The turn of the road

Contents

. WINIFRED CHOOSES . . INTERLUDE

ISATE? : : : . NEARING THE First MILESTONE . . Dan’s PATH IS CHOSEN FOR HIM . REALIZATION .

. Dan’s LIGHTS GO OUT .

Chapter I WINIFRED CHOOSES

HE June air was full of sunshine and the rapturous singing of bobolink and thrush. In the fields was a gay riot of wild flowers. Winifred sang with careless, joyous passion as she walked in the garden between flaming poppy beds : —

“ Sweetheart, thy lips are touched with flame.”

The clear young voice rang out gloriously. She flung her head back with a gesture of joyous abandonment, and her song rose higher in restless, swinging measures : —

“ Sweetheart, the blood leaps in thy cheek ; Sweetheart, thy very heart-throbs speak ; Sweetheart”? —

Her voice ceased suddenly as her eyes met those of some one who leaned over the garden gate, watching her with amused admiration.

“ Dan!” she exclaimed, “I didn’t know I was singing to you.”

“JT was daring to hope you did,” he answered with ready audacity, as he vaulted over the gate and joined her.

The flush in her face faded quickly, and she shook hands, with a laugh. In his level lips and steady eyes her mirth found no response, which was rare. Before speaking he hesitated, which was rarer still. He remembered certain documents in a green bag he carried, which would take the happy confidence out of her young life. He was unaccustomed to be the bearer of bad news; moreover, he loved this girl with the passion of his youth, with the strength of his manhood, and from the depths of his soul. So he hesitated, not knowing how to tell her, and the shadow deepened on his face.

Winifred looked perplexed.

‘‘You are worried, or something,” she said lightly. ‘Iam sure it is the fault of the green bag, and I don’t blame you. Drop it behind the lilac bush, and come and see my roses.”

Dan ignored the words. ‘ I have news for you,” he said.

“News for me?” questioned Winifred. “It is bad news,” she added quickly.

“Yes, bad news.”

She looked at him for a moment in displeased silence.

‘IT know what it is: the will has been found, and papa has left half our money to a home for aged ladies and trade unions.” She smiled, half bitterly, half contemptuously.

‘No will has been found,’ he answered her gravely, and they walked to the house through the brilliant garden.

Winifred looked a sombre young figure in her black dress, with her masses of dark hair, and a seriousness on her face as rare as it was striking. Her personality was too strong and independent to be wholly feminine, nor was she a girl the average man would love or be happy in loving. An affair with her would involve elements of doubt and fear — doubt of winning her, fear of her restive power when won.

The man who walked beside her now, with the obstinate chin and daring eyes, neither doubted the one nor feared the other. He had loved her since they were boy and girl, and as desire and possession were synonymous terms in his vocabulary he had vowed within himself to win her. As yet his confidence seemed somewhat misplaced, and it was in this connection that his best friend had been known to say, “ Howard is a man who should fail in something, lest he grow to fancying himself omnipotent.”

There was no arrogance now in the eyes that looked down into hers; only a grave, protective tenderness.

“ Win,” he began, when they were seated on the broad veranda, “‘ you must prepare yourself for a great blow. I don’t ask you to be brave, for I know you can never be anything else.” He paused. Her eyes, questioning but fearless, met his.

“You remember,” he went on, “that last week we found a clue to the whereabouts of your father’s safety vault, and you gave me your written permission to open it. I did so yesterday, and found only worthless bonds, some few certificates of good stock, and records of vast sales of property made during the last years of his life, when he seems to have lived entirely on his principal. This was almost exhausted at the time of his death.”

Winifred was pale, but her eyes did not falter. *‘ How much is left?” she asked.

‘“‘ Knough to Lact you and Edith about fifteen hundred a year.”

“And the extravagant improvements made on the place last winter?”

‘‘ They were done on credit.”

*¢ And there was no credit?”

“There was no credit.”

She drew in her breath quickly.

‘Of course we must pay the money back at once, if we starve for it. Oh, it is shameful — shameful.” A flush half of anger, half of pain, came into her face. She rose, and leaning on the balustrade looked out on the sunlight and flowers. Dan tramped up and down the piazza noisily. He wanted very much to swear.

‘“¢So we are poor,” she said wonderingly, trying to adjust her thoughts to the fact. ‘ We are poor —and in debt.” Here was a very tangible, practical fact. She flushed again.

Dan sat down astride of a chair and folded his arms on the back.

“The place ought to bring fifty thousand,” he said practically. ‘That would more than pay all you owe, and leave something to invest. Walter should see to it for you.”

Winifred flung out her strong young arms with an impatient gesture. “How Aunt Betsy and Uncle Charles will moan over and pity us! I feel my temper rising in anticipation. I have had so much pity during the past weeks that I can’t stand another ounce of it.”

She paused, and a swift change came into her face and voice.

“Dan, I want to tell you something — something that Iam more ashamed of than of anything else in the world—something” — She hesitated ; there was almost a tremor on her lips.

“Yes, Win; out with it,” came Dan’s deep voice. His lips were commendably grave, but in his eyes was amused incredulity.

“T want to tell you because — because I want you to know me just as I am, and because I feel I am not honest in taking sympathy from you when I don’t need it, and because now that this wrong of father’s has come to us I may say things.”

“Yes, Win.”

Her face was white, but she went on hurriedly : “Every one thought, because I did not lose my head or cry at the time of father’s death, that I was strong and proud, but broken-hearted. I was not. I mean I did not really grieve for one single hour.”

‘‘T knew it, dear.”

“You knew it?” she asked in astonishment. “Then how can you go on— caring, if you know me so well? Oh, you can’t think of the shame I felt when they all kissed and cried over me and called me a brave girl! How ashamed I felt when I thought of father, and how he loved me best! Of course I was fond of him and missed him dreadfully, but it was not love and it was not grief. I know that very well; I know what they both must be, though I can’t seem really to love any one in the whole world. Only a little while after he died, I was thinking with part of me that it was good to be free, so that I could go abroad and study singing.” Her eyes were dark with remorseful passion. ‘“ Dan, why don’t you tell me you despise me? Why don’t you say something?”

‘“‘T can never say less than this to you, dear,” he answered, and taking her hand in his kissed it reverently. Then he went on in his deep, rich voice while he kept her hand: “ Whether you love or not, you are always the bravest, truest woman in the world, the one prize in life most worth winning. Some day you will love, and so well that it is worth while losing the lesser love of a thousand lesser women for the chance of winning you and yours.”

For the moment he was holding her in the spell of his eyes and words. She did not withdraw her hand.

“Dan,” she almost whispered, “can’t you make me love you?”

‘Yes, dear, some day I shall find the way.”

T

Her being was vibrating with a hint of something strange, and strong, and madly sweet, but it was only a hint. Fortunately Dan knew this.

He knew that her powerful nature was crude as yet; that she must come up to many of her milestones and discover their small value before she would pause and hearken to the deep whisperings of life and love. Some of her lamps must be put out before she could see the stars.

The light died quickly in her eyes, and she withdrew her hand and nature from him. There was a rushing in his ears, and for an instant the sunlight looked red; but he controlled himself, and forced his voice to a steady if constrained quiet, while he discussed with her such commonplace details as the placing of property, the payment of debts, and the adjustment of living expenses to areduced income. He even brought her to investigate certain contents of the green bag, and explained technical points with praiseworthy steadiness, while she leaned over his shoulder.

When there came a pause she looked at him quizzically and somewhat doubtfully. The color had come back to her face and the confidence to her bearing.

“Of course you know what I am going to do,” she said, a suppressed excitement in her voice.

“Yes,” answered Dan, bending his head over the papers he held.

‘“‘ Now don’t spoil it by objecting. Besides, objecting won’t do the smallest good.”

“ T am not objecting. Have you any idea how soon you start?”

* Just as soon as I can settle estates, debts, and so forth, here. That ought to be by early autumn, don’t you think so? It must be early autumn. Oh, how blissful it will be, back in my dear Europe, free, and learning to be a great artist! There is no reason why I should n’t go on the stage now, and every reason why I should. Edith and I are poor, and I must make money for us both. Iam glad we are poor — do you hear me, Dan? — glad. The world shall be at my feet; I shall have everything I want, and more—more. Ah, it is glorious to think of. Dan, you don’t know — you don’t know!”

Dan made no answer. She paced restlessly to and fro on the piazza.

“IT shall succeed,” she went on — “I know that. I was made for success, just as you were. Nature never cut me out for a mere paving stone. Why don’t you say something? Oh, how irritating you are! Why don’t you say you feel sure I shall succeed?”? She stopped in front of him.

** Because I don’t feel sure of it,’’ he answered.

“Dan!” She looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment and some displeasure. ‘“ How absurd! Why don’t you think so? I should like to know simply for the sake of argument. Of course I don’t really care what you think, because you don’t know. You are a very clever lawyer, and have, I am told, exceptional powers of convincing juries of things they don’t want to believe, that no reasonable person could believe, and that you probably don’t believe yourself; but that doesn’t prove you know anything of the elements that go to make up a great singer. Now will you kindly tell me what I lack ? Have n’t I voice?”

SuY eae?

“‘ And is n’t it beautiful?”

“ It is beautiful.”

‘“ Well, then. Can’t I act?”

“ Up to a certain point.”

“Up to a certain point? What do you mean by that ?”

“JT mean that you can act well up to a certain point.”

“‘ So you said before.”

“¢T will say it again, if you wish.”

Winifred was irritated, Dan correspondingly amused. Then, with feminine tact, she carried her point by an appeal to his most vulnerable quarter.

*‘ Dan, please don’t chaff. You know that, whatever I say, I care for your opinion more than I do for any one else’s. I really want to know what you think I lack.”

He was only softened within certain limits. *¢ Well, then, I think you are crude. You cannot be great at any art till you put some of your life’s blood into it, and you have n’t been bled yet.”

* Oh, is that all?” she said, with a sigh of relief. “Then I don’t mind. Your words are only theory. I have temperament, and that anticipates all experience of an emotional kind, lives it in the nerves and imagination. Musicians don’t need to live; through music alone they learn all that is greatest of love and life.”

‘That is only another theory,” said Dan obstinately. ‘The proposition that temperament takes the place of and anticipates experience remains to be proved.”

“ Proof? Nonsense! A woman doesn’t need proof. She knows.”

“ Hixactly,”’ said Dan dryly, ‘“ she knows.”

“* Well, what more do you want than knowing ? Dan, you are laughing at me!”

Then she laughed herself, with good-humored appreciation of his point of view, but went on immediately to express an unconscious sense of rebellion.

: 11

“ Of course, I might have known you would put all sorts of objections in the way. You think a woman ought to stay at home and make a home ; making a home means being troubled with pots and pans. You know very well I can’t do that, and what do you want me todo? I ask you to answer me reasonably — what do you want me to do?”

This was a reckless question, and Dan answered as she might have known he would :—

“Marry me.”

She flushed and moved uneasily. ‘“ You know that is more impossible than anything else.” Her voice dropped a little. ‘ Please don’t talk so any more. I mean, what do you expect me todo? An unmarried woman has her choice of four things: society, charity, literary clubs, and melancholia. I don’t feel inclined to any of those. There is one thing more: I can follow out some of papa’s socialistic studies. I can think about the greatest good of the greatest number. I can have theories concerning the disposition of economic rent; not that I could ever understand what economic rent was, but I suppose I could learn in time, as other people have. I could even form a woman’s club for the propagation of my ideas, and write pamphlets, and” —

“Very well, then, what is the use in talking about it?”

“T can’t imagine,” he answered quietly, with a tormenting smile; then he added more seriously : *‘ Don’t let us misunderstand each other any longer, Win. I can’t say I am glad to have you go away and study for the stage; but, all things considered, [ think you are doing the only thing you can do.”

‘Then why could n’t you have said so in the beginning?” Winifred was only partly pacified.

“In the first place you did n’t give me a chance. Then I am usually so weak-minded with you that my self-respect now and then requires the stimulus of teasing you.” He rose. “And now good-by. I have some work to do on an important case, when I must deal with a more than usually obstinate jury. Shall I put the estate into the hands of a broker? I can see to it without troubling you to come up to town. No, don’t thank me; that is n’t allowed, you know; besides, it’s no trouble. I shall be down again in a day or two with some papers for you and Edith to sign. I hope the poor child will take the loss of her fortune as easily as you have done. Good-by again.”

Before she could speak he had gone. With softening eyes she watched the retreating figure.

“ Dear old Dan!” she said. “ What should I do without him? I suppose I ought to give him up, but I’m too selfish. Besides, he would n’t go.” She smiled with pride in his strength.

Three months later Winifred and her sister were leaning over the side of an Atlantic liner, and watching idly the confusion of leave-taking and baggage-hunting going on between deck and wharf. There was only one more good-by to say; then the great ocean — the new life! Winifred told herself she was jubilant, and held her head high. Her eyes were bright and her face pale. Edith’s mouth was quivering, and her eyes were suspiciously red ; but she said nothing. Then Dan appeared from the cabin; his face looked worn, but he spoke with determined cheeriness. “There are your table seats,” he said. “I have said a good word for you with the captain, and your fee will have due effect on the steward, I don’t doubt. I wish you had felt like affording outside staterooms; yours seem stuffy. Mrs. Smith thinks her berth is small, and said there was no place in the brackets for her cologne bottle. She is rather tearful; but she will feel better in a day or so, I dare say. She is old, eminently respectable, and will let you have your own way; so she possesses the essentials. Where are you putting your tickets? That isn’t safe. How will you ever learn to take care of your things? Fold them this way — see.”

“Yes,” said Winifred with unusual meekness, ‘‘T think I understand. They are almost as hard to fold as time-tables. There, Dan, that’s the bell for you to go. Please go— it makes me nervous. I hate saying good-by. Please go— now — they are taking up the gangway.”

“That’s all right,” said Dan coolly. “I made arrangements to go on with you a bit and take the tug back. You don’t look as pleased as you ought to, to hear it. Edith, you look tired. Hasn’t the headache gone?”

“No. I think I should like to lie down, if I could find my chair.”

There was a little catch in Edith’s voice, for a strip of green water was widening between them and home.

“Your chair is here. It’s a little windy now, but when we get out more to sea the breeze will be on the other side. I arranged it on purpose. Here are the shawls; let me undo them and spread one on the chair before you sit down. They are first cousins to gridirons, these chairs, but you can circumvent them with practice. Is that all right? Shan’t I open your umbrella? There is nothing like an umbrella for keeping off wind. Now are you comfortable ? ”

“Yes, thank you. How kind you are! You think of everything. Jam sorry to reward you by erying. I know men hate it, but I can’t help it.”

“‘ That’s all right,” said Dan kindly. “I like to see a woman cry sometimes.”

Then he went back to Winifred. He had never seen her cry. ‘“ We will walk,” he said. ‘There are one or two things I want to say to you. We may not see each other again for a long time.”

“‘T know, Dan,” she broke in hurriedly ; “I have something to say also. I meant to write it, but that’s because I am acoward. I think I had better say it now. First, I want to thank you— oh, but I can’t thank you enough for all you have done, when I think what you give me, and what 1” —

“Stop there, Win. I don’t want thanks, and I don’t want reward, even supposing I deserved either. To serve you is and must always be” — He paused, and closed his lips firmly on the words in his heart. The strain of prolonged leave-taking was wearing on his nerves.

“That is just what I have been thinking about,” Winifred went on. ‘Things can’t go on as they are. You are too good a man for some woman to miss. Your love is too precious to be poured out before some one like me, who— I was just thinking now, when I saw you taking care of Edith, that I have somehow missed the right angle of womanhood.”

* You will find it,” he broke in.

“ Don’t make it hard for me,” she continued; “I am not the kind that loves and marries. I am going away forever, perhaps, and this is the moment for us to say good-by ; our friendship must end. I can’t ever forget you —I don’t think I shall ever find any one to take your place; but it is best — it must be. I don’t want you to write to me; I shall not write you. I want you to put me out of your life” — Her voice had grown so very low that Dan bent his head to listen.

When she paused, he smiled.

“That reminds me,” he said, “ you have n’t given me the address of your pension in Paris. I may write there instead of to the bank. I shall expect a letter from you once a month at least, and if you ever write me such nonsense as you have just spoken, I shall be obliged to cross the ocean at once and marry you against your will.”

Winifred drew a deep breath and then laughed —a short, low laugh that had something of triumph in it. She gave him a whimsical sidelong glance. 17

“‘T do like your combativeness, Dan,” she said.

‘‘Did you dream for the shadow of a second that I would let you go?” he asked.

“‘T don’t know; I tried to believe it, because I know it’s right that you should.”

‘But you didn’t want to believe it ?”

“No. I should miss you more than — any one.”

“Thank you, Win.”

For a while they walked in silence. Most of the passengers were in their staterooms, and the deck was deserted. ‘The great steamer began to throb rhythmically to her depths with a mighty life of steam and steel. The wind from out of the sea came to meet them, and its first greeting thrilled mournfully in the rigging.

Dan kept his eyes on the watery horizon. There were deepening lines round his mouth, and his face looked older than his years. Win easily kept pace with his swinging stride; but there was an odd hollow feeling at her heart. She shivered and drew her cloak about her, wishing that Dan were gone.

He turned at her movement. ‘“ You don’t look right,” he said; ‘surely this motion is not too much ?”

“No, but I don’t feel altogether natural. I very much suspect, Dan, I very much suspect that I don’t like saying good-by to you.” She smiled as she spoke, with a full, candid look into his eyes.

Dan stooped to fasten her cloak. ‘ Let us sit down,” he said. And then, during the time that remained, he spoke to her only of his love — spoke passionately, tenderly, powerfully always, with a certain sturdy eloquence entirely his own. Winifred listened in silence, and was moved as only he had power to move her; but she did not answer him, and kept a pale face turned to the sea. When a shrill, discordant whistle surprised them, and a tug appeared suddenly under their bows, she started.

“It’s the tug!” she cried.

** Yes.” Dan wheeled about and caught her hands. ‘“ Dearest, one word more. You don’t know what you are going to, what temptations you are going to have. But whatever comes to you, however you are tempted, however you yield — you don’t know what I am talking about, but you will learn too soon — I am ready to be at your side to take your part against the world ; for whether you ever love me or not, you will always be the greatest thing in the world to me, the greatest happiness, the greatest pain — the Alpha and Omega of all my life. Never forget this: whatever danger threatens, whatever happens, never forget to say, ‘Dan loves me for better, for worse.’ Promise to remember that, dear. ‘Dan loves me for better, for worse, and is always there when I need him.’ ”

“Oh, I am not worth it—I1 am not—I can’t give it back.”

“ That is my affair. Promise me, Win.”

“ Yes, Dan.”

A warning cry came from the tug.

“‘ Good-by, my love — good-by.”

** Don’t forget,” he called up to her from where he swung on the ladder, halfway down the steamer’s side.

“No. Oh, Dan, good-by — good-by.”

Chapter IT INTERLUDE

HEN Dan went back to his room that night,

Walter Garrison, the friend he lived with,

looked at him doubtfully over the edge of the “¢ Transcript.”

*¢ Why were n’t you at your office this morning ?” he asked.

Dan rolled a cigarette in silence. ‘Can you give me a light?” he said finally; and that was the only answer Walter received, and the last time he asked that particular question.

Walter Garrison was Dan’s most intimate friend, which means that they shared the same apartment, breakfasted and dined together, spoke little, held opposite views on nearly everything concerning this life or the next, and would have cheerfully cut off their right arm for each other, if such a sacrifice had seemed beneficial.

Dan always said that Walter had been born several centuries too late. If he could have lived in the time when all ladies were fair and all men were brave, and when evil was a thing to be fought with a spotless name and silver armor, he would have made his mark. <As it was, he dealt in corporation paper and collateral loans, wore the unpicturesque garb of the nineteenth century, and, concealing his sensitiveness and chivalry under a rough beard and a slow manner, passed as a very commonplace young man indeed.

The friendship between the two men began in their boyhood on the mutual discovery of a good place for finding angleworms ; it had lasted through the rough-edged gladness of college life, and it held fast in their early manhood, though Walter was a struggling note broker, and Dan the most successful lawyer of his age in the State, and though there was the name of a woman which could never be mentioned between them.

During the days at Harvard they had roomed together as they did now. The arrangement had been mutually satisfactory in spite of difference of temperament and belief. Dan read Plato, while Walter went to church. Dan loved such diverging possibilities as the classics and football; he was ageressive in both. Walter plodded through the average college courses, and preferred rowing to the strenuous wrestling of football fields; he was aggressive in nothing. Dan was confident with what his enemies called “confounded arrogance,” and his friends considered ‘splendid audacity.” He thought with lightning-like speed and power, but Walter’s mind moved slowly and obstinately ; his ideas were more easily formed than changed.

It was in his Junior year that Dan one day rescued Winifred from drowning, and discovered while bearing her to the shore that he loved her. He told her so before her hair had time to dry, and though she did not laugh, she treated the matter lightly and reproached him for having spoiled their fun. Then Dan went back to college with an added doggedness of jaw, and spent hours in silences that were never satisfactorily explained.

During the years that followed he laid his best at her feet, and she learned to accept it as a matter of course. There were times when he grew restive and claimed impossible things, when his words made her cheek burn and his eyes shamed her light indifference; but Winifred’s spirit was cool and free ; she defied him easily.

So Dan went hungry through his early manhood, and about his mouth there came lines that do not belong to youth.

Walter disliked Winifred; she was too selfassertive, and according to his views there must be something wrong about a girl who did not return

Dan’s love. He hoped her departure for Europe and intention to go on the stage would end Dan’s hopes and desires, but asked no questions.

And Dan was not forgetting. His working hours were troubled with visions of Winifred imprudently going with wet feet in a new climate, and committing hygienic offenses against which there was no one to warn her. He wrote pages of instructions, and to her amused protestations he agreed, adding, * But you see I had rather the world begged than that you should want for a glove.”

Winifred, on her side, was rapidly learning care of herself, and other singers’ lessons of renounced freedom, limited amusement, and general slavery to the condition of vocal cords.

“¢ Whoever could think you would submit to all these precautions, Win?” said Edith, when her sister wrapped her throat in scarfs and refused to go out damp evenings. “ Have you written Dan that- you have given up talking except on state occasions ?”’

‘“‘That is only when I have a cold,” protested

Winifred.

' “Tt seems to me you have colds very often; you never used to have them. Perhaps it’s the climate.”