, and more foolish Mrs.
Allen were too ready to do, and for the first time
since their coming, the little cottage resounded

with laughter that was too loud and frequent to
be inspired by happiness only.

If guardian angels watched there, as we believe
they do everywhere, they might well veil their faces
in sadness and shame.

But the face of poor innocent Hannibal shone
with delight, and nodding his head toward Mrs.
Allen's maid with the complacency of a prophet
who saw his predictions fulfilled, he said:

“I told you my young ladies wasn't gwine to
stay long in Bushtown,” (as Hannibal persisted in
calling the place).

To Arden Lacey, the sight of Edith listening
with glowing cheeks and intent manner to a stranger
with her hand within his arm—a stranger too
that seemed the embodiment of that conventionality
of the world which he despised and hated, was
a vision that pierced like a sword. And then
Gus' contemptuous words, Edith's non-recognition,
though he tried to believe she had not seen him,
was like vitriol to a wound. At first there was a
mad impulse of anger toward Elliot, and as we
have intimated, only Edith's presence prevented
Arden from demanding instant apology. He knew
enough of his fiery nature to feel that he must get
away as fast as possible, or he might forever disgrace
himself in Edith's eyes.

As he rode home his mind was in a sad chaos.
He was conscious that his airy castles were falling
about him with a crash, which though unheard by
all the world, shook his soul to the centre.

Too utterly miserable to face his mother, loathing
the thought of food, he put up his horses and
rushed out into the night.

In his first impulse he vowed never to look
toward Edith again, but before two hours of fruitless
wandering had passed, a fascination drew his
feet toward Edith's cottage, only to hear that detested
voice again, only to hear even Edith's laugh
ring out too loud and reckless to come from the
lips of the exquisite ideal of his dreams. Though
the others had spoken in thunder tones, he had
ears for these two voices only. He rushed away
from the spot, as one might from some torturing
vision, exclaiming,—

“The real world is a worse mockery than the
one of my dreams. Would to heaven I had never
been born.”