Presently he said: "To the dead, who cannot suffer, we can be kind and shield them even from themselves. Is there no way to help the living? A few hundred dollars, two short years ago, would have saved all this, and there was no way for her to get it. She knew it _all_ then, and there was no help!"

"Why did she not, in such a case as that, push back her pride and go to some one? There must be thousands who would have gladly responded to such a call as that," I argued.

He buried his face in his hands for a moment and shuddered. At last he said: "She did--she went to three good men, men who had known, been friendly with, admired her and her husband. Two of them are worth their millions, the other one is rich. She only asked to borrow, and promised to repay it herself if she had to live and work after he were dead to do it!"

He paused.

"You do not mean to tell me that they refused--and they old friends and rich?" I asked, amazed.

"I mean to say just this: they one and all made some excuse; they did not let her have it."

"She told them what the doctors said, and of her fears?"

"She did," he answered, sadly.

"And yet you say they are good men!" I exclaimed, indignantly.

"Good, benevolent, charitable, every one of them," he answered.

"Were you one of them, Barker?" I asked, after a moment's pause.

"Thank G.o.d, no!" he replied. "But perhaps in some other case I have done the same, if I only knew the whole story. Those men do not know this last, you must remember."

"And the worst of it is, we dare not tell them," said I, as we parted.

"No, we dare not," he replied, and left me standing with the copy of the burial certificate in my hand.

"Natural causes?" I said to myself, looking at it. "Died of natural causes--the brutality and selfishness of man--and poverty with love.

_Natural_ causes! Yes." And I closed my office door and turned out the light.

UNDER PROTEST.

_"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I a.s.sure you._

_"Much more, perchance, might be said; but I hold him, of all men, most lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale."_

Bret Harte.

When the new family moved into, and we were told had bought, the cottage nearest our own, we were naturally interested in finding out what kind of people they were, and whether we had gained or lost by the change of neighbors.

In a summer place like this it makes a good deal of difference just what kind of people live so near to you that when you are sitting on your veranda and they are swinging in hammocks on theirs, the most of the conversation is common property, unless you whisper, and one does not want to spend three or four months of each year mentally and verbally tiptoeing about one's own premises. Then, on the other hand, there are few less agreeable situations to be placed in than to be forced to listen to confidences or quarrels with which you have nothing whatever to do, or else be deprived of the comforts and pleasures of out-door life, to secure which you endure so many other annoyances.

Our new neighbors were, therefore, as you will admit, of the utmost interest and importance to us, and I was naturally very much pleased, at the end of the first week, when I returned one day from a fishing party, from which my wife's headache had detained her, by the report she gave me of their att.i.tude toward each other. (From her glowing estimate, I drew rose-colored pictures of their probable kindliness and generosity toward others.) Up to this time they had been but seldom outside of their house, and we had not gathered much information of their doings, except the fact that a good deal of nice furniture had come, and they appeared to be greatly taken up in beautifying and arranging their cottage. This much promised well, so far as it went; but we had not lived to our time of life not to find out, long ago, that the most exquisitely appointed houses sometimes lack the one essential feature; that is, ladies and gentlemen to occupy them.

"They are lovely!" said my wife, the moment I entered the door, before I had been able to deposit my fishing-tackle and ask after her headache.

"They are lovely; at least he is," she amended. "I am sure we shall be pleased with them; or, at least, with him. A man as careful of, and attentive to, his wife as he is can't help being an agreeable neighbor."

"Good!" said I. "How did you find out? And how is your headache?--Had a disgusting time fishing. Glad you did not go. Sun was hot; breeze was hot; boatman's temper was a hundred and twenty in the shade; bait wouldn't stay on the hooks, and there weren't any fish any way. But how did you say your head is?"

"My head?" said my wife, with that retrospective tone women have, which seemed to indicate that if she had ever had a head, and if her head had ever ached, and if headache was a matter of sufficient importance to remember, in all human probability it had recovered in due time. "My head? Oh, yes--Oh, it is all right; but you really never did see any one so tractable as that man. And adaptable! Why, it is a perfect wonder. Of course I had no business to look or listen; but I did. I just couldn't help it. The fact is, I thought they were quarrelling at first, and I almost fainted. I said to myself, 'If they are that kind of people we will sell out. I will not live under the constant drippings of ill-temper.' Quarrelling ought to be a penitentiary offence; that is, I mean the bickerings and naggings most people dignify by that name. I could endure a good, square, stand-up and knock down quarrel, that had some character to it; but the eternal differences, often expressed by the tones of voice only, I can't stand." I smiled an emphatic a.s.sent, and my wife went on.

"Well, I must confess his tones of voice are, at times, against him; but I'm not sure that it is not due to the distance. _All_ of his tones may not carry this far. I'm sure they don't, for when I first heard him, and made up my mind that it was a horrid, common, plebeian little row, I went to the west bedroom window--you know it looks directly into their kitchen--and what do you suppose I saw?"

The question was so sudden and wholly unexpected, and my mental apparatus was so taken up with the story that I found myself with no ideas whatever on the subject Indeed I do not believe that my wife wanted me to guess what she saw, half so much as she wanted breath; but I gave the only reply which the circ.u.mstances appeared to admit of, and which, I was pleased to see, in spite of its seeming inadequacy, was as perfectly satisfactory to the blessed little woman as if it had been made to order and proven a perfect fit.

"I can't imagine," said I.

"Of course you can't," she replied, pushing my crossed legs into position, and seating herself on my knees.

"Of course you can't. A man couldn't. Well, it seems their servant left last night, and that blessed man was washing the dishes this morning.

The difference of opinion had been over which one of them should do it."

"Why, the confounded brute!" said I. "He is a good deal better able to do it than she is. She looks sick, and so long as he has no business to attend to down here, he has as much time as she and a good deal more strength to do that kind of work."

"Well, I just knew you'd look at it that way," said my wife, with an inflection of pride and admiration which indicated that I had made a ten strike of some kind, of which few men--and not many women--would be capable.

"But that was not it at all," continued she.

I began laboriously to readjust my mental moorings to this seemingly complicated situation, and was on the verge of wondering why my wife was so pleased with me for simply making a mistake, when she began again, after giving me a little pat of unqualified satisfaction and sympathy.

"They both wanted to do it. She said she wasn't a bit tired and could do it alone just as well as not, and he'd break the gla.s.ses with his funny, great, big fingers; and he said he'd be careful not to break anything, and that the dish-water would spoil her hands."

"Good," said I, "I shall like the fellow. I------"

"Of course you will," my wife broke in, enthusiastically; "but that isn't all. I went to sleep after that, and later on was awakened by a loud--and as I thought at the time--a very angry voice. I went to the window again only to see a laughing scuffle between them over the potato-knife. She wanted to sc.r.a.pe them and he wanted to sc.r.a.pe them. Of course he got the knife, and it really did look too comical to see him work with those little bulbs. He put his whole mind on them, and he didn't catch her picking over the berries until she was nearly done.

Then he scolded again. He said he did the potatoes to keep her from getting her thumb and forefinger black, and here she was with her whole hand covered with berry stain. He seemed really vexed, and I must say his voice doesn't carry this far as if he was half as nice as he is.

I think there ought to be a chair of voices attached to every school-house--so to speak--and the result of the training made one of the tests of admission to the colleges of the country. Don't you?"

Again I was wholly unprepared for her sudden question, and was only slowly clambering around the idea she had suggested, so I said--somewhat irrelevantly, no doubt--"It may be."

She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then said, as she got up and crossed the room: "You didn't hear a word I said, and you don't begin to appreciate that man anyway."

"I did hear you, dear," I protested; "I was listening as hard as I could--and awfully interested--but a fellow can't skip along at that rate and have well-matured views on tap without a moment's warning.

You've got to be like the n.o.ble ladies in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' 'and give me heart and give me time.' Now _they_ understood men. We're slow."

She laughed and tied the last pink bow in the lace of a coquettish little white gown and dragged me out on the veranda.

Our new neighbors were out ahead of us.

"I don't think so at all, Margaret," we heard him say, as we took our chairs near the edge of the porch to catch any stray breeze that might be wandering our way.

"Sh--," we heard her say; "don't talk so loud. They will think you are going to scalp me."

"Oh, don't bother about the neighbors; let 'em hear," said he, "let 'em think. Who cares? If they haven't got anything better to do than sit around and think, they'd better move away from our neighborhood."