The evasion

Front matter

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REFERENCE LIBRARY OF | HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY |

2 Park Street, Boston

Part I

I. Tue Fates In CONFERENCE

II. A WomAN OF THE WORLD . ‘ III. GLADYS BEGINS HER EDUCATION IV. THe D&suTaNntTEe

V. Tae SociaList . : : ‘ ‘ VI. ATHEIST AND Mystic . : . : VII. THe Lover R : : : ; .

VIII. Dick anp ARTHUR IX. Truancy . ; ; : : : ° X. A GAME OF POKER ; ; ; ° ° XI. Feet or Cray . ; : : : .

XII. ArTHUR DISQUALIFIED . ‘ : N 4 XIII. Moonrieut " : . : ‘ ° XIV. QUIXOTIEM. . : ; 4 ~ ; PART II I. A Return. : ‘ : ; .

II. Over THE TEa-Curs . :

III. Sisters 5 : ; : .

IV. THE GAME. H i: F ri “ vi

CONTENTS

. A MeeETING AT MIDNIGHT

. FLIGHT.

. A MaAn’s RESOLVE .

. HUSBAND AND WIFE .

. THE PRoFeEssor 18 TROUBLED

. AN Avucust NIGHT .

. AN AWAKENING .

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXYV.

XXVI.

XXVITI.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

THE PLAcE oF MEMORIES .

THE ORDEAL OF GLADYS ARTHUR’S RETURN

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW .

Burnt PAPER .

ON THE CLIFF. A On THE SANDS RENUNCIATION

. 154

. Li ee

. 204

. 224

. 248

. 276

. 299

. 323

. 351

. 366

. 390

. 407

Tur summer world was full of beauty, beauty that mounted daily as the sap in the trees, as the tides under midsummer moons. Wealth was flung upon wealth, beauty upon beauty, glory upon glory, and Marian Copeland, to whom these things were as the life of her soul, lay dying.

The accident had been so swift and terrible that neighbors forgot the disapproval with which they had always regarded her irresponsibility, her pagan love of nature and beauty, and her lack of principle as evinced in the bringing up of her boy, with whom since her husband’s death she had been more like a child than a mother. They spoke of her now with awestruck voices, wondering how she could die on a day of so much beauty, how she could die at all,—she for whom death seemed so much too still and solemn.

Yet Marian Copeland was to die, and on this day, full as it was of the beauty that she loved.

‘She will not last till evening,” said the great specialist who had been summoned from Boston.

“ Then I suppose that some one must tell the boy,” suggested the specialist’s assistant.

But the famous man was indifferent upon the subject. He was, in fact, unaware of the existence of a boy, and felt that on general principles the less heard of boys the better. The assistant might do as he liked, he said, provided the child could be kept from making a disturbance; and then he got into his buggy and drove away.

The young physician left in charge of the situation stood for a moment in the sunshine. He had an acute recollection of the little figure he had found the night before, lying asleep outside the door of the sick woman’s chamber, and of the dark eyes that had questioned him as the boy started into consciousness. He was not an attractive boy, being neither pretty nor particularly clean. In the suddenness and terror of accident no one had thought to wash or undress him, so that his face was still stained by the blueberries picked and eaten the afternoon before by him and the young mother, little more than a child herself, who now lay dying in the glory of the summer day.

“Can I go in to her now?” he had asked; and at intervals during the morning he had repeated the question with the maddening persistency of children. When denied he had gone quietly away, for they told him any noise would disturb her. But as the day wore on his questions were put with increasing frequency, and after each denial there was a longer’ pause before he turned away,and during which he fixed upon the one in authority a look of inquiry and deepening suspicion.

The young doctor was a coward, as all men are when confronted with emotional responsibility, and while he deliberated as to the course he had best pursue, the child stood again before him. His feet were bare, and he carried his boots in his hand. By daylight the blueberry stains about his lips were especially prominent, and the knees of his trousers bore signs of yesterday’s frolic.

“Can I go in to her now?” he asked. “I will be very quiet. I have taken off my boots on purpose.”

“‘ think you had better not go in yet,” said the doctor, anxious to gain time, and hoping that the little questioner would go away as he had gone before.

But this time he did not go away. His bare feet were planted firmly in the dust, his eyes were more than usually suspicious, and the pause more than usually long.

“Why not?” he asked finally. ‘“ Why not, can’t I go in to her ?”

*¢ Because you would disturb her.”

There was another pause, and another scrutiny.

“‘T have never disturbed her, never once since I was born,” he persisted.

*¢ And how do you know that?”’ asked the doctor, in a light and cheerful tone.

‘“‘ Because she told me so,” answered the boy gravely.

There is a power in the unconsciousness and directness of children which the man may envy; and it was this power, as much as a distressing duty, which made the young doctor exceedingly uncomfortable. He was conscious of distinct relief when the boy turned away, and, stepping softly, disappeared into the house. So little noise did the bare feet make that the nurse was not aware of him till he stood by the bed; and the sick woman’s consciousness, struggling through fever and opium, woke, as with a ery his mother caught him in her arms.

_ “Dickie! Dickie!” The voice was thick and broken. “ Dickie, I am going to die —I am too young to die — too young!” And then there were burning kisses, long, laboring sobs, her cheek hot and tear-stained against his, her finger-tips wandering over his brow, his eyelids, his lips, choking words of tenderness, and always the blind kisses, clinging, long-drawn, delirious. In the confusion that followed her inevitable collapse, Dickie was hurried from the room.

There are many who pass from youth to middle age before receiving the revelation that life can be a great and a terrible thing ; there are more who never receive it; but to Dickie the knowledge was given while he was yet a child, and stood in his mother’s garden knowing that she was going to die.

To die —she was going to die! She was going to leave him alone; and Dickie flung himself on the ground in agony.

Suffering does not measure time, so it might have been a moment or a year before he heard the voice of his nurse, and his head was drawn into her arms.

‘“* My darlin’! my darlin’!” She was rocking to and fro in her grief. “She won’t be for to die! she won’t be for to lave ye. Pray, dearie, pray! They say the Lord listens to the prayers of little children. Pray to the Blessed Virgin, the Blessed Mother, who knows the pain of children—ah! what am I after sayin’? She would never learn ye to pray to our Mother in heaven, and if I learned ye now she might be too angered to stay wid us. Pray wid the Lord’s Prayer she taught ye wid her own lips; but pray low, dearie, pray in a whisper, for she ’s sleepin’ now, and it’s the sleep that will do her good, and the blessed Lord and all the saints will hear if ye so much as whisper.”

‘The Lord listens to the prayers of little children.” The words sank deep into Dickie’s soul.

“Tell me about God, mamma,” he had asked her once. And she had said that no one knew much about Him, except that He was good.

‘*‘God is good, and listens to the prayers of little children.” Then surely — surely she would not die.

Under an apple-tree, far away from his mother’s chamber, so that he should not disturb her, Dickie prayed.

“*Oh, God, save her, save her!” he whispered, kneeling in a huddled little heap, his head almost on the ground. Above and about him was the quiet summer stillness, a golden stillness, broken only by the hum of insects and occasional splashes of music from a song-sparrow.

‘‘There are so many mothers in heaven,” prayed Dickie. “You cannot need her up there, there are so many mothers in heaven —and I have only her. Let her stay, and I will be good — oh, I will be good!”

Now and again the whispers were interrupted by sobs, the need of silence was forgotten in the passion of appeal, and then he would cower down in terror, pressing his hands to his mouth. He sobbed with harsh, gasping sobs too heavy for his small frame, so that finally a merciful exhaustion came to him, and with exhaustion quiet came also, and the dawn of faith. He raised his eyes to the branches above, that were full of shadow and sunlight.

“God is good,” repeated the child. “ He cannot let her die when I have begged so hard.”

Over the meadows floated the evening song of the wood-thrush, serene, lofty, remote from the passions of men. Dickie felt suddenly that all was well, not as God might will, but as he wished, and he lay on his back with his face to the sky and his arms outstretched, while the song of the thrush came to him again and again through the evening calm.

‘“‘'The Lord listens to the prayers of little children,” whispered Dickie, after which there was a smile on his lips, and he slept.

When he woke the world had grown dark. He was shivering, and found on standing up that he must steady himself against the tree, for it was many hours since he had eaten. But he was not unhappy, for he knew that his prayer had been answered.

The house was still and dark, but a faint light shone from his mother’s room into the garden.

He crept up the staircase, groping his way, and obliged to sit down now and then because of a dizzy feeling in his head. At these times the stillness of the thick dark was like a presence, and at any other time he might have been afraid.

At the head of the staircase a faint shaft of light came from the half-open door of his mother’s room. Very softly the bare feet took him to the door, and he pushed it wide open.

Half an hour later they found him lying senseless across the threshold.

After the funeral the presiding clergyman felt it necessary to take Dickie aside.

“Why did you not kneel with me when the others knelt?” he asked.

“ Were n’t you praying?” asked the boy.

“Of course we were praying.”

“T thought so,” said Dickie. ‘‘ That is why I did not kneel.”” He looked at the clergyman with steady, unchildlike eyes. “I will never ask God for anything again,” he added.

PART I

Chapter I The Fates In Conference

Tue fact that he was a notoriously bad boy is rather in his favor than otherwise,” said Mrs. Stanwood. ‘I shall certainly ask him.” And Richard Copeland’s name and address went down in her notebook. “ His guardian is one of my oldest friends,” she continued, “‘and I can hardly refuse to receive his ward at my house because he refused to say his prayers at a funeral when he was ten years old. Why was he expelled from St. Matthew’s school?”

*‘ Because he would not go to chapel. He said the service was wicked, and the Nicene Creed worse than anything in paganism. I don’t blame him much for that myself.” And Miss Miranda Lawrence, who was a stanch Unitarian, stabbed her emery bag with an energy suggestive of her readiness for combat.

But her sister, Mrs. Stanwood, made no response to this warlike temper, though she was an Episcopalian who would have scorned to occupy any but the most expensive pew in the most expensive church of Boston.

“ And how about the English schools?” she asked.

“The same difficulty from a religious point of view, added to his unwillingness to stand the fagging. He created quite a scandal in England.”

“A scandal, you say —better and better!” cried Mrs. Stanwood gayly. ‘“‘ Why, the boy is sure to make a mark! He will be a radical of some kind, perhaps even an anarchist, and he may found a new Boston religion. In the meantime I wish him to be seen at my parties.”

“ But why ask him just when you are bringing out Gladys?”

“T have n’t said that I would bring out Gladys. Wait till I have seen her. You don’t tell me she is pretty.” ‘‘T have said that she is small, and has red hair.”

“Tf you are small enough it is a distinction, and red hair is rather an advantage than otherwise if you know how to dress for it.”

“ Humph! ” said Miss Miranda. ‘I have n’t encouraged her to think much about dress so far.”

“We will change all that,’’ said her sister serenely.

‘Which any one would feel sure of to look at you,” retorted Miss Miranda.

“T hope so, indeed,” answered Mrs. Stanwood, with great sincerity, and the subject was dropped. There was no ill-feeling between them, but they were more or less unknown quantities to each other.

Mrs. Stanwood was a woman of what is known as the grand monde. She had married a fortune and a goodnatured man, and made the most of both. For fifteen years the best that Europe could offer of talent and

THE FATES IN CONFERENCE aristocracy had met in her drawing-rooms. She was a social influence in London, a power in the Faubourg St. Germain, and in Rome Papist and Royalist had met in her palace. It was for these things that Mrs. Stanwood lived,and she had never been heard to say that life was not worth the living; for there is a social talent as marked and inevitable as that for any of the arts, and Mrs. Stanwood possessed this talent. It seemed therefore much to her credit when she submitted so gracefully to her husband’s suddenly announced intention of returning to his own country.

** Yes,” she said, in answer to inquiries, “I am taking poor Willie back to Boston. What am I going to do there? Dieu sait, ma chere! But he has stayed over here for so long to please me that it is his turn now, for he never liked Europe.”

Mrs. Stanwood usually spoke of her husband as “poor Willie,” with an accent'suggestive of kindly tolerance, not unmixed with pity for his shortcomings, and on this occasion the impression conveyed was one of voluntary and charming willingness to subscribe to his unspoken wish. In reality, she knew by a certain expression of her husband’s chin that his mind was made up, and that no power of hers could unmake it; so she accepted his decision with the gay philosophy which was her great charm, and prepared to make the best of it.

It was true that Mr. Stanwood had never liked living in Europe. He found it difficult to remember foreign names, he was unable to cope with repartee, nor could 15 he discuss art, love, temperament, or the subleties of European diplomacy. It followed, therefore, that he was at a disadvantage in his wife’s drawing-room, and no man may stand this long and keep his self-respect.

But it must not be thought that during these fifteen long years Mr. Stanwood had been entirely without consolation. He was known as one of the most eminent beetle collectors in Europe, and in beetles he found his comfort and his pride, for no one could safely contradict him on the subject of coleopteran specimens, or turn the argument into regions whither he could not follow.

He had hoped for quiet in the city of his fathers, but soon discovered his mistake. Though he might, and often did, find peace at his club, he need but enter his own door to be plunged into as gay if not so varied a social atmosphere as he had ever encountered in Europe. Superbly padded army officers were lacking, and highly decorative Catholic prelates, and diplomats of strange countries, who had dark skins and wore gorgeous, un- Christian clothes ; but there was just as much movement, and quite as many dinners and luncheons, as during the Continental years. He had also hoped for New England simplicity of arrangement in his home; but he was again mistaken, for his wife had imported madonnas, triptychs, shrines, and images from Catholic countries, porcelain from Sevres, mosaics from Italian palaces, and bric-a-brac from every corner of Europe.

“It might be a Continental bazaar,” he said morbidly, but paid custom-house duties without more serious protest than an evening of ill-humor.

THE FATES IN CONFERENCE

His wife found life little more than tolerable in her own city. Of social gayety there was sufficient to satisfy her exactions; but after the first winter she became conscious of a void.

“There is no variety about it,’ she complained, “‘and the people are all so young!”

Her forty years had sat lightly upon her in Europe, but, once conscious of the reign of the bud and college youth, which is indigenous to Boston soil, she became anxious. The bud and the college youth bored her, and the presence of slang and absence of ideas in these young people was a natural trial to one who had lived among ambassadors and statesmen.

* But one must have a scattering of débutantes and football players at one’s parties, even if one finds it impossible to hold rational conversation with them,” she said. “I had forgotten Boston was so silly; had n’t you, Willie?”

Mr. Stanwood, looking at the ya of his rooms, and remembering the almost equal magnificence of the houses in which he dined, remarked that Boston had changed incredibly ; and then he sought the ‘“ Beetlery,” his place of refuge from disturbing thought.

It was about this time that Mrs. Stanwood felt the want of a daughter to “ bring out,” and bethought herself of her niece, whom she had never seen, and who must be approaching the delectable age.

Miranda Lawrence, who was in charge of this niece, had never married. “ But what can any one expect who is called Miranda?” asked Mrs. Stanwood of a friend. ‘*‘ Yes, we are sisters—stranger things may have been,” she added.

Miss Lawrence would have disdained to answer airy persiflage about her name. The temper of New England villages is not attuned to persiflage, and Miranda had spent her life in one. Moreover, she was by nature serious, and had not the light touch on life and things, nor the easy philosophy, wherein lay much of her sister’s power. But, like her sister, she had chosen her own way of living, and never regretted her choice. To stay in the family mansion and take care of her brother and his three children from the time of his young wife’s death had been the destiny of her own choice, from which Miranda never swerved.

Her brother was a professor of bacteriology, who studied germs with even more ardor than his brother-in-law expended upon beetles ; and he often wished that Miranda were not so unflinching in her duty. He would have preferred a little less care-taking, a little less devotion as evidenced in the stiffness of his linen, a little less punctuality of meal hours. He sometimes wished to find his hat and stick on the wood-box where he had left them, though Miranda, already worn thin in his service, had been the one to transfer them to a coat closet. He even went so far as to be conscious of impatience that Miranda’s sense of duty compelled her to sit with him in the evening, though she was plainly overcome with sleep by half-past nine.

But the Professor bore his trouble without protest. Protest and peace could not keep company in a house

THE FATES IN CONFERENCE where Miss Miranda was mistress, and above all things in the world the Professor desired peace. Of his three children, two, a boy and a girl, were at boarding-school ; the third and oldest was Gladys, the girl whom Mrs. Stanwood proposed to introduce to the world.

Miss Miranda loved Gladys, as indeed she loved each one of her adopted family, but she was one of those whose destiny it is to love without return. The love that is capable of lifelong devotion, of heroic sacrifice ; the love of those who will die for us, or, what is often more difficult, live for us, is not always the love that can command return, and this is one of the saddest things in life. The greater part of living is made up of little things, and those who make the little things pleasant for us, who fill our days with a gracious presence, with ease, with sweetness, and with mirth, are those who capture our love. Miranda Lawrence had sacrificed personal happiness for her brother and his children, but she could not make them happy. Her presence was not a gracious one; she lacked the suppleness that makes sympathy and comprehension possible ; she could not shed mirth and sweetness upon the lives about her; and so her love was fated to be without return. Upright, strong, and pure, living rigidly, loving dumbly, knowing neither hesitation nor compromise, Miranda Lawrence walked the cold and lonely way of many a New England sister.

She was not happy at the prospect of surrendering Gladys to the light-hearted cosmopolitan who had come to claim her; but pride of race was strong within her, and she wished Gladys to occupy the position of social prominence and power which was hers by birth.

When the Professor detached himself from his germs sufficiently long to discuss the future of his oldest daughter, and declared himself in favor of her introduction to the Boston world, Miranda made no objection to the plan. It is possible that the Professor’s ready acquiescence in his daughter’s departure from the family mansion may have come from a fear that if Gladys lived too long with her Aunt Miranda she would grow to be like her. But that such a fear would be unfounded, no one looking at the two could doubt.

Mrs. Stanwood also reflected uneasily upon the possible result of Miranda’s education of her niece.

“Tell me the worst at once,” she exclaimed finally. *¢ Whom does she resemble — you or me?”

She asked the question with a pretty gayety at which it would have been impossible to take offense ; but before her sister could reply the door opened and a delicate, spirit-like little person with red hair stood on the threshold.

“This is Gladys,” said Miranda, and her sister was answered. The girl resembled no one but herself. Her personality was unusual, as Mrs. Stanwood noticed with relief, and she almost forgot to wonder if Gladys could be called pretty —she was so much more. She was pale, but her pallor was exquisite ; she was small, but so small as to fail in being insignificant. Her fairness was of a transparency that seemed scarcely tangible;

THE FATES IN CONFERENCE and one would have said that her flesh and blood belonged rather among essences than substances. But this spirit-like personality was contradicted by the red of her hair, which was like pale, rebellious flame, and whether she spoke or was silent, moved or was still, this flame seemed the visible expression of some subtle essence that vitalized her entire being, giving her delicate little person a vividness and nervous force that made her very emphatically a creature of this world.

“So this is Gladys,” Mrs. Stanwood said slowly, holding her hand after the conventional kiss.

* And you are Aunt Edith,” answered the girl, in a clear, childlike voice, returning her aunt’s scrutiny with eyes the color of spring skies.

There was a short silence, during which Mrs. San wood tried to classify the girl; but failing in this, she allowed her eyes to wander over the stiff, unbecoming dress of gray print, which was, of course, Miranda’s choice. Gladys saw the look, understood it, and rejoiced.

“You had better smooth your hair, child,” interrupted Aunt Miranda, in her downright, decided tones.

“‘ Nonsense!” answered Mrs. Stanwood airily, and with a pretty foreign gesture. ‘“ We like it rough, don’t we, Gladys?” From that moment Gladys worshiped at her Aunt Edith’s feet. |

“«So you are coming to visit me next summer,” continued that lady, conscious of her easy victory.

“Am I?” asked Gladys. A sudden and apparently

| 24 uncalled-for mirth danced in her eyes as she turned _ them upon Aunt Miranda. “Am I?” she repeated.

“T think your father has given his consent,” said Aunt Edith.

“¢ Papa — oh, yes.” A slight upward movement of the chin suggested the trifling importance of such consent. “ And you— you are really going to ask me?” she added, evidently struggling with laughter and some hidden impulse.

“So far as I am concerned, it is settled,’’ answered Mrs. Stanwood, and then Gladys’s impulse conquered. Laughing, half audacious, half ashamed, she knelt suddenly by her aunt’s side, a liberty nothing since her childhood had prompted her to take with Miss Miranda.

* Aunt Miranda said you would never ask me if you did not think I was pretty,”’ she said, “ and I think — I think that if I did not have to wear so many gray checks, I might possibly be —a little — pretty — sometimes.”’

Mrs. Stanwood laughed, a laugh as fresh and young as Gladys’s own. “I see that we shall be excellent friends,” she said.

Chapter II A Woman Of The World

Ir was only a few weeks later that Gladys Lawrence began a new life. In the dignified colonial mansion of her birth, her delicate, wayward personality had been almost submerged; but in Mrs. Stanwood’s modern house, with its irregular outlines, its gay awnings, its light and space and luxury, Gladys knew herself to be at home.

On the tables were the latest books, with alluring titles, and current magazines, with news and pictures of strange lands over the seas; and everywhere were flowers, flowers that she loved, but which had been denied her in the old house because “ they cluttered up things so.” The bibelots, pictures, and bits of ancient arras that Mrs. Stanwood had brought from Europe were sufficiently prominent to pervade the atmosphere, and these hints of old-world culture were of infinite and bewildering suggestiveness to Gladys, whose horizon had been limited by pale New England skies. The new and incredible possibilities they offered were not the least important elements in the roseate atmosphere which surrounded her first days of freedom.

Aunt Edith, always exquisitely dressed, fresh, buoyant, and apparently as full of life as the girl herself, was the fairy godmother of this wonderful world. She appeared to have unlimited resources in the way of new dresses, ribbons, lace, chiffons of all kinds, with which to replace Gladys’s village wardrobe, and one might have said she lived but to provide the girl with pleasure and amusement.

But Gladys was of the age when pleasure and amusement are only words. She was at the time when the cup of life holds nothing less than happiness, and this cup, full of fragrance and magic, the girl held to her lips with eager, confident hands. Pleasure and amusement are things that come later, when our taste for life is dulled, and our days require seasoning, — the refuge of jaded palates. An unhappy man or woman may find relief in amusement, and the greater the weariness the more feverish the search for pleasure. But the grays of youth are blue and the yellows golden. In such a world the paltry ring of mere amusement is changed straightway to the tumult of joy bells. .

Beyond the sheltered beauty and gayety of Mrs. Stanwood’s home was the sea, still and beautiful, an immeasurable force, slumbering and remote under the blue of June. Only at night, when the warm scents of earth were spent, a damp, alien breath floated in from the great deeps, and there were solemn whispers along the shore as the tides came up. But Gladys knew nothing of these things as yet.

The first few days were largely spent in consultation with the dressmaker, who brought fabulous stuffs from the city for Mrs. Stanwood to choose from, and the

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD choosing was an occupation of absorbing and almost sacred importance.

“It is almost too good to be true!” said Gladys once, with a sigh of deep happiness.

“¢ What is?,” inquired her aunt.

“ Oh, everything! you most of all.”

Mrs. Stanwood laughed lightly. “ Nonsense, child, there is nothing too good to be true about me, I can assure you.”

They were in Mrs. Stanwood’s boudoir ; and Gladys, for whom most chairs were too large, was indulging a lifelong preference for the floor, cushions, or any other substitute for a formal seat, and had placed herself on a footstool near her aunt, from which position she could look through the long French window at the sea.