The last of the Puritans; the story of Benjamin Gilbert and his friends

Front matter

“When the Great Recorder comes To write against your name, He writes not that you won or lost

But how you played the game’

Burncoat Girl Scout Library

Foreword

When I consider Life and its few years—

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;

A call to battle and the battle done,

Ere the last echo dies within our ears;

A rose, choked in the grass, an hour of fears;

A burst of music down the unlist’ning street;

The gusts that past a dark’ning shore do beat— I wonder at the Idleness of Tears;

Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, Chieftains and bards, and keepers of the sheep, By ev'ry cup of sorrow that you had,

Loose me from tears, and make me see aright, How each hath back what once he stayed to weep—

Chapter I

00—oom—noo—m!” warned the weird nd wail of an automobile horn as the big machine spun by a tall young man walking wearily along a Connecticut country road in the sunshine of May. The young man’s firm mouth twitched, he passed his hand over his white forehead, and tried to smile. It was no use. Melancholy settled upon his fine, cleanly shaven features. A haunting look was in his brown eyes. In his heart was dumb acceptance of a bitter lot. | A month ago Giles Brewster had been in the”

full flush of health and vigor, with a future before him seemingly as sure and as fair as any man’s. One of the best liked, as he was one of the brightest of the younger professors at Brown, an associate in the Department of

I

English, his heart was in his work and his brain was clear as a bell. And music had been in his soul; for he was engaged to be married ~ to one of the prettiest girls ever graduated _. from the women’s college of the Rhode Island University.

e That was four weeks ago! It seemed a life- ; time. Now, Eternity was before him. His eyes could see to read no book. His brain knew too well the reality of suffering. Brewester had been caught in a railway wreck going ~ from Providence to Boston to deliver a lecture which he never delivered. After the accident he was for some days in delirium. He came forth from, this to face the truth: his doctors ’ deredvhim to the country for complete rest. x “te shock to his system had been severe. His es were seriously affected. He might re-

cover, he might not.

The only near relative Brewster had in the world was his dead father’s sister, a maiden » aunt. It wasto Aunt Susalla Brewster’s home in the quaint little hamlet of Tolltown, among the peaceful hills of rural Connecticut, that he was now going. As he journeyed along the dusty road he found it in his heart to thank his » God that a measure of physical strength was still spared him. His athlete’s frame betrayed little of the mental anguish the strong man bore. His eyes were beginning to pain him again. He drew forth some glasses from his inner coat pocket and placed them on his nose.

Brewster had already walked three wil from the railroad station at Mixville; it w only two more to Tolltown Street. Just nov he was in a deep cut. An impulse seized him « to clamber to the top of the steep bank on his left. Facing west, he looked upon suétessiv ranges of hills to the horizon where lies the Co! necticut valley; from this point on the Tolltown Turnpike, Hartford is twenty miles. Nearer nestle little towns whose white church * steeples are easily discernible. Green fields merge into sloping woodland; hills tower afar., @ ‘At the northwest, Wilton Mountain juts toward the sky, majestic, deceiving as to distance.

_ “When I look far enough off,” he said, “I can see as clearly as ever; how the river shines in the sun!” In a vale below and before him, a mile away, lay the lake-like expanse of Boulder River, which here shows no claim to its name; its broad bosom is unbroken and its current silent; it sweeps back into the country at the north with a mighty arm, though the gens comes from the east and flows due outh beyond the great curve of its crescent. rewster gazed long and intently at the beauty of river and vale and rising hills before he journeyed on, thinking, thinking.

Perec orp Turnpike runs into Tolltown reet opposite the Baptist Church, which is

out midway the length of the broad village green. This extends half a mile; elms a century old and more tower over the central green. The double highway is arched by leafy maples

. andelms. The old-fashioned street is perfectly typical, restful and dignified.

Brewster stood at the green by the Baptist Church. He knew his aunt used to live at one end of the street or the other, but he could not remember whether it was up at the Methodist Church end or down at the south end, where the stately Congregational spire rises white and tapering from among the elms.

In the yard of the big square-topped lemoncolored house next the Tolltown Baptist Church, which has no steeple at all, a picturesque, robust individual perhaps forty years old was mowing the lawn. He toed in—decidedly. He chewed tobacco—violently. His hair stuck through his partially crownless hat, one side of which was much torn. He needed a shave.

Brewster leaned against the fence. The lawn mower stopped. “Hotter’n !” said the fellow, wiping his brow. He uttered it so expressively and naively that Brewster queried: “Sir?”

“Hot! it! Hotter’n —— mowin’!”’

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He had now abandoned the lawn mower and come up to the fence.

“What is your name?” asked Brewster.

“I’m Rob Wright who be you?” was the response in one breath.

“My name is Brewster; can you tell me where Miss Brewster lives?”

Rob Wright’s brown, squirrel-like eyes suddenly bulged. “Be you, be you Prefesser Brewster?” he asked excitedly.

oo ge

Rob Wright grew more agitated. “You’re her nephew that was comin’ to-day! Well, she lives down to that end—and she’s dead—she died this mornin’ sudden ’n’ I was the first one knew about it—I——”

“What!” Brewster cut him off sharply. A burning anger rose within him at the shocking, preposterous statement of the fellow.

“What are you talking about?) Who do you mean—is my aunt dead?” The last word came from him like a challenge. He could not believe; it was a mistake or a mockery.

Rob Wright stared.

“Show me the house!” commanded Brewster.

Rob Wright straddled the fence to climb it and half fell down, with a foot caught between pickets. Brewster set him upright and they started down the street.

“I was the first one knew it!” said Wright, finding his tongue. “I come to mow her lawn this mornin’ and I went to git a drink o’ water to the kitchen and I see her lying crost ways on the dinin’-room couch and I says, “‘Good-mornin’, Miss Brewster,’ an’ she never spoke!”

The professor increased his stride. Wright fairly ran to keep pace, and nearly fell over his own feet. “I was scairt, ’n’ I run into Dr. Huntington’s, that’s next door, ’n’ the doctor come in ’n’ he couldn’t bring her to, ’n’ she was dead—’twuz heart trouble i

“Ts somebody at the house now?’ Brewster asked; they had passed the Congregational Church and he saw the little white cottage down the street, and recognized it.

“'There’s been women there all day—Mis’

Henry Bishop, she lives where I was just mowin’—’n’ I live there too—she’s my aunt— she’s here now.” They were already at the beginning of the hedge that shut in the frontage of the yard from the street.

Rob Wright lagged. “end me five cents, — will you?” he called out. A coin was flung back to him.

Brewster quickly stepped across the little veranda facing the street at the dining-room ell, and entered the house.

Chapter II

REWSTER saw two women with their heads together reading a letter. Before them was his aunt’s little old writing desk with half its drawers open and letters and papers strewed about. So engrossed were they that they were not at once aware of Brewster’s footsteps. In a few seconds they felt his presence, and turned. “Oh!” said the older woman. She had shoulders like a man’s and her neck was settled between them. She involuntarily covered her hands in her gingham apron.

“Mrs. Bishop?” inquired Brewster.

“I’m Mr. Brewster,” he said; “I am told my ~ aunt is dead!”

The younger woman, whose thin face crimsoned, hastily stuffed letters and papers back in the desk.

“This is Mrs. Starkweather, my daughter,” remarked Mrs. Bishop. “We wuz tryin’ to straighten up things—we knew you wuz expected. Your aunt’s death wuz awful sudden. I wuz one of her friends—I se

“Ves,” said Brewster, and bowed.

There was an awkward pause.

“Guess I'll be goin’,’ said the younger woman, and passed through the door.

Brewster spoke: “Mrs. Bishop, this is a terrible shock to me—I can hardly realize that my aunt is dead. Have any arrangements been made? Is, is—she here?” he asked.

“She never ought to lived alone so. Yes— the undertaker wuz got this forenoon—the— She’s dressed in her black silk and laid out in the parlor. The casket’s coming to-day. It wuz thought the funeral maybe you’d want to-morrow?”

Mrs. Bishop’s voice rasped when she uttered an inquiry; it was metallic at best.

“Tl go in there,” he said; “alone, please,” he added, as Mrs. Bishop stepped heavily forward. She drew back, somewhat offended.

Giles Brewster was with his dead.

The face looked younger than he remembered to have seen it in life. It was lily fair as a young girl’s might have been—sweet, peaceful and glorified; Heaven, after sixty-five years in the world. The fragile hands lay as lightly on her breast as garlands of flowers; the white hair was ethereal; the smooth forehead bore no trace of time or care now; only the mark of perfect rest.

The tears coursed unrestrainedly from Brewster’s tired eyes. Longing, love, yearning unspeakable, filled his aching heart. She was the last of his own blood, and he had never known how lovely, how good she was. He realized with a shock the worth of a hundred tokens of affection that she had given in her silent way since the death of his father and mother in early young manhood. That he had dwelt away from her made no difference. She always remembered. He thought of the letter she wrote to Martha, bidding them welcome— if Martha, his wife-to-be, were only beside him there now! So, yearning for the dead passed to longing for the living—his nearest and dearest.

Brewster had withdrawn from the little parlor; he stood at the dining-room door, which opened upon the veranda, and, with a sob in his throat, drank in breaths of the free air. How still was this still little village! An overpowering sense of it swept down uponhim. A feeling of helplessness, a feeling of the Presence of God possessed him.

There was the sound of footsteps coming down the village street. A square-shouldered young man passed the hedge and came into view. He was a short figure; a shovel hat made his height seem less than it really was. He came up the walk to the cottage ell. His face was beardless, his tie white, and his clothes black. He extended his hand to Brewster. “I am the Reverend Matthew Lingane,” he said; “I was your aunt’s pastor. I take it youre her nephew that was coming——”

“Yes,” answered Brewster, “come in.”

The young clergyman sat down at Brewster’s bidding, and they talked of funeral arrangements. In a half hour he rose to go.

Various other persons called during the long afternoon—kindly neighbors with good hearts and wet eyes.

When it had become nearly dark, and Brewster was alone, again some one rapped at the door of the dining-room ell. The professor was lighting the little lamp on the stand by the china closet. “Come in,” he said. A young woman, bareheaded and dark haired, stepped just over the threshold.

“Dr. Huntington would like you to come in,” she said; “our house is the next to this. We would be pleased if you would have supper with us. Your aunt was our dear friend. You must be very tired.” She paused. Her manner of speech was unaffected and direct. Her voice was extremely clear, rather low pitched, and the gentlest Brewster had heard in all that day.

“Thank you,” he answered; “it is kind of you. I will. I am tired.” He remembered that he had not tasted food since an early breakfast in Providence.

“Your name?” began Brewster absently, as he turned down the light and prepared to go with her.

“T am Ruth Huntington. Dr. Huntington is my father,” she quickly said.

The girl was tall; she walked easily and rapidly a little ahead of Brewster in the dusk down the walk, and on the Huntington lawn. They entered a hallway at a side entrance, where a hanging lamp showed the way into the doctor’s offices on the left, and into a large, wellappointed and brightly lighted dining-room at the right hand. The doctor sat before the open fireplace; the evening was cool, and the blaze grateful. He rose with the ease and quickness of manner characteristic of his daughter. He took Brewster’s hand and looked into his face earnestly. Dr. Samuel Huntington was a fine figure of a man; spare, but well built—tall, with hair and mustache nearly snow white, and a face of Puritan type, much bronzed by years of hard riding. His practice was distributed in a radius of many miles. His shoulders showed age, but his dark eyes held fire, and his voice rang true: “You must let us do whatever we can for you. Your aunt has been our neighbor and our friend for more than twenty-five years. She was a noble woman.”

“Thank you,” said Brewster, but could say no more.

A plump, pretty little woman dressed in black, and a boy of seven or eight, entered the room.

“My daughter, Mrs. Tremaine,” said the doctor. Mrs. Tremaine expressed her pleasure. “My son, Percival,” she said, presenting the boy, who had an interesting pug nose. They were soon seated at table, with Percival Tremaine directly opposite the professor. The boy had fat, red cheeks, tow hair, blue eyes, and looked like his mother. Mrs. Tremaine was a widow. Her married life had been spent in

Hartford, where her husband had recently died.

Ruth Huntington poured steaming chocolate. Brewster noticed what wonderful hair Ruth Huntington had; it neither waved nor curled; it was piled high in luxuriant masses on her shapely head and was perfectly black, with neither sheen nor gloss. This girl’s eyes were, oddly enough, not black at all, but a very deep gray, lustrous and gentle, and large. She possessed an unusually sensitive mouth and a straight, slender nose. Ruth’s manner was more reserved than that of her older sister, but she could not be over twenty-six or eight.

Brewster watched her closely, scarcely aware that he was doing so, while he talked with the others.

“TI would like you to stay with us, if you choose—to sleep here, to-night,” said Dr. Huntington to Brewster after supper. “You would feel less lonely, perhaps.”

Brewster gratefully assented.

He went to the cottage and closed it.

“The room is ready, if Professor Brewster is tired,” said Ruth, when he had returned, a little later.

“Just plain Mr. Brewster—please call me that—for you have made yourselves my friends, and there are no titles between friends,” suggested Brewster, smiling. She looked back at him frankly.

“Mr. Brewster,” she said, and gave him her hand, and bade him good-night.

The doctor showed Brewster to the great chamber with its wide windows, spotless curtains, fine old furniture and the odor of lavender and rose leaves pervading it. Between smooth sheets he sank to sleep.

Chapter III

ARTHA BeEmis, in her own little slantceilinged room on the third floor of the two-family house on Doyle Avenue, in which her father lived in Providence, sat with flushed cheeks and quickly beating heart reading a letter. To say that her cheeks were flushed tells not all the truth; they were crimson; always their coloring was rich; now it was riotous. Ordinarily her blue eyes were placid, with not too much of artful expression; now they seemed to look into a future filled with wonders.

It was night; the single gas jet by the window flickered in a gusty breeze. At the top of a hill was Martha’s home, and from her window under the roof she saw the lights of the west side of the city as it lay below; for she had turned from her letter, and stood looking out into the night. Martha was tall; her head nearly touched the low ceiling; abundant tawny

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS aoe hair, with streaks of gold, was coiled on the back of her head and hung low and ‘covered her neck. She was a perfect specimen of sane, vigorous maidenhood, ready to blossom, to flower into a glorious free womanhood.

She sat on the edge of the bed, and again read her letter:

“My Desar Marrua: It is a week since aunt’s funeral. I have delayed writing again ‘until I should have decided what it is best to do. But you shall decide. I find myself in possession of aunt’s little place here in Tolltown Street. The cottage has seven rooms, four downstairs and three up, and would be a cozy home for two people. There is an acre of land for garden. Besides the place, there is a large wood lot on the hill, worth perhaps fifteen hundred dollars, if worked to good advantage. Aunt owned a few shares of Water Company stock. Now you know all my resources—the money I have saved, and the newly acquired. You know, too, that my eyes may trouble me for a long time.

“The question for you to decide is, shall we marry, and will you come here and take care of me this summer? I feel that I have hardly the right to ask you, unless you would rather. Dear, it shall be as you say. If your judgment tells you it would be unwise to marry me now, I shall keep bachelor’s hall here this summer at least.

“Remember me to your father and mother and Nell.

“As always,

“GILES BREWSTER.”

The professor’s letter was unevenly written, and evidenced how badly his eyes had troubled him.

The girl on the edge of the bed spoke to herself.

“Oh, I don’t see how I could—I don’t see. It would be terrible if his eyes shouldn’t be all right again—and there would be children—of course there’d be children, and then, if he couldn’t support them a

She said no more, but still sat, dreaming her dream.

At last she rose and finished undressing. Deeply religious was Martha. Her faith had never failed her. So, now, she gracefully fell upon her knees; her loosened hair streamed golden and tawny and shimmering across her flowing nightgown. She prayed fervently, and if one may judge, came to a satisfactory conclusion. For she was asleep five minutes later, and in measured breathing her fair bosom rose and fell.

Giles Brewster, as a professor at Brown, had lived his life with little thought of femininity until he began teaching a senior class at the women’s college in connection with the University. And Martha Bemis became his pupil. From the first she attracted him.

She was born of plain, wholesome English parents, and seemed to him the very flower of her family. The father was a skilled worker in one of the jewelry factories. Martha’s amiable mother had reared a numerous family, but only Martha and her younger sister Nellie were left at home.

There were no questionings in Brewster’s mind when once he had taken Martha in his arms and kissed her lips; the desire to call her his possessed him. The old, old story of propinquity and sex; a fresh, fair maiden and a man who was ready to love. And there was not a doubt that she loved him.

“My Dear GIEs,” said her letter to Brewster, “I have been thinking all about what you wrote in your last. How nice it would be if we only could! It does seem hard that we can’t be married, and I would have had all my things ready by fall if it hadn’t been for your getting hurt. But I am going to make you wait, dear, because I am afraid it is best. You said the cottage would be a cozy home for two people. But you see it may be a long time before we can have much except the cottage to live on, but we hope it won’t be long a bit.

“Now I am going to surprise you. I have a place in the library at college to catalogue books all summer. I went to your friend, Professor Marsh, and he took me to the Librarian and told him I was a last year’s graduate, and he remembered me—of course he would—I spent hours and hours in the American Poetry

Collection! You said I was one of the poems. He was very kind, and I have the place, and I hope it will help you to think I am working, even if you can’t be doing anything toward getting married just now, dear. But—we shall be married. No more for this time, because mamma called me several minutes ago to help fold sheets, as I used to make you do in the kitchen Monday nights when Nell had the parlor. She is courting hard, for a little girl, and I guess it will be a ‘go.’ He comes very regularly.

“Good-by. With love,

“MartTHA.”

“P. S.—I am glad to know about that wood lot. Do you think it will be worth as much as you say?

“T hope this writing is large enough. Are you going to do your own cooking, dear?”

“TI guess I am,” said the professor, as he tipped his chair back against the house where he sat on the little veranda of the dining-room ell, folded the letter, and put it in his pocket. “She’s right. Martha’s a good practical girl.”

Rob Wright came along, pushing a lawn mower before him and toeing in. Brewster smiled, and greeted him.

“Say,” said Rob Wright, sitting on the edge of the veranda, “be you goin’ to get married?”

Brewster looked at him. “Who wants to know?”

“Well, my aunt, Mis’ Henry Bishop, she was wonderin’. Folks ’spose you be goin’ to.”

Rob Wright gazed into Brewster’s face with a toothless grin of good-fellowship.

“Do you ever go fishing?” asked Brewster.

“Ye-es,” said Rob Wright, looking puzzled.

“And not catch anything?”

“Y e-es.”

“Well,” said Brewster, getting up to go into the house, “that’s because you don’t bait your hook right!”

“Say!”

The professor halted.

“Lend me five cents—I’ll take it out when I mow your lawn next week.”

Brewster solemnly placed a nickel in the eager hand.

“Much obliged!” said Rob Wright, and started up the street with his lawn mower.

Ruth Huntington and her sister, Mrs. Tremaine, went by and bowed pleasantly. Percival Tremaine tagged behind, and shied a stone at a hapless kitten on the green. Over across the street the three children of young Mrs. Starkweather, Mrs. Henry Bishop’s daughter, were raising a din that rent the air. The girl of four slapped the face of the boy of three as they played on the piazza; he fell backward and over the creeping infant. The chorused shriek that followed was terrific; the infant’s cry was impish.

The professor went into the house to pare potatoes for dinner.

CHAPTER IV HE usual social gathering was in evidence

when Brewster entered Randall’s store that evening to buy groceries. White-whiskered, giant-framed, shrewd-featured John Randall himself leaned over the counter with his great hand on a bushel basket of potatoes. A dozen wooden rakes, and an assortment of hoes, shovels, scythes and whip lashes cast fantastic shadows in the uncertain illumination afforded by kerosene lamps. Clark Jones, the champion wood chopper of Tolltown, tall, gaunt and sinewy, stood straight against a high chest of spool silks and assorted braids. Ed Sperrow, who wore felt boots winter and summer, and carried a staff wheresoever he went, by day or by night, though he stood six feet and could have whipped two good men in spite of his sixty years, sat on a sugar barrel by the door, stroking his beard pensively. Eben Rider, professional mower of lawns and sawer of wood, and in all respects the natural enemy and deadly rival of Rob Wright, had his whiskerless, gnarled face screwed into a grimace of many years’ standing. Mr. Rider occupied a second sugar barrel. Orin Champlin, a thinfaced, cadaverous horse doctor, sat on a box beside Mr. Rider’s barrel.

In the seat of honor, a wooden office chair that was braced and held together by a dozen iron rods and a score of bolts, sat Benjamin Gilbert, his feet on the stove and his right hand in a pail of seed beans. He was a big, deep-chested man with huge shoulders and powerful limbs. He was seventy, but age scarcely showed except in the fold of skin at his neck. He wore the old-fashioned kind of standing white collar that opens wide in front, and a black cravat of a pattern not often seen nowadays. Benjamin Gilbert’s face was of large, strong type; a forehead almost massive, and a rugged set of features. His face was cleanly shaven except for a gray mustache.

There had been a momentary silence when Brewster entered the store.

“Well, there was nobody but Yankees here before, and there’s nobody but Yankees here now,” said Benjamin Gilbert, looking approvingly at Brewster.

Brewster was buying his groceries, and John Randall was waiting on him deliberately as he named articles wanted.

“And so, as I was sayin’,” declared Benjamin Gilbert, “I will say on. It ain’t the pleasantest thing in the world for us old Yankees that kinder love the place we was born in to see all the outlyin’ farms and all the old homesteads of generations gone passin’ into the hands of foreigners. Woodpiles at the front door and chicken coops in the front yard ain’t specially pleasant to see, and when the European Sunday’s observed by gettin’ drunk, why, we wish they wouldn’t!”

Benjamin Gilbert paused. Eben Rider lighted a pipe; Ed Sperrow prodded the floor with his long staff. Clark Jones bought a plug of tobacco without further ado than putting a dime on the counter, and resumed his posture against the chest of assorted spool silks and braids as Benjamin Gilbert began speaking again:

“What I maintain is, that we Yankees air simply destroyin’ ourselves by lettin’ in the foreigners so fast. All our old communities air gettin’ the overflow from the cities. What I want to know is, what’s the end? What kind of a body politic air we goin’ to have in the © State of Connecticut in thirty years more? What does town meetin’ mean to these shiploads of folks that air swarmin’ in? It’s all well enough to talk about their children bein’ Americans. Yes. What kind of Americans? Can ten per cent. of Yankees in a town educate ninety per cent. of foreigners? The percentage in the rural districts and factory towns won’t be ten per cent. Yankee in a few years more, at the present rate of immigration and emigration, and births and deaths. In some respects we air worse off than the cities air. Our schools ain’t so well equipped to handle foreigners. The country districts have been the safeguard of the nation, and the country districts have supplied the cities with the sturdiest stock and the best brains. Well, where air the cities goin’ to draw from the next hundred years?”

There was a characteristic Yankee silence in John Randall’s store. Presently, Benjamin Gilbert’s great shoulders moved, and he rose deliberately from his chair. Brewster had listened with especial attention to the observations of this old-fashioned Yankee—type of a bygone day. Benjamin Gilbert passed out of the store, and Brewster followed, his arms laden with groceries. The older man waited, in neighborly fashion, and walked down the street with him. “Mr. Brewster,” he said, as they crossed to the westerly side, “I’d like to have you come down and call on me; it’s the house next to the grist mill, at the foot of the hill out of the street. I live there alone, and have ever since my wife and daughter died. I do my own cookin’ and keep house alone same’s you do. I knew your father well; we was together at Antietam. He was a gentleman and a scholar and a fighter. He was worth knowin’, and I guess you air.” After this frank avowal Benjamin Gilbert at once said good-night and went on down the street, as Brewster turned into his yard and deposited groceries at his kitchen door, and then went around through the dining-room to unlock it and take them in. His aunt’s little cottage had been so decorously _ kept for a quarter of a century that the professor would have deemed it unseemly to take in groceries at any front entrance.

Chapter V

4 fa professor arose early next morning and worked in his garden, planting a row each of peas, string beans and bush limas. After a breakfast of cocoa and crackers he lay on the couch in the dining-room and went fast asleep. At ten o’clock, being awakened by the screaming of the Starkweather children across the street, he decided to make a forenoon call upon Benjamin Gilbert, down by the grist mill. Tolltown Street runs north and south along a narrow plateau between two ranges of hills. At the south end it descends into a vale. Looking due south from the end of the broad front piazza of Benjamin Gilbert’s white story-anda-half house, South Tolltown Depot is nearly three miles straight away down the vale. In front, on the east, rises a towering wooded hill, at the base of which flows the small stream that turns the grist mill water wheel. The north end of Benjamin Gilbert’s piazza 32 was screened from Brewster’s view as he approached by a woodbine; a thick, intermingled growth of cinnamon vine and honeysuckle on the front met it at the corner, and closed in a space.