The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4

"Certainly. Or you would at least tell us what you mean about Mr. Edmonson, even if your former friendship for him—that is supposing it gone now—prevented you from going into details." She spoke earnestly and wondered as she did so why she had never felt any curiosity before as to the break of the intimacy between Edmonson and his friend, for, evidently, there had been a coolness, something more than mere separation. As Elizabeth sat looking at his perturbed face, an old legend crossed her mind. "Mr. Edmonson has lost his shadow," she thought; and it seemed ominous to her.

"There are no details," answered the earl. "Nothing has happened. If you imagine I have quarrelled with him, you are mistaken. Nothing of the sort. There were reasons, as I have said, to keep me at home, and he had no claim upon me to accompany him. Besides, there's a something, that as I said, I can't put into words, and I may be entirely wrong. But Edmonson is a terrible fellow at times. One day he—." Then Bulchester stopped abruptly, and began a new sentence. "I know nothing," he said. "I have nothing to tell, only I fear, because if he wants anything, he must have it through every obstacle. When he takes the bits between his teeth, Heaven only knows where he will bring up, and Heaven hasn't much to do with the direction of his running, I imagine. Sometimes one would rather not ride behind him." As he finished, his eyes were on Elizabeth's face, and it seemed as if he were speaking especially for her. But in a moment as they met hers full of inquiry, he dropped them and looked disturbed.

"You are frightfully mysterious," cried Katie.

"Not at all," he entreated. "There is no mystery anywhere. I never said anything about mysteries. Please don't think I spoke of such a thing."

"Yes, you are very mysterious," she insisted. "Nobody can help seeing that you know evil of your friend, and don't want to tell it. I dare say it's to your credit. But, all the same, it's tantalizing."

Not even her commendation could keep a sharp anxiety from showing itself on Bulchester's face. "I have said nothing," he answered, "it all might happen and he have no concern in it—, I mean," he caught himself back with a startled look and then went on with an assumption of coolness, "I mean exactly what I say, Mistress Archdale, simply that Edmonson does not please me so much as he did before I saw better people. But I assure you that this has no connection with any special thing that he has done."

"Or may do?" asked Elizabeth.

"Or that I believe he will do," he answered resolutely. But it was after an instant's hesitation which was not lost upon one of his listeners who sat watching him gravely, and in a moment as if uttering her thought aloud, said,

"That is new; he used to please you entirely."

Bulchester fidgetted, and glanced at Katie who had turned toward the speaker. There was no need, he thought, of bringing out his past infatuation so plainly. In the light of a new one, it looked absurd enough to him not to want to have it paraded before one of his present companions at least. But Elizabeth had had no idea of parading his absurdities; for when he said apologetically that one learned in time to regulate his enthusiasms, she looked at him with surprise, as if roused, and answered that the ability to be a good friend was the last thing to need apology. Then she sat busy with her own thoughts.

"What, the mischief, is she after?" thought the young man watching her as Katie talked, and there must have been strong reason that could have diverted his mind in any degree from Katie. "Is it possible she has struck my uncanny suspicion? If she has, she's cool about it. No, it's impossible; I've buried it fathoms deep. Nobody could find it. It's too evil a suspicion, too satanical, ever to be brought to light. I wish to Heaven, though, I had never run across it, it makes me horribly uncomfortable." Then he turned to Katie, but soon his thoughts were running upon Elizabeth again. "She's one of those people," he mused, "that you think don't notice anything, and all at once she'll score a hit that the best players would be proud of. I can't make her out. But I hardly think Edmonson would have everything quite his own way. Pity he can't try it. I'd like to see it working. And perhaps some day—." So, he tried to put away from him a suggestion, which, dwelt upon, gave him a sense of personal guilt, because, only supposing this thing came that Edmonson had hinted at, it would be an advantage to himself. He shivered at the suggestion; there was no such purpose in reality, he was sure of it. Edmonson only talked wildly as he had a way of doing. The very thought seemed a crime to Bulchester. If he really believed, he ought to speak. But he did not believe, and he could hardly denounce his friend on a vagary. Still, he was troubled by Elizabeth's evident pondering, and was glad to have the conversation turned into any channel that would sweep out thoughts of Edmonson from their minds.

As this was done and he turned fully to Katie again, a new mood, the effect of her sudden indifference, came over him. A few moments ago she had been almost fond, now she was languidly polite. Hope faded away from all points of his horizon. An easterly mist of doubt was creeping over him. His egotism at its height was only a mild satisfaction in his social impregnability and was readily overpowered by the recollection of personal defects to which he was acutely alive. In the atmosphere of Katie's coolness, he forgot his earldom and thought disconsolately of his nose. He was disconcerted, and after a few embarrassed words took his leave. It never occurred to him as a consolation that his tones and glances were growing a little too loverlike to be safely on exhibition before Elizabeth who had not noticed them in the moments that Bulchester had forgotten his caution, but who, as Katie knew, might wake up to the fact at any glance. Elizabeth bade him farewell kindly, she pitied his disappointment, and thought that he bore it well. But as she watched his half-timorous movements, she believed that even had her own marriage ceremony turned out to be a reality. Lord Bulchester would have had no chance with a girl who had been loved by Stephen Archdale whose wooing was as full of intrepidity as his other acts.

"Well! What are you thinking of?" asked Katie meeting her earnest gaze.

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"Yes."

"I was wondering why you tortured him. Why don't you send him away at once, and forever?"

Katie laughed unaimiably. "He seems to like the torturing," she said. Then she looked at Elizabeth in a teasing way. "Some girls would prefer him to Stephen, you know," she added.

"You mean because he has a title? You can't think of any other reason."

"Oh, of course I don't, my Archdale champion. How strange that you trust me so little, Elizabeth!"

"Trust you so little, Katie? Why, if any other girl did as you are doing, I should say she was playing false with her betrothed, and meant to throw him over. I never imagine such a thing of you. I only feel that you are very cruel to Lord Bulchester."

Katie cast down her eyes for a moment. "Some things are beyond our control," she answered.

"Not things like these," said Elizabeth. "Since you have suffered yourself, I don't understand why you want to make other people suffer."

"Don't you?" returned the girl. "That's just the reason, I suppose. Why should I be alone? But I shall be done with playing by and by, Elizabeth."

"Yes, I know, Katie," the girl answered. "I trust you."

Again Katie looked down for a moment, looked up again, this time into the face of her friend, and sighed lightly. "Don't think me better than I am, Betsey," she implored, the dimples about her mouth effectually counteracting the pathos of her tones. And at the words she put up her lips with a childlike air to her companion. Elizabeth's arms folded impulsively about her, and held her for a moment in an embrace that seemed at once to guard, and caress, and brood over her. Then she drew away, and sat beside her with a quietness that seemed like a wish to make her sudden evidence of strong feeling forgotten.

"Betsey, my dear," said Katie softly, "you're so good. I have seemed different to you sometimes. You must not expect me to be like you."

"I should not have done half so well," said Elizabeth hastily.

Katie smiled. After this they sat and talked some time longer; it was the first free interview that they had had since their estrangement was over, and Elizabeth's voice had a happy ring in it. After a time, Katie began to give an account of some gathering at which she had been present. At the sound of Lord Bulchester's name, among the guests, Elizabeth's attention wandered. She began to think of the young's man's strange reticence respecting Edmonson, and evident uneasiness about something connected with him. Why were they not friends still? Was it on account of this unknown something? All at once the light of conviction flashed over her face. She perceived at least one cause of the separation. Bulchester's attentions to Katie were distasteful to Edmonson, for he wanted Katie to marry Stephen Archdale, because he feared lest Elizabeth should grow fond of him, lest Stephen should come to find a fortune convenient. Elizabeth's unaided perceptions would never have reached this point; but in Edmonson's anger at her second refusal of him he had dared to intimate such a thing, so darkly, to be sure, that she had not seen fit to understand him, but plainly enough to throw light upon the estrangement of the two men. "Distasteful," was a light word to use in speaking of anything that Edmonson did not like; his feelings were so strong that he seemed always ready to be vindictive. Her feeling toward him for this intimation had been anger which had cooled into contempt of a nature like his, ready to find baseness everywhere. The suggestion was no reproach to her, for she had had no thoughts of disloyalty to Katie. As she sat there still seeming to listen, suddenly, it seemed to her, for she could not trace its coming, a picture rose before her with the vividness of reality. She saw Archdale and Edmonson standing together on the deck of the same vessel bound upon the same errand, always together; and she remembered Edmonson' muttered words, and his face dark with passion over all its fairness.

She went home full of secret trouble, trouble too vague for utterance. Besides what she knew and felt there had been something else that she had not got at, and that disturbed Lord Bulchester. The rest of the day she was more or less abstracted, and went to bed with her mind full of indistinct images brooded over by that vague trouble, the very stuff of which dreams are made. And more than this, out of which the brain in the unconscious cerebration of sleep, sometimes, drawing all the tangled threads into order, weaves from them a web on which is pictured the truth.

GROWING OLD

Growing old! The pulses' measure
Keeps its even tenor still;
Eye and hand nor fail nor falter,
And the brain obeys the will;
Only by the whitening tresses,
And the deepening wrinkles told,
Youth has passed away like vapor;
Prime is gone, and I grow old.

Laughter hushes at my presence,
Gay young voices whisper lower,
If I dare to linger by it,
All the streams or life run slower.
Though I love the mirth of children,
Though I prize youth's virgin gold,
What have I to do with either!
Time is telling—I grow old.

Not so dread the gloomy river
That I shrank from so of yore;
All my first of love and friendship
Gather on the further shore.
Were it not the best to join them
Ere I feel the blood run cold?
Ere I hear it said too harshly,
"Stand back from us—you are old!"

    —All the Year Round.

EDITOR'S TABLE

Many a valuable work has been produced in manuscript by students and other persons of experience in special fields of practice which have never yet been put into type, and perhaps never will, solely because of the poverty of their writers or of the disinclination of publishers in general to take hold of books which do not at the start promise a remuneration. The late Professor Sophocles of Harvard College, left in MS. a Lexicon of Modern Greek and English, which if published would certainly prove a valuable contribution to literature as well as be greatly appreciated by scholars. We are aware of several instances of this sort.

While, in such instances, the authors are to be commiserated, it would be folly to blame the publishers, who, were they to accept for publication every unremunerative manuscript offered to them, would soon cease to be publishers and instead be forced into the alms-houses. It has been suggested that wealthy men can do themselves honor and assist creditably in building up literature by providing the means wherewith deserving, but poor, authors may print their books. Were the suggestion to be carefully weighed, and then, to be adopted, American literature would be made the richer. A great many rich men of the day seem to take great satisfaction in patronizing artists, athletes, actors, and colleges. Why is it not possible to derive as much pleasure in patronizing authors?

While writing on this theme, we are reminded that one of the most unsaleable books of the present day is a Town History: and, yet, however crude or dry it may seem to be, it is in reality an exceedingly valuable contribution to our national annals. Such books are as a rule declined by regular publishing houses, and, if published at all, the author is usually out of pocket by reason of his investment. There ought to be public spirit enough in every community to make the opposite of this the rule.

It remains to be seen whether the Hartford Courant and other newspapers of the same proclivities, will ever again wave the "bloody shirt" in the field of politics. This paper, viewing the events of the past month, has repeatedly thanked God (in print) that, "now we have neither North nor South, but one united country." Few events in ceremonial history, we confess, have been more significant than the presence of two Confederate generals as pall-bearers at the funeral of General Grant. This ought, if indeed it does not, to mark the close of the Civil War and of all the divisions and combinations which have had their roots and their justifications in it. The "bloody shirt" can be waved no more, except as an insult to the memory of the late first citizen of the Republic. On what basis, then, are political parties henceforth to rest? What, in the future, will give a meaning to the names Republican and Democrat, or make it national and patriotic for an American citizen to enlist in one of the two organizations and wage political war against the other?