 A Gala Dress by Mary E. Wilkins. I don't care anything about going to that 4th of July picnic, Lisbeth. I wouldn't say anything more about it if I was you, Emily. I'd get ready and go. I don't really feel able to go, Lisbeth. I'd like to know why you ain't able. It seems to me as if the firecrackers and the tootin' on those horns would drive me crazy. And Matilda Jennings says they're going to have a cannon down there and fire it off every half hour. I don't feel as if I could stan it. You know my nerves ain't very strong, Lisbeth. Elizabeth Babcock uplifted her long, delicate nose with its transparent nostrils and sniffed. Apparently her sister's perverseness had an unacceptable odor to her. I wouldn't talk so if I was you, Emily. Of course you're going. It's your turn to, and you know it. I went to meetin' last sabbath. You just put on that dress and go. She eyed her sister. She tried not to look pleased. I know you went to meetin' last, said she, hesitatingly. But a Fourth of July picnic is a little more of a rarity. She fairly jumped. Her sister confronted her with such a sudden vigor. Rarity. Well, I hope a Fourth of July picnic ain't quite such a treat to me that I'd rather go to it than meetin'. I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, speakin' so, Emily Babcock. Emily, a moment before, delicately alert and nervous like her sister, shrank limply in her limp black muslin. I didn't think how it sounded, Lisbeth. Well I should say you'd better think. It don't sound very becoming for a woman of your age and profession what you do. Now you'd better go and get out that dress and rip the velvet off and sew the lace on. There won't be any too much time. They'll start early in the morning. I'll stir up a cake for you to carry when I get tea. Don't you suppose I could get along without a cake? Emily ventured tremulously. Well I shouldn't think you'd want to go and be beholden to other folks for your eatin'. I shouldn't. I shouldn't want anything to eat. I guess if you go, you're going like other folks. I ain't going to have Matilda Jennings peakin' in pryin' and tellin' things if I know it. You'd better get out that dress. Well, said Emily, with a long sigh of remorseful satisfaction, she arose showing a height that would have approached the majestic had it not been so wavering. The sisters were about the same height, but Lisbeth usually impressed people as being the taller. She carried herself with so much decision that she seemed to keep every inch of her stature firm and taut, old woman although she was. Let's see that dress a minute, she said, when Emily returned. She wiped her spectacles, set them firmly, and began examining the hem of the dress, holding it close to her eyes. You're gittin' of it all tagged out, she declared presently. I thought you was. I thought I see some ravelins hangin' the other day when I had it on. It's just because you don't stand up straight. It ain't any longer for you than it is for me. If you didn't go all bent over so, there ain't any need of it. Emily oscillated warily over her sister in the dress. I ain't very strong in my back, and you know I've got a weakness in my stomach that hinders me from standin' up as straight as you do, she rejoined, rallying herself for a feeble defence. You can stand up just as well as I can if you're a mine, too. I'll rip that velvet off now if you'll let me have the dress, Lisbeth. Elizabeth passed over the dress, handing it gingerly. Mind you don't cut it, ripin' of it off, said she. Emily sat down, and the dress lay in shiny black billows over her lap. The dress was black silk, and had been in its day very soft and heavy. Even now there was considerable wear left in it. The waist and overskirt were trimmed with black velvet ribbon. Emily ripped off the velvet, then she sewed on some old-fashioned straight-edged black lace, full of little embroidered sprigs. The sisters sat in their parlour at the right of the front door. The room was very warm, for there were two west windows and a hot afternoon sun was beating upon them. Out in front of the house was a piazza, with a cool uneven brick floor, and a thick lilac growth across the western end. The sisters might have sat there and been comfortable, but they would not. Set right out in the face and eyes of all the neighbours, they would have exclaimed with dismay had the idea been suggested. There was, about these old women and all their belongings, a certain gentle and deprecatory reticence. One felt it immediately upon entering their house, or indeed upon coming inside of it. There were never any heads at the windows, the blinds were usually closed. Once in a while a passer-by might see an old woman, well shielded by shawl and scooping sun-bonnet, start up like a timid spirit in the yard, and softly disappear through a crack in the front door. Out in the front yard Emily had a little bed of flowers, of balsams and nasturtiums and porchillacas. She tended them with furtive glances toward the road. Elizabeth came out in the early morning to sweep the brick floor of the piazza, and the front door was left a jar for a hurried flitting should anyone appear. This excessive shyness and secrecy had almost the aspect of guilt, but no more guileless and upright persons could have been imagined than these two old women. They had over their parlor windows full, soft-falling, old muslin curtains, and they looped them back to leave bare the smallest possible space of glass. The parlor chairs retreated close to the walls, the polish of the parlor table lit up a dim corner. There were very few ornaments in sight. The walls were full of closets and little cupboards, and in them all superfluorities were tucked away to protect them from dust and prying eyes. Never a door in the house stood open. Every bureau drawer was squarely shut. A whole family of skeletons might have been well hidden in these guarded recesses. But skeletons there were none, except, perhaps, a little innocent bone or two of old womanly pride and sensitiveness. The Babacock sisters guarded nothing more jealously than the privacy of their meals. The neighbors considered that there was a decided reason for this. The Babacock girls have so little to eat that they are ashamed to let folks see it, people said. It was certain that the old women regarded intrusion at their meals as an insult. But it was doubtful if they would not have done so had their table been set out with all the luxuries of the season instead of scanty bread and butter and no sauce. No sauce for tea was regarded as very poor living by the village women. Tonight the Babacocks had tea very soon after the lace was sewed on the dress. They always had tea early. They were in the midst of it when the front door opened and a voice was heard calling out in the hall. The sisters cast a dismayed and indignant look at each other. They both arose, but the door flew open and their little square tea-table with its green and white china pot of weak tea, its plate of bread and a little glass dish of butter, its two china cups and thin silver teaspoons were displayed to view. My! cried the visitor with a little backward shuffle. I do hope you'll excuse me. I didn't know you were eating supper. I wouldn't had come in for the world if I'd known. I'll go right out. It warn't anything particular anyhow. All the time her sharp and comprehensive gaze was on the tea-table. She counted the slices of bread and measured the butter as she talked. The sisters stepped forward with dignity. Come into the other room, said Elizabeth, and the visitor, still protesting with her backward eyes upon the tea-table, gave way before her. But her eyes lighted upon something in the parlor more eagerly than they had upon that frugal and exclusive table. The sisters glanced at each other in dismay. The black silk dress lay over a chair. The caller, who was their neighbor Matilda Jennings, edged toward it as she talked. I thought I'd just ran over and see if you weren't going to the picnic to-morrow, she was saying. Then she clutched the dress and diverged. Oh! You've been fixin' your dress! She said to Emily with innocent insinuation. She did not sit well upon Matilda Jennings. None of her bodily lines were adapted to it, and the pretense was quite evident. She was short and stout, with a hard, a sallow retundity of cheek. Her small black eyes were bright pointed under fleshy brows. Yes, I have, replied Emily, with a scared glance at Elizabeth. Yes, said Elizabeth, stepping firmly into the subject and confronting Matilda with prim and resolute blue eyes. She has been fixin' of it. The lace was ripped off, and she had to mend it. It's pretty lace, ain't it? I had some of the same kind on a mantilla once when I was a girl. This makes me think of it. The sprigs in mine was set a little closer. Let me see, Elizabeth. Your black silk dress is trimmed with velvet, ain't it? Elizabeth surveyed her calmly. Yes, I've always worn black velvet on it, said she. Emily sighed faintly. She had feared that Elizabeth could not answer desirably and be truthful. Let me see, continued Matilda. How was that velvet put on your waist? It was put on peaked. In one peak or two? One. Now I wonder if it would be too much trouble for you just to let me see it a minute. I've been thinkin' of fixin' over my old alpaca a little, and I've got a piece of black velvet ribbon I've steamed over, and it looks pretty good. I thought maybe I could put it on like yours. Matilda Jennings, in her chocolate calico, stood as relentlessly as any executioner before the Babcock sisters. They, slim and delicate and pale in their flabby black muslins, leaned toward each other. Then Elizabeth straightened herself. Some time when it's convenient I'd just as soon show it as not, said she. Well, I'd be much obliged to do you if you would, returned to Matilda. Her manner was a trifle over odd, but there was a sharper gleam in her eyes. Pretty soon she went home and ate her solitary and substantial supper of bread and butter, cold potatoes, and pork and beans. Matilda Jennings was as poor as the Babcocks. She had never, like them, known better days. She had never possessed any fine old muslins, nor black silks in her life, but she had always eaten more. The Babcocks had always delicately and unobtrusively felt themselves above her. There had been in their lives a faint savor of gentility and aristocracy. Their father had been college educated and a doctor. Matilda's antecedents had been humble, even in this humble community. She had come of wood-soyers and garden-labors. In their youth, when they had gone to school and played together, they had always realized their height above Matilda, and even old age and poverty and a certain friendliness could not do away with it. The Babcocks owned their house and a tiny sum in the bank upon the interest of which they lived. Nobody knew how much it was. Nobody ever would know while they lived. They might have had more if they would have sold or mortgaged their house, but they would have died first. They starved daintily and patiently on their little income. They mended their old muslins and tidbits and wore one dress between them for best, taking turns and going out. It seemed inconsistent, but the girls were very fond of society, and their reserve did not interfere with their pleasure in the simple village outings. They were more at ease abroad than at home, perhaps because there were not present so many doors which could be opened into their secrecy. But they had an arbitrary conviction that their claims to respect and consideration would be forever forfeited should they appear on state occasions in anything but black silk. To their notions of etiquette, black silk was as sacred a necessity as feathers at the English court. They could not go abroad and feel any self-respect in those flimsy muslins and rusty woolens which were very flimsy and rusty. The old persons in the village could hardly remember when the Babcox had a new dress. The dainty care with which they had made those tender old fabrics endure so long was wonderful. They held up their skirts primly when they walked. They kept their pointed elbows clear of chairs and tables. The black silk in particular was taken off the minute its wear entered her own house. It was shaken softly, folded, and laid away in a linen sheet. Emily was dressed in it on the fourth of July morning when Matilda Jennings called for her. Matilda came in her voluminous old alpaca with her tin lunch pail on her arm. She looked at Emily in the black silk and her countenance changed. My, you ain't going to wear that black silk trailing round in the woods, are you? Said she. I guess she won't trail around much, spoke up Elizabeth. She's got to go, looking decent. Matilda's poor old alpaca had many a threadbare streak and mended slit in its rusty folds. The elbows were patched, it was hardly respectable, but she gave the skirt a defiant switch and jerked the patched elbows. Well, I always believe in going dressed suitable for the occasion, said she sturdily as if that was her a special picnic costume out of a large wardrobe. However, her bravado was not deeply seated. All day long she maneuvered to keep her patches and darns out of sight. She arranged the skirt nervously every time she changed her position and held her elbows close to her sides and she made many little flings at Emily's black silk. The festivities were nearly over, the dinner had been eaten, Matilda had devoured with relish her brown bread and cheese and cold pork and Emily had nibbled daintily at her sweet cake and glanced with inward loathing at her neighbor's grosser fare. The speeches by the local celebrities were delivered, the cannon had been fired every half hour, the sun was getting low in the west and a golden mist was rising among the ferny undergrowth in the grove. It's getting damp, I can see it rising, said Emily who was rheumatic. I guess we'd better walk round a little and then go home. Well, said Matilda, I'd just as soon, you'd better hold up your dress. The two old women adjusted themselves stiffly upon their feet and began ranging the grove, stepping warily over the slippery pine needles. The woods were full of merry calls, the green distances fluttered with light draperies. Every little while came the sharp bang of a firecracker, the crash of cannon, or the melancholy hoot of a fishhorn. Now and then blue gunpowder smoke curled up with a golden steam from the dewy ground. Emily was nearsighted. She moved on with innocently peering eyes. Her long neck craned forward. Matilda had been taking the lead, but she suddenly stepped aside. Emily walked on unsuspectingly, holding up her precious black silk. There was a quick puff of smoke, a leap of flame, a volley of vicious little reports, and poor Emily Babcock danced as a martyr as her fiery trail might have done. Her gentle dignity completely deserted her. Oh, oh, oh! she shrieked. Matilda Jennings pushed forward. By that time Emily was standing pale and quivering on a little heap of ashes. You stepped into a nest of firecrackers, said Matilda. A boy just run, I saw him. What made you stand there in him? Why didn't you get out? I couldn't, gasped Emily. She could hardly speak. Well, I guess it ain't done much harm. Them boys ought to be prosecuted. You don't feel as if you were burned anywhere, do you, Emily? No, I guess not. Seems to me your dress. Just let me look at your dress, Emily. My, ain't that a wicked shame. Just look at all them holes right in the flounce and where it'll show. It was too true. The flounce that garnished the bottom of the black silk was scorched in a number of places. Emily looked at it and felt faint. I must go right home. She moaned. Oh, dear! Maybe you can darn it if you're real particular about it, said Emily with an uneasy air. Emily said nothing. She went home. Her dress switched the dust off the wayside weeds, but she paid no attention to it. She walked so fast that Matilda could hardly keep up with her. When she reached her own gate, she swung it swiftly to before Matilda's face, then she fled into the house. Elizabeth came to the parlor door with a letter in her hand. She cried out when she saw her sister's face. What is the matter, Emily, for pity's sakes? You can't never go out again, Elizabeth! You can't! You can't! Why can't I go out? I'd like to know. What do you mean, Emily Babcock? You can't! You never can again! I stepped into some firecrackers, and I burned some great holes right in the flouncing. You can't never wear it without folks knowing. Matilda Jennings will tell. Oh, Elizabeth, what will you do? Do, said Elizabeth. Well I hope I ain't so sad I'm going out at my time of life as all that comes to. Let's see it. Hmm. And that? No, you can't. Matilda would see it if you did. Oh, dear, oh, dear! Emily dropped into a corner and put her slim hands over her face. Do stop acting so, said her sister. I've just had a letter, and Aunt Elizabeth is dead. After a little, Emily looked up. When did she die? She asked in a despairing voice. Last week. Did they ask us to the funeral? Of course they did. It was last Friday at two o'clock in the afternoon. They knew the letter couldn't get to us till after the funeral, but of course they asked us. What did they say the matter was? Old age, I guess, as much as anything. Aunt Elizabeth was a good deal over eighty. Emily sat reflectively. She seemed to be listening while her sister related more at length the contents of the letter. Suddenly she interrupted. Elizabeth. Well. I was thinking, Elizabeth, you know those crepe veils we wore when mother died? Well, what of them? I don't see why you couldn't make a flounce of those veils and put on this dress when you wore it. Then she would know. I'd like to know what I'd wear a crepe flounce for. Hi, morning for Aunt Elizabeth. Emily, Babcock, what sense would there be in my wearing morning when you didn't? You were named after her, and it's a very different thing. You can just tell folks that you were named for your aunt that just died, and you felt as if you ought to wear a little crepe on your best dress. It'll be an awful job to put on a different flounce every time we wear it. I'll do it. I'm perfectly willing to do it. Oh, Elizabeth, I shall die if you ever go out again and wear that dress. For pity's sakes don't, Emily. I'll get out those veils after supper and look at them. The next Sunday Elizabeth wore the black silk garnished with the crepe of flounce to church. Matilda Jennings walked home with her and eyed the new trimming sharply. Got a new flounce, ain't you? She said finally. I had word last week that my Aunt Elizabeth Taylor was dead, and I thought it weren't anything more unfittin' than I should put on a little crepe, replied Elizabeth with dignity. Has Emily put on more than two? Emily ain't any call to. She weren't named after her as I was, and she never saw her but once when she was a little girl. It ain't more than ten years since I saw her. She lived out west. I didn't feel as if Emily had any call to wear a crepe. Matilda said no more. But there was unqueled suspicion in her eye as they parted at the Babcock Gate. The next week a trunk full of Aunt Elizabeth Taylor's clothes arrived from the west. Her daughter had sent them. There was in the trunk a goodly store of Old Woman's Finery, two black silks among the other gowns. Aunt Elizabeth had been a dressy old lady, although she died in her eighties. It was a great surprise to the sisters. They had never dreamed of such a thing. They palpitated with awe and delight as they took out the treasures. Emily clutched Elizabeth, a thin hand closing round the thin arm. Elizabeth! What is it? We won't say anything about this to anybody. We'll just go together to meet next Sabbath and wear these black silks and let Matilda Jennings see. Elizabeth looked at Emily. A gleam came into her dim blue eyes. She tartened her thin lips. Well, we will, she said. The following Sunday the sisters wore the black silks to church. During the week they appeared together at a sewing meeting, then at church again. The wonder and curiosity were certainly not confined to Matilda Jennings. The eccentricity which the Babcock sisters displayed in not going into society together had long been a favorite topic in the town. There had been a great deal of speculation over it. Now that they had appeared together three consecutive times there was much talk. On the Monday following the second Sunday Matilda Jennings went down to the Babcock house. Her cape bonnet was on one-sided, but it was firmly tied. She opened the door softly when her old muscles were straining forward to jerk the latch. She sat gently down in the proffered chair and displayed quite openly a worn place over the knees in her calico gown. "'We had a pleasant Sabbath yesterday, didn't we?' said she. "'Real pleasant,' assented the sisters. "'I thought we had a good discourse!' The Babcocks assented again. "'I hear'd a good many say they thought it was a good discourse,' assented Matilda, like an emphatic chorus. Then she suddenly leaned forward and her face, in the depths of her awry bonnet, twisted into a benevolent smile. "'I was real glad to see you out together,' she whispered with meaning emphasis. The sisters smiled stiffly. Matilda paused for a moment. She drew herself back, as if to gather strength for a thrust. She stopped smiling. "'I was glad to see you out together, for I thought it was too bad the way folks was talking,' she said. Elizabeth looked at her. "'How were they talking?' "'Well, I don't know, as there's any harm in my telling you. I've been thinking maybe I ought, for some time. It's been round considerable lately that you and Emily didn't get along well. And that was the reason you didn't go out more together. I told them I had no idea it was so, though, of course. I couldn't really tell. I was real glad to see you out together, because there's never any knowing how folks do get along, and I was real glad to see you'd settled it, if there had been any trouble. There ain't been any trouble. Well, I'm glad if there ain't been any, and if there has, I'm glad to see you'd settled, and I know other folks will be, too.' Elizabeth stood up. "'If you want to know the reason why we haven't been out together, I'll tell you,' said she. "'You've been trying to find out things every way you could, and now I'll tell you you've drove me to it. We had just one decent dress between us, and Emily and me took turns wearing it, and Emily used to wear lace on it, and I used to rip off the lace and sew on black velvet when I wore it, so folks shouldn't know it was the same dress. Emily and me never had a word in our lives, and it's a wicked lie for folks to say we have.' Emily was softly weeping in her handkerchief. There was not a tear in Elizabeth's eyes. There were bright spots on her cheeks, and her slim height overhung Matilda Jennings imposingly. My Aunt Elizabeth, that I was named for, died two or three weeks ago, she continued, and they sent us a trunk full of her clothes, and there was two decent dresses among them, and that's the reason why Emily and me have been out together since. Now Matilda Jennings, you have found out the whole story, and I hope you're satisfied. Now that the detective instinct and the craving inquisitiveness which were so strong in this woman were satisfied, she should have been more jubilant than she was. She had suspected what nobody else in town had suspected. She had verified her suspicion, and discovered what the secrecy and pride of the sisters had concealed from the whole village. Still she looked uneasy and subdued. I shan't tell anybody, said she. You can tell nobody you're a mind to. I shan't tell nobody. Matilda Jennings arose. She had passed the parlor door when she faced about. I suppose I kind of regretched you that black silk, said she, or I shouldn't have cared so much about finding out. I never had a black silk myself, nor any of my folks that I ever heard of. I ain't got nothing decent to wear anyway. There was a moment's silence. We shan't lay up anything, said Elizabeth then, and Emily sobbed responsively. Matilda passed on, and opened the outer door. Elizabeth whispered to her sister, and Emily nodded eagerly. You tell her, said she. Matilda, called Elizabeth, Matilda looked back. I was just going to say that if you wouldn't resent it, it got burned to some, but we mended it nice, that you was perfectly welcome to that, black silk. Emily and me don't really need it, and we'd be glad to have you have it. There were tears in Matilda Jennings' black eyes, but she held them unwinkingly. Thank ye, she said in a gruff voice, and stepped along over the piazza down the steps. She reached Emily's flower garden. The peppery sweetness of the nasturtiums came up in her face. It was quite early in the day, and the porchillacas were still out in a splendid field of crimson and yellow. Matilda turned about. Her broad foot just cleared a yellow porchillaca which had straggled into the path, but she did not notice it. The homely old figure pushed past the flowers and into the house again. She stood before Elizabeth and Emily. Look here, said she with a fine light struggling out for a coarse old face. I want to tell you I see them firecrackers of sizzling before Emily stepped in them. End of A Gala Dress by Mary E. Wilkins. The Locket by Kate Chopin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Locket by Kate Chopin. Part one. One night in autumn a few men were gathered about a fire on the slope of a hill. They belonged to a small detachment of confederate forces and were awaiting orders to march. Their gray uniforms were worn beyond the point of shabbiness. One of the men was heeding something in a tin cup over the embers. Two were lying at full length a little distance away, while a fourth was trying to decipher a letter and had drawn close to the light. He had unfastened his collar and a good bit of his flannel shirt front. What's that you got around your neck, Ned? Asked one of the men, lying in the obscurity. Ned, or Edmund, mechanically fastened a nether button on his shirt and did not reply. He went on reading his letter. Is it your sweetheart's picture? Taint no gal's picture. Offered the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. That's a charm, some kind of who-do business, that one of the priests gave him to keep him out of trouble. I know them Catholics. That's how come Frenchie got promoted and never got a scratch since he's been in the ranks. Hey, French, ain't I right? Edmund looked up absently from his letter. What is it? He asked. Ain't that a charm you got round your neck? It must be, Nick, returned Edmund with a smile. I don't know how I could have gone through this year and a half without it. The letter had made Edmund heart-sick and homesick. He stretched himself on his back and looked straight up at the blinking stars. But he was not thinking of them nor of anything but a certain spring day when the bees were humming in the climatis, when a girl was saying goodbye to him. He could see her as she unclasped from her neck the locket which she fastened about his own. It was an old-fashioned golden locket, marrying miniatures of her father and mother, with their names ends the date of their marriage. It was her most precious earthly possession. Edmund could feel again the folds of the girl's soft white gown and see the droop of the angel sleeves as she circled her fair arms about his neck. Her sweet face, appealing, pathetic, tormented by the pain of parting, appeared before him as vividly as life. He turned over, burying his face in his arm, and there he lay, still and motionless. The profound and treacherous night with its silence and semblance of peace settled upon the camp. He dreamed that the fair Octavie brought him a letter. He had no chair to offer her and was pained and embarrassed at the condition of his garments. He was ashamed of the poor food which comprised the dinner at which he begged her to join them. He dreamt of a serpent coiling around his throat, and when he strove to grasp it the slimy thing glided away from his touch. Then his dream was climber. Get your duds, you, Frenchie! Nick was bellowing in his face. There was what appeared to be a scramble and a rush rather than any regulated movement. The hillside was alive with clatter and motion, with sudden up-springing lights among the pines. In the east the dawn was unfolding out of the darkness. Its glimmer was yet dim in the plain below. What's it all about?" wondered a big black bird, perched in the top of the tallest tree. He was an old solitary and a wise one, yet he was not wise enough to guess what it was all about. So all day long he kept blinking and wondering. The noise reached far out over the plain and across the hills, and awoke the little babes that were sleeping in their cradles. The smoke curled up towards the sun and shattered the plain so that the stupid birds thought it was going to rain. But the wise one knew better. They are children playing a game, thought he, I shall know more about it if I watch long enough. At the approach of night they had all vanished away with their din and smoke. Then the old bird plumed his feathers. At last he had understood. With a flap of his great black wings he shot downward, blinked toward the plain. A man was picking his way across the plain. He was dressed in the garb of clergymen. His mission was to administer the consolations of religion to any of the prostrate figures in whom there might yet linger a spark of life. A negro accompanied him, bearing a bucket of water and a flask of wine. There were no wounded here. They had been borne away. But the retreat had been hurried and the vultures and the good Samaritans would have to look to the dead. There was a soldier, a mere boy, lying with his face to the sky. His hands were clutching the sword on either side and his fingernails were stuffed with earth and bits of grass that he had gathered in his despairing grasp upon life. His musket was gone. He was hatless, and his face and clothing were begrimed. Around his neck hung a gold chain and locket. The priest, bending over him, unclasped the chain and removed it from the dead soldier's neck. He had grown used to the terrors of a whore and could face them unflinchingly. But its pathos, some way, always brought the tears to his old, dim eyes. The Angelus was ringing half a mile away. The priest and the negro knelt and murmured together the evening benediction and a prayer for the dead. PART 2 The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction. Along the leafy road, which skirted a narrow, torturous stream in central Louisiana, rumbled an old-fashioned cabriolet, much the worse for hard and rough usage over country roads and lanes. The fat, black horses went in a slow, measured trot, notwithstanding constant urging on the part of the fat, black coachmen. Within the vehicle were seated the fair Octavey and her old friend and neighbor, Judge Piliar, who had come to take her for a morning drive. Octavey wore a plain black dress, severe in its simplicity. A narrow belt held it at the waist and the sleeves were gathered into close-fitting wristbands. She had discarded her hoop skirt and appeared not unlike a nun. Beneath the folds of her bodice nestled the old's locket. She never displayed it now. It had returned to her sanctified in her eyes, made precious as material things sometimes are by being forever identified with a significant moment of one's existence. A hundred times she had read over the letter with which the locket had come back to her. Even later than that morning she had again poured over it. As she sat beside the window, smoothing the letter out upon her knee, heavy and spiced odors stole in to her with the songs of birds and the humming of insects in the air. She was so young and the world was so beautiful that there came over her a sense of unreality as she read again and again the priest's letter. He told of that autumn day, drawing to its close, with the gold and the red fading out of the west, and the night gathering its shadows to cover the faces of the dead. Oh! She could not believe that one of those dead was her own. With visage uplifted to the gray sky in an agony of supplication, a spasm of resistance and rebellion seized and swept over her. Why was the spring here with its flowers and its seductive breath if he was dead? Why was she here? What further had she to do with life and the living? Octavia had experienced many such moments of despair, but a blessed resignation had never failed to follow, and it fell then upon her like a mantle and enveloped her. I shall grow old and quiet and sad like poor Aunt Octavia. She murmured to herself as she filled at the letter and replaced it in the secretary. Already she gave herself a little demure air like her Aunt Octavia. She walked with a slow glide in unconscious imitation of Mademoiselle Octavia, whom some youthful affliction had robbed of earthly compensation while leaving her in possession of youth's illusions. As she sat in the old Capriolet, beside the father of her dead lover, again there came to Octavia the terrible sense of loss which had assailed her so often before. The soul of her youth clamored for its rights, for a share in the world's glory and exultation. She leaned back and drew her veil a little closer about her face. It was an old black veil of her Aunt Octavia's. A whiff of dust from the road had blown in, and she wiped her cheeks and her eyes with her soft white handkerchief, a homemade handkerchief fabricated from one of her old fine muslin petticoats. Will you do me the favor, Octavia? Requested the judge in the courteous tone which he never abandoned. To remove that veil which you wear, it seems out of harmony someway with a beauty and promise of the day. The young girl obediently yielded to her old companion's wish, and unpinning the cumbersome, sombre drapery from her bonnet, folded it neatly and laid it upon the seat in front of her. Ah, that is better, far better! He said in a tone expressing unbounded relief. Never put it on again, dear. Octavia felt a little hurt, as if he wished to debar her from share and parcel in the burden of affliction, which had been placed upon all of them. Again she drew forth the old muslin handkerchief. They had left the big road and turned into a level plain, which had formerly been an old meadow. There were clumps of thorn trees here and there, gorgeous in their spring radiance. Some cattle were grazing off in the distance in spots where the grass was tall and luscious. At the far end of the meadow was the towering lilac hedge, skirting the lane that led to Judge Pillier's house, and the scent of its heavy blossoms met them like a soft and tender embrace of welcome. As they neared the house, the old gentleman placed a norm around the girl's shoulders and turning her face up to him, he said, do you not think that on a day like this, miracles might happen? When the whole earth is vibrant with life, does it not seem to you, Octavia, that heaven might once relent and give us back our dead? He spoke very low, advisedly and impressively. In his voice was an old quaver, which was not habitual and there was agitation in every line of his visage. She gazed at him with eyes that were full of supplication and a certain terror of joy. They had been driving through the lane with the towering hedge on one side and the open meadow on the other. The horses had somewhat quickened their lazy pace. As they turned into the avenue leading to the house, a whole choir of feathered songsters fluted a sudden torrent of melodious greeting from their leafy hiding places. Octavia felt as if she had passed into a stage of existence, which was like a dream, more pregnant and real than life. There was the old gray house with its sloping eaves. Amid the blur of green and dimly, she saw familiar faces in her voices as if they came from far across the fields and Edmund was holding her. Her dead Edmund, her living Edmund, and she felt the beating of his heart against her and the agonizing rapture of his kisses striving to awake her. It was as if the spirit of life and the awakening spring had given back the soul to her youth and bade her rejoice. It was many hours later that Octavia drew the locket from her bosom and looked at Edmund with a questioning appeal in her glance. It was the night before an engagement. He said, in the hurry of the encounter and the retreat next day, I never missed it till the fight was over. I thought of course I had lost it in the heat of the struggle but it was stolen. Stolen, she shuddered and thought of the dead soldier with his face uplifted to the sky in an agony of supplication. Edmund said nothing. But he thought of his messmate, the one who had lain far back in the shadow, the one who had said nothing. End of The Locket. Recording by Katie Riley. November 2009. Three unpublished poems by Louisa May Alcott. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Antoinette Griffin. A-B-A, lines written by Louisa M. Alcott to her father. Like Bunyan's pilgrim with his pack, fourth went the dreaming youth to seek to find and make his own wisdom, virtue and truth. Life was his book and patiently he studied each hard page. By turns, reformer, outcast priest, philosopher and sage. Christ was his master and he made his life a gospel suite. Plato and Pythagoras in him found a disciple meet. The noblest and best his friends, faithful and fond though few, eager to listen, learn and pay, the love and honor do. Power and place, silver and gold, he neither asked nor sought, only to serve his fellow men with heart and word and thought. A pilgrim still, but in his pack, no sins to frighten or oppress, but wisdom, morals, piety to teach, to warn and bless. The world passed by, nor cared to take, the treasure he could give. A part he sat, content to wait and beautifully live. Unsaddened by long, lonely years of want, neglect and wrong, his soul to him a kingdom was steadfast, serene and strong. Magnanimous and pure his life, tranquil its happy end. Patience and peace his handmaids were, death and immortal friend. For him no monuments need rise, no laurels make his pawl, the memory of the good and wise, out shines, out lives them all. End of recording. End of three unpublished poems by Louisa May Alcott. Recording by Antoinette Griffin, Orlando, Florida, storieswithantoinette.com. When the bio overflows by Alice Dunbar. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Belano Times. When the bio overflows by Alice Dunbar for the American Women's Literature Collection. When the sun goes down behind the great oaks along the bio tish near Franklin, it throws red needles of light into the dark woods and leaves a great glow on the still bio. Ma'am Moton paused at her gate and cast a contemplative look at the red sky. It will rain tomorrow, show I must get in my tings. Ma'am Moton's remark must have been addressed to herself or to the lean dog, for no one else was visible. She moved briskly about the yard, taking things from the line when Luzette's voice called cheerily. Ah, Ma'am Moton, can I help? Luzette was petite and plump and black-haired. Luzette's eyes danced and her lips were red and tempting. Ma'am Moton's face relaxed as the small brown hands relieved hers of the burden. Sylve, has he come yet? Asked the red mouth. Ma'am, Ma'am Moton, sadly, I can tell you for why he no come home soon this day. Ah, ma'am, I feel like something gone happened. He's so strange. Even as she spoke, a quick nervous step was heard crunching up the brick walk. Sylve paused an instant without the kitchen door. His face turned to the setting sun. He was tall and slim and agile, a true khejan. Bonjour, Luzette, he laughed. Hey, Ma'am, ah, my son, you are very late. Sylve's crowned but said nothing. It was a silent supper that followed. Luzette was sad. Ma'am Moton sighed now and then. Sylve was constrained. Ma'am, he said at length, I am going away. Ma'am Moton dropped her fork and stared at him with unseeing eyes. Then, as she comprehended his remark, she put her hand out to him with a pitiful gesture. Sylve's cried Luzette, springing to her feet. Ma'am, don't, don't, he said weakly, then gathering strength from the silence, he burst forth. Yes, I'm going away to work. I'm tired of this, just dig, dig, work in the field, nothing to see but the cloud, the tree, the bio. I don't like New Orleans. It's too near here. There's no money, dear. I go up for Mardi Gras and the same people, the same street. I'm going to Chicago. Sylve's screamed both women at once. Chicago, that vast, far-off city that seemed in another world. Chicago, a name to conjure with for wickedness. Why, yes, continued Sylve's. Lots of boys they know there. Ari and Joseph Lascaud and Arthur direct me what money they make in cigar. I can make a living too. I can make fine cigar. See how I do in New Orleans in the winter. Oh, Sylve, well, Luzette. Daniel, forget me. Not all, mon cher, he answered tenderly. I will come back when the bio overflows again. And Maman and Luzette will have fine present. Mom, Motan had bowed her head on her hands and was rocking to and fro in an agony of dry-eyed misery. Sylve's went to her side and knelt. Maman, he said softly, Maman, you must not cry. All the boys go away and I will come back, reach. And you won't have thought to work no more. But Maman, Motan, was inconsolable. It was even as Sylve's had said. In the summertime, the boys of the bio-tich would work in the field or in the town of Franklin, hack-driving and doing odd jobs. When winter came, there was a general exodus to New Orleans a hundred miles away where work was to be had as cigar makers. There is money, plenty of it, in cigar making if one can get in the right place. Of late, however, there had been a general slackness of the trade. Less winter, oftentimes, Sylve's had walked the streets out of work. Many were the Creole boys who had gone to Chicago to earn a living for the cigar making trade flourishes there wonderfully. Friends as Sylve's had gone and written home glowing accounts of the money to be had almost for the asking. When one's blood leaps for new scenes, new adventures, and one needs money, what is the use of frittering away time alternately between the bio-tich and New Orleans? Sylve's had brooded all summer, and now that September had come, he was determined to go. Lisette, the orphan, the girl-lover whom everyone in Franklin knew would someday be Mamonde Motin's daughter-in-law, wept and pleaded in vain. Sylve's kissed her with quivering lips. Marcher, he would say, think I will bring you one fine diamond ring next spring when the bio overflows again. Lisette would faint be content with this promise. As for Mamonde Motin, she'd seem to have grown ages older. Her Sylve's was going from her. Sylve's, whose trips to New Orleans had been a yearly source of heartbreak, was going far away for months to that mysterly wicked city, a thousand miles away. October came, and Sylve's had gone. Mamonde Motin had kept up bravely until the last. When with one final cry she extended her arms to the pitiless train bearing him northward, then she and Lisette went home drearily, the one leaning upon the other. Ah, that was a great day when the first letter came from Chicago. Lisette came running in breathlessly from the post-office, and together they read it again and again. Chicago was such a wonderful city, said Sylve's, why it was always like New Orleans at Mardi Gras with the people. He had seen Joseph Lascaux, and he had a place to work promised him. He was well, but he wanted, oh, so much, to see Mamonde and Lisette. But then he could wait. Was ever such a wonderful letter? Lisette sat for an hour afterwards building gorgeous air castles while Mamonde Motin fingered the paper and murmured prayers to the Virgin for Sylvès. When the bio overflowed again, that would be in April. Then Lisette caught herself looking critically at her slender brown fingers and blushed furiously, though Mamonde Motin could not see her in the gathering twilight. Next week there was another letter, even more wonderful than the first. Sylvès had found work. He was making cigars and was earning two dollars a day. Such wages. Mamonde Motin and Lisette began to plan pretty things for the brown cottage on the tish. That was a pleasant winter, after all. True, there was no Sylvès, but then he was always in New Orleans for a few months anyway. There were his letters full of wondrous tales of the great queer city where cars went by ropes underground and where there was no Mardi Gros and the people did not mind Lent. Now and then there would be a present, a keepsake for Lisette and some money for Mamonde. They would plan improvements for the cottage and Lisette began to do sewing and dainty crochet, which she would hide with a blush if anyone hinted at her to sew. It was March now and springtime. The bio began to sweep down between its banks less sluggishly than before. It was rising and soon would spread over its tiny levees. The doors could be left open now, though the trees were not yet green, but then down here the trees do not swell and bud slowly and tease you for weeks with promises of greenness. Dear know, they simply look mysterious and their twigs shake against each other and tell secrets of the leaves that will soon be born. Then one morning you awake and lo, it is a green world. The boughs have suddenly clothed themselves all in a wondrous garment and you feel the blood run right in your veins out of pure sympathy. One day in March it was warm and sweet. Underfoot were violets and we white star flowers peering through the baby grass. The sky was blue with flecks of white clouds reflecting themselves and the brown bio. Lausette tripped up the red brick walk with the Chicago letter in her hand and paused a minute at the door to look upon the leaping waters, her eyes dancing. I know the bio must be ready to overflow with the letter and the carefully phrased French that the brothers taught at the parochial school and I am glad for I want to see the dear Mamon and my Lausette, I am not so well and Monsieur-le-docteur says it is well for me to go to the south again. Monsieur-le-docteur, so was not well, the thoughts struck a chill to the hearts of Mamon and Lausette, but not for long. Of course, Soves was not well. He needed some of Mamon's dissents. Then he was homesick, it was to be expected. At last the great day came. Soves would be home. The brown waters of the bio had spread until they were seemingly trying to rival the Mississippian width. The little house was scrubbed and cleaned until it shone again. Lausette had looked her dainty little dress over and over to be sure that there was not a flaw to be found wherein Soves could compare her unfavorably to the stylish Chicago girls. The train rumbled in on the platform and two pair of eyes opened wide for the first glimpse of Soves. The porter, all officiousness and brass buttons bustled up to Mam-Motin. This is Mrs. Motin, he inquired deferentially. Mam-Motin nodded, her heart singing, where is Soves? He is here, madame. There appeared Joseph Lascaux. Then some men bearing something. Lausette put her hands up to her eyes to hide the sight, but Mam-Motin was rigid. It was too cold for him, Joseph was saying to almost deaf ears, and he took the consumption. He thought he could get well when he come home. He talked all the way down about the bio and about you and Lausette. Just three hours ago he had a bad hemorrhage and he died from weakness. Just three hours ago he said he wanted to get home and give Lausette her diamond ring when the bio overflowed. End of When the Bio Overflows by Alice Dunbar. Ardessa by Willa Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. Ardessa by Willa Cather. For the American Women's Literature Collection. The grand-mannered old man who sat at a desk in the reception room of the outcry offices to receive visitors and incidentally to keep the time book of the employees looked up as Miss Divine entered at 10 minutes past 10 and condescendingly wished him good morning. He bowed profoundly as she minced past his desk and with an indifferent air took her course down the corridor that led to the editorial offices. Mechanically he opened the flat black book at his elbow and placed his finger on D, running his eye along the line of figures after the name Divine. It's banker's hour she keeps indeed, he muttered. What was the use of entering so capricious a record? Nevertheless, with his usual preliminary flourish, he wrote 10, 10 under this, the fourth day of May. The employee who kept banker's hours rustled on down the corridor to her private room hung up her lavender jacket and her trim spring hat and readjusted her sidecombs by the mirror inside her closet door. Glancing at her desk she rang for an office boy and reproved him because he had not dusted more carefully and because there were lumps in her paste. When he disappeared with the paste jar she sat down to decide which of her employer's letters he should see and which he should not. Ardessa was not young and she was certainly not handsome. The coquettish angle at which she carried her head was a mannerism surviving from time when it was more becoming. She shuddered at the cold candor of the new businesswoman and was insinuatingly feminine. Ardessa's employer, like young Luckenbar, had come out of the West and he had done a great many contradictory things before he became proprietor and editor of The Outcry. Before he decided to go to New York and make the East take notice of him, O'Malley had acquired a punctual, reliable silver mine in South Dakota. This silent friend in the background made his journalistic success comparatively easy. He had figured out when he was a rich nobody in Nevada that the quickest way to cut into the known world was through the printing press. He arrived in New York, bought a highly respectable publication and turned it into a red-hot magazine of protest which he called The Outcry. He knew what the West wanted and it proved to be what everybody secretly wanted. In six years he had done the thing that had hitherto seemed impossible. Build up a national weekly out on the newsstands the same day in New York and San Francisco, a magazine the people howled for, a moving picture film of their real tastes and interests. O'Malley bought The Outcry to make a stir, not to make a career. But he had got built into the thing more than he ever intended. It had made him a public man and put him into politics. He found the publicity game diverting and it held him longer than any other game had ever done. He had built up about him an organization of which he was somewhat afraid and with which he was vastly bored. On his staff there were five famous men and he had made every one of them. At first it amused him to manufacture celebrities. He found he could take an average reporter from the Daily Press, give him a line to follow, a trust to fight, a vice to expose. This was all in that good time when people were eager to read about their own wickedness. And in two years the reporter would be recognized as an authority. Other people, Napoleon, Disraeli, Sarah Bernhardt, had discovered that advertising would go a long way. But Marcus O'Malley discovered that in America it would go all the way as far as he wished to pay its passage. Any human countenance plastered in three sheet posters from sea to sea would be revered by the American people. The strangest thing was that the owners of these rave countenances, staring at their own faces on newsstands and billboards, fell to venerating themselves. And even he, O'Malley, was more or less constrained by these reputations that he had created out of cheap paper and cheap ink. Constraint was the last thing O'Malley liked. The most engaging and unusual thing about the man was that he couldn't be fooled by the success of his own methods and no amount of recognition could make a stuffed shirt of him. No matter how much he was advertised as a great medicine man in the councils of the nation, he knew that he was a born gambler and a soldier of fortune. He left his dignified office to take care of itself for a good many months of the year while he played about on the outskirts of social order. He liked being a great man from the East in rough and tumble Western cities where he had once been merely an unconsidered spender. O'Malley's long absences constituted one of the supreme advantages of Ardessa Devine's position. When he was at his post, her duties were not heavy, but when he was giving balls in gold-filled Nevada, she lived an ideal life. She came to the office every day, indeed, to forward such of O'Malley's letters as she thought best to attend to his club notices and tradesmen's bills and to taste the sense of her high connections. The great men of the staff were all about her as contemplative as Buddhas in their private offices, each meditating upon the particular trust or form of vice confided to his care. Thus surrounded, Ardessa had a pleasant sense of being at the heart of things. It was like a mental massage, exercised without exertion. She read and she embroidered. Her room was pleasant and she liked to be seen at ladylike tasks and to feel herself a graceful contrast to the crude girls in the advertising and circulation departments across the hall. The youngest stenographers who had to get through the enormous office correspondence and who rushed about from one editor to another with wire baskets full of letters made faces as they passed Ardessa's door and saw her cool and cloistered, daintily plying her needle. But no matter how hard the other stenographers were driven, no one, not even one of the five oracles of the staff dared dictate so much as a letter to Ardessa. Like a sultan's bride, she was inviolate in her lord's absence. She had to be kept for him. Naturally the other young women employed in the outcry offices disliked Miss Divine. They were all competent girls trained in the exacting methods of modern business and they had to make good every day in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work or lose their position. O'Malley's private secretary was a mystery to them. Her exemptions and privileges, her patronizing remarks formed an exhaustless subject of conversation at the lunch hour. Ardessa had indeed, as they knew she must have, a kind of purchase on her employer. When O'Malley first came to New York to break into publicity, he engaged Miss Divine upon the recommendation of the editor whose ailing publication he bought and recristened. That editor was a conservative, scholarly gentleman of the old school who was retiring because he felt out of place in the world of brighter, brazier magazines that had been flowering since the new century came in. He believed that in this vehement world young O'Malley would make himself heard and that Miss Divine's training in an editorial office would be of use to him. When O'Malley first sat down at a desk to be an editor, all the cards that were brought in looked pretty much alike to him. Ardessa was at his elbow. She had long been steeped in literary distinctions and in the social distinctions which used to count for much more than they do now. She knew all the great men, all the nephews and clients of great men. She knew which must be seen, which must be made welcome and which could safely be sent away. She could give O'Malley on the instant. The former rating in magazine offices of nearly every name that was brought into him. She could give him an idea of the man's connections of the prices were commanded and the insinuate, whether he ought to be met with the old punctiliousness or with the new joviality. She was useful in explaining to her employer the significance of various invitations and the standing of clubs and associations. At first she was virtual, the social mentor of the bullet headed young Westerner who wanted to break into everything, the solitary person about the office, of the humming new magazine who knew anything about the editorial traditions of the 80s and 90s which antiquated as they now were, gave an editor, as O'Malley said, a background. Despite her indolence, Ardessa was useful to O'Malley as a social reminder. She was the card catalog of his ever-changing personal relations. O'Malley went in for everything and got tired of everything. That was why he made a good editor. After he was through with people, Ardessa was very skillful in covering his retreat. She read and answered the letters of admirers who had begun to bore him. When great authors who had been dined and fettered the month before were suddenly left to cool their heels in the reception room, thrown upon the suave hospitality of the grand old man at the desk, it was Ardessa who went out and made soothing and plausible explanations as to why the editor could not see them. She was the break that checked the two-eager neophyte, the emollient that eased the severing of relationships, the gentle extinguisher of the lights that failed. When there were no longer messages of hope and cheer to be sent to ardent young writers and reformers, Ardessa delivered as sweetly as possible whatever messages were left. In handling these people with whom O'Malley was quite through, Ardessa had gradually developed an industry which was immensely gratifying to her own vanity. Not only did she not crush them, she even fostered them a little. She continued to advise them in the reception room and personally received their manuscripts long after O'Malley had declared that he would never read another line they wrote. She let them outline their plans for stories and articles to her, promising to bring these suggestions to the editor's attention. She denied herself to nobody, was gracious even to the Shakespeare-Bacon man, the perpetual motion man, the travel article man, the ghosts which haunt every magazine office. The writers who had had their happy hour of O'Malley's favor kept feeling that Ardessa might reinstate them. She answered their letters of inquiry in her most polished and elegant style and even gave them hints as to the subjects in which the restless editor was or was not interested at the moment. She feared it would be useless to send him an article on how to trap lions because he had just bought an article on elephant shooting in Majuba land, et cetera. So when O'Malley plunged into his office at 11.30 on this, the fourth day of May, having just got back from three days fishing, he found Ardessa in the reception room, surrounded by a little court of discards. This was annoying, for he always wanted his stenographer at once. Telling the office boy to give her a hint that she was needed, he threw off his hat and topcoat and began to race through the pile of letters Ardessa had put on his desk. When she entered, he did not wait for her polite inquiries about his trip, but broke in at once. What is that fellow who writes about Fosseja still hanging round here for? I don't want any articles on Fosseja and if I did, I wouldn't want his. He has just sold an article on the match industry to the New Age, Mr. O'Malley. Ardessa replied as she took her seat at the editor's right. Why does he have to come and tell us about it? We've nothing to do with the New Age and that prison reform guy, what's he loving about for? Ardessa bridled. You remember, Mr. O'Malley, he brought letters of introduction from Governor Harper, the reform governor of Mississippi. O'Malley jumped up, kicking over his waistbasket in his impatience. That was months ago. I went through his letters and went through him too. He hasn't got anything we want. I've been through with Governor Harper a long while. We're asleep at the switch in here and let me tell you, if I catch sight of that, causes a blindness in baby's woman around here again, I'll do something violent. Clear them out, Miss Divine. Clear them out. We need a traffic policeman in this office. Have you got that article on stealing our national water power ready for me? Mr. Gerard took it back to make modifications. He gave it to me at noon on Saturday, just before the office closed. I will have it ready for you tomorrow morning, Mr. O'Malley, if you have not too many letters for me this afternoon. Ardessa replied pointedly. Holy Mike, muttered O'Malley, we need a traffic policeman for the staff too. Mr. Gerard's modified that thing half a dozen times already. Why don't they get accurate information in the first place? He began to dictate his warning mail, walking briskly up and down the floor by way of giving his stenographer an energetic example. Her indolence and her ladylike deportment weighed on him. He wanted to take her by the elbows and run her around the block. He didn't mind that she loathed when he was away, but it was becoming harder and harder to speed her up when he was on the spot. He knew his correspondence was not enough to keep her busy, so when he was in town, he made her type his own breezy editorials and various articles by members of his staff. Transcribing editorial copy is always laborious, and the only way to make it easy is to farm it out. This Ardessa was usually clever enough to do. When she returned to her own room after O'Malley had gone out to lunch, Ardessa rang for an office boy and said languidly, James, call Becky, please. In a moment, a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of 18 or 19 came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of type-written sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Divine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself in her insufficient, open-worked waist. Her wild black eyes followed Miss Divine's hands desperately, Ardessa sighed. The seems to be very smary copy again, Becky. You don't keep your mind on your work, and so you have to erase continually. Becky spoke up and wailing self-vindication. It ain't that, Miss Divine. It's so many hard words he uses that I have to be at the dictionary all the time. Look, look! She produced a bunch of manuscript, faintly scrolled in pencil, and thrust it under Ardessa's eyes. He don't write out the words at all. He just begins a word, and then makes waves for you to guess. I see you haven't always guessed correctly, Becky, said Ardessa, with a weary smile. There are eight great many words here that would surprise Mr. Gerard. I am afraid. And the inserts, Becky persisted. How is anybody to tell where they go, Miss Divine? It's mostly inserts, see? All over the top and sides and back. Ardessa turned her head away. Don't clob the pages like that, Becky. You make me nervous. Mr. Gerard has not time to dot his eyes and cross his teeth. That is what we keep copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you. It would be terrible if Mr. O'Malley saw them, and then you can copy them over again. It must be done by tomorrow morning, so you may have to work late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you will not smear it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Miss Divine. Will you tell the janitor, please? It's all right. If I have to stay, he was cross because I was here Saturday afternoon doing this. He said it was a holiday, and when everybody else was gone, I ought to. That will do, Becky. Yes, I will speak to the janitor for you. You may go to lunch now. Becky turned on one hill, and then swung back. Miss Divine, she said anxiously, will it be all right if I get white shoes for now? Ardessa gave her kind consideration. For office wear, you mean? No, Becky. With only one pair, you could not keep them properly clean, and black shoes are much less conspicuous, tan, if you prefer. Becky looked down at her feet. They were too large, and her skirt was as much too short as her legs were too long. Nearly all the girls I know were white-shoesed business, she pleaded. They are probably little girls who work in factories or department stores, and that is quite another matter. Since you raised the question, Becky, I ought to speak to you about your new waist. Don't wear it to the office again, please. Those cheap, open-worked wastes are not appropriate in an office like this. They are all very well for little chorus girls. But Miss Kowski wears expensive waist to business more open than this, and jewelry Ardessa interrupted. Her face grew hard. Miss Kowski, she said coldly, works for the business department. You are employed in the editorial offices. There is a great difference. You see, Becky, I might have to call you in here at any time when a scientist or a great writer or the president of a university is here talking over editorial matters, and such clothes as you have on today would make a bad impression. Nearly all our connections are with important people of that kind, and we ought to be well, but quietly dressed. Yes, Miss Devine, thank you. Becky gasped and disappeared. Heaven knew she had no need to be further impressed with the greatness of the outcry office. During the year and a half she had been there, she had never ceased to tremble. She knew the prices all the authors got as well as Miss Devine did, and everything seemed to her to be done on a magnificent scale. She hadn't a good memory for long technical words, but she never forgot dates or prices or initials or telephone numbers. Becky felt that her job depended on Miss Devine, and she was so glad to have it that she scarcely realized she was being bullied. Besides, she was grateful for all that she had learned from Ardessa. Ardessa had taught her to do most of the things that she was supposed to do herself. Becky wanted to learn. She had to learn. That was the train she was always running for. Her father, Isaac, titled by the tailor, impressed Miss Devine's skirts and kept her ladylike suits in order, had come to his client two years ago, and told her he had a bright girl just out of commercial high school. He implored Ardessa to find some office position for his daughter. Ardessa told an appealing story to Amali and brought Becky into the office at a salary of $6 a week to help with copying and to learn business routine. When Becky first came, she was as ignorant as a young savage. She was rapid at her shorthand and typing, but a cafe girl would have known as much about the English language. Nobody ever wanted to learn more than Becky. She fairly wore the dictionary out. She dug up her old school grammar and worked over it at night. She faithfully mastered Miss Devine's fussy system of punctuation. There were eight children at home younger than Becky, and they were all eager to learn. They wanted to get their mother out of the three dark rooms behind the tailor shop and to move into a flat upstairs, where they could, as Becky said, live private. The young title-bombs doubted their father's ability to bring this change about. For the more things he declared himself ready to do in his window placards, the fewer were brought to him to be done. Dying, cleaning, ladies' furs remodel. It did no good. Rebecca was out to improve herself. As her father had told her, she must. Ardessa had easy way with her. It was one of those rare relationships from which both persons profit. The more Becky could learn from Ardessa, the happier she was, and the more Ardessa could unload on Becky, the greater was her contentment. She easily broke Becky of the gum-chewing habit, taught her to walk quietly, to efface herself at the proper moment and to hold her tongue. Becky had been raised to $8 a week, but she didn't care half so much about that as she did about her own increasing efficiency. The more work Ms. Devine handed over to her, the happier she was, and the faster she was able to eat it up. She tested and tried herself in every possible way. She now had full confidence that she would surely one day be a high-priced stenographer, a real businesswoman. Becky would have corrupted a really industrious person, but a billiard's temperament like Ardessa's couldn't make even a feeble stand against such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost the knack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance and serenity, she shivered. What if O'Malley should die and she were thrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen, competent young women she saw about her everywhere? She believed herself indispensable, but she knew that in such a mischanceful world as this, the very powers of darkness might rise to separate her from this pearl among jobs. When Becky came in from lunch, she went down the long hall to the washroom where all the little girls who worked in the advertising and circulation departments kept their hats and jackets. There were shelves and shelves of bright spring hats piled on top of one another, all as stiff as sheet iron and trimmed with gay flowers. At the marble wash stand, stood Rana Kalski, the right bower of the business manager, polishing her diamond rings with a nail brush. Hello, kid, she called over her shoulder to Becky. I've got a ticket for you for Thursday afternoon. Becky's black eyes glowed, but the strained look on her face drew tighter than ever. I'll never ask her, Miss Kalski, she said rapidly. I don't dare, I have to stay late night again, and I know she'd be hard to please after. If I was to try to get off on a weekday, I thank you, Miss Kalski, but I better not. Miss Kalski laughed. She was a slender young Hebrew, handsome in an impudent, tenderline sort of way with a small head, reddish-brown almond eyes, a trifle tilted, a rapacious mouth, and a beautiful chin. Ain't you under that woman's thumb, though? Collar bluff. She isn't half the prima donna she thinks she is. On my side of the hall, we know who's who about this place. The business and editorial departments of the Outcry were separated by a long corridor and a great contempt. Miss Kalski dried her rings with tissue paper and studied them with an appraising eye. Well, since you're such a frady calf, she went on. Maybe I can get a rise out of her myself. Now I've got you a ticket out of that shirt front I want you to go. I'll drop in on divine this afternoon. When Miss Kalski went back to her desk in the business manager's private office, she turned to him familiarly, but not impertinently. Mr. Henderson, I want to send a kid over in the editorial stenographers to the palace Thursday afternoon. She's a nice kid, only she's scared out of her skin all the time. Miss Devine's her boss, and she'll be just mean enough not to let the young one off. Would you say a word to her? The business manager lit a cigar. I'm not saying words to any of the high brows over there. Try it out with the Devine yourself. You're not bashful. Miss Kalski shrugged her shoulders and smiled. Oh, very well. She serpentine'd out of the room and crossed the Rubicon into the editorial offices. She found Ardessa typing of Allie's letters and wearing a pained expression. Good afternoon, Miss Devine, she said carelessly. Can we borrow Becky over there for Thursday afternoon? We're short. Miss Devine looked peaked and tilted her head. I don't think it's customary, Miss Kalski, for the business department to use our people. We never have girls enough here to do the work. Of course, if Mr. Henderson feels justified. Thanks awfully, Miss Devine. Miss Kalski interrupted her with the perfectly smooth good-natured tone, which never portrayed a hint of the scorn. Every line for sinuous figure expressed. I will tell Mr. Henderson, perhaps we can do something for you some day. Whether this was a threat, a kind wish, or an insinuation, no mortal could have told. Miss Kalski's face was always suggesting insolence without being quite insolent. As she returned to her own domain, she met the cashier's head clerk in the hall. That divine woman's a crime. As she murmured, the head clerk laughed tolerantly. That afternoon, as Miss Kalski was leaving the office at 5.15, on her way down the corridor, she heard a typewriter clicking away in the empty, echoing editorial offices. She looked in and found Becky bending forward over the machine as if she were about to swallow it. Hello, kid, do you sleep with that? She called. She walked up to Becky and glanced at her copy. What do you let him keep you up nights over that stuff for? She asked contemptuously. The world wouldn't suffer. That stuff never got printed. Rebecca looked up wildly. Not even Miss Kalski's French pansy hat, or her earrings and landscape veil, could loosen Becky's tenacious mind from Mr. Garen's article on water power. She scarcely knew what Miss Kalski had said to her, certainly not what she meant. But I must make progress already, Miss Kalski. She panted. Miss Kalski gave her low, siren laugh. I should say you must, she ejaculated. Ardessa decided to take her vacation in June, and she arranged that Miss Milligan should do O'Malley's work while she was away. Miss Milligan was blunt and noisy, rapid and inaccurate. It would be just as well for O'Malley to work with a coarse instrument for a time. He would be more appreciative, perhaps, of certain qualities to which he had seemed insensible of late. Ardessa was to leave for East Hampton on Sunday, and she spent Saturday morning instructing her substitute, as to the state of the correspondence. At noon O'Malley burst into her room. All the morning he had been closeted with a new writer of mystery stories just over from England. Can you stay and take my letters this afternoon, Miss Devine, you are not leaving until tomorrow. Ardessa pouted and tilted her head at the angle he was tired of. I'm sorry, Mr. O'Malley, but I've left all my shopping for this afternoon. I think Becky Tidalbaum could do them for you. I will tell her to be careful. Oh, all right! O'Malley bounced out with a reflection of Ardessa's disdainful expression on his face. Saturday afternoon was always a half-holiday, to be sure, but since she had weeks of freedom when he was away, however. At two o'clock Becky Tidalbaum appeared at his door, clad in the sober office suit, which Miss Devine insisted she should wear, her notebook in her hand, and so frightened that her fingers were cold and her lips were pale. She had never taken dictation from the editor before. It was a great and terrifying occasion. Sit down, he said, encouragingly. He began dictating while he shook from his bag the manuscripts. He had snatched away from the amazed English author that morning. Presently he looked up. Do I go too fast? No, sir, Becky found strength to say. At the end of an hour he told her to go and type as many of the letters as she could. While he went over the bunch of stuff, he had torn from the Englishman. He was with the Hindu detective in an opium den in Shanghai when Becky returned and placed a pile of papers on his desk. How many, he asked, without looking up. All you gave me, sir. All so soon? Wait a minute, and let me see how many mistakes. He went over the letters rapidly, signing them as he read. They seemed to be all right. I thought you were the girl that made so many mistakes. Rebecca was never too frightened to vindicate herself. Mr. O'Malley, sir, I don't make mistakes with letters. It's only copying the articles that have so many long words. And when the writing is in plain, like Mr. Gerard's, I never make any mistakes with Mr. Johnson's articles or with yours. I don't. O'Malley wheeled round in his chair and looked with curiosity at her long tense face, her black eyes, and straight brows. Oh, so you sometimes copy articles, do you? How does that happen? Yes, sir. Always mis-define gives me the articles to do. It's good practice for me. I see, O'Malley shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking that he could get a rise out of the whole American public any day easier than he could get a rise out of Arteza. What editorials of mine have you copied lately, for instance? Rebecca blazed out at him, reciting rapidly. Oh, a word about the Rosenbaum's useless Navy yards. Who killed Cock Robin? Wait a minute, O'Malley checked her flow. What was that one about Cock Robin? It was all about why the Secretary of the Interior dismissed. All right, all right, copy those letters and put them down to shoot as you go out. Come in here for a minute on Monday morning. Becky hurried home to tell her father that she had taken the editor's letters and had made no mistakes. On Monday she learned that she was to do O'Malley's work for a few days. He disliked Ms. Milligan, and he was annoyed with Arteza for trying to put her over on him when there was better material at hand. With Rebecca he got on very well. She was impersonal, unreproachable. And she fairly panted for work. Everything was done almost before he told her what he wanted. She raced ahead of him. It was like riding a good modern bicycle after pumping along on an old hard tire. On the day before Ms. Divine's return, O'Malley strolled over for a chat with the business office. Henderson, your people are taking vacations now, I suppose. Could you use an extra girl? If it's that then black one, I can. O'Malley gave him a wise smile. It isn't. To be honest, I want to put one over on you. I want you to take Ms. Divine over here for a while and speed her up. I can't do anything. She's got the upper hand of me. I don't want to fire her, you understand. But she makes my life too difficult. It's my fault, of course. I've pampered her. Give her a chance over here. Maybe she'll come back. You can be firm with them, can't you? Ms. Divine glanced toward the dust, where Ms. Kowski's lightning eye was skimming over the printing-house bills that he was supposed to verify himself. Well, if I can't, I'd know who can, he replied with a chuckle. Exactly, O'Malley agreed. I'm counting on the force of Ms. Kowski's example. Ms. Divine's all right, Ms. Kowski, but she needs regular exercise. She owes it to her complexion. I can't discipline people. Ms. Kowski's only reply was a low, indulgent laugh. O'Malley braced himself on the morning of Ardessa's return. He told the waiter at his club to bring him a second pot of coffee, and to bring it hot. He was really afraid of her. When she presented herself at his office at 10.30, he complimented her upon her tan and asked her about her vacation. Then he broke the news to her. We want to make a few temporary changes about your Ms. Divine for the summer months. The business department is short of help. Henderson is going to put Ms. Kowski on the books for a while to figure out some economies for him, and he is going to take you over. Meantime, I'll get Becky broken in so that she could take your work if you were sick or anything. Ardessa drew herself up. I've not been accustomed to commercial work, Mr. O'Malley. I've no interest in it, and I don't care to brush up on it. Brushing up is just what we need, Ms. Divine. O'Malley began tramping about his room expansively. I'm going to brush everybody up. I'm going to brush a few people out. But I want you to stay with us, of course. You belong here. Don't be hasty now. Go to your room and think it over. Ardessa was beginning to cry, and O'Malley was afraid he would lose his nerve. He looked out of the window at a new skyscraper that was building while she retired without a word. At her own desk, Ardessa sat down breathless and trembling. The one thing she had never doubted was her unique value to O'Malley. She had, as she told herself, taught him everything. She would say a few things to Becky, title-bomb, into that pigeon-breasted tailor, and her father, too. The worst of it was that Ardessa had herself brought it all about. She could see that clearly now. She had carefully trained and qualified her successor. Why had she ever civilized Becky? Why had she taught her manners and deportment, broken her of the gum-chewing habit, and made her presentable? In her original state O'Malley would never have put up with her, no matter what her ability. Ardessa told herself that O'Malley was notoriously fickle. Becky amused him, but he would soon find out her limitations. The wise thing, she knew, was to humor him. But it seemed to her that she could not swallow her pride. Ardessa gulped, yellower, within the hour. Over and over in her mind she bade O'Malley a cold edu, and minced out past grand old men at the desk for the last time. Each exit she rehearsed made her feel sorry for herself. She thought over all the offices she knew, but she realized that she could never meet their inexorable standards of efficiency. While she was bitterly deliberating, O'Malley himself wandered in, rattling his keys nervously in his pocket. He shut the door behind him. Now you're going to come through with this, all right, aren't you, Miss Deweyne? I want Henderson to get over the notion that my people over here are stuck up and think the business department are old shoes. That's where we get our money from, as he often reminds me. You'll be the best-paid girl over there. No reduction, of course. You don't want to go wandering off to some new office where personality doesn't count for anything. He sat down confidentially on the edge of her desk. Do you know, Miss Deweyne? Ardessa simpered tearfully as she replied. Yes, Mr. O'Malley, she brought out, you'll soon find that Becky is not the sort of girl to meet people for you when you are away. I don't see how you can think of letting her. That's one thing I want to change, Miss Deweyne. You're too soft-handed with the has-beens and the never-wesers. You're too much of a lady for this rough game. Nearly everybody who comes in here wants to sell us a gold brick, and you treat them as if they were bringing in wedding presents. Becky is as rough as sandpaper, and she'll clear out a lot of dead wood. O'Malley rose and tapped Ardessa's shrinking shoulder. Now be a sport and go through with it, Miss Divine. I'll see that you don't lose. Henderson thinks you will refuse to do his work, so I want you to get moved in there before he comes back from lunch. I've had a desk put in his office for you. Miss Kowski is in the bookkeeper's room half the time now. Raina Kowski was amazed that afternoon when a line of office boys entered, carrying Miss Divine's effects, and when Ardessa herself coldly followed them. After Ardessa had arranged her desk, Miss Kowski went over to her and told her about some matters of routine very good-naturedly. Ardessa looked pretty badly shaken up, and Raina bore no grudges. When you want the dope on the correspondence with a paper man, don't bother to look it up. I've got it all in my head, and I can save time for you. If he wants you to go over the printing bills every week, you'd better let me help you with that for a while. I can stay almost any afternoon. It's quite a trek to figure out the plates and overtime charges till you get used to it. I've worked out a quick method that saves trouble. When Henderson came in, at three, he found Ardessa, chilly but civil, awaiting his instructions. He knew she disapproved of his tastes and his manners, but he didn't mind. What interested and amused him was that Raina Kowski, whom he had always thought as cold-blooded as an adding machine, seemed to be making a hair mattress of herself to break Ardessa's fall. At five o'clock, when Ardessa rose to go, the business manager said freezingly, See you at nine in the morning, Miss Devine. We begin on the stroke. Ardessa faded out of the door, and Miss Kowski's slender back squirmed with amusement. I never thought to hear such words spoken, she admitted, but I guess she'll limber up all right. The atmosphere is bad over there. They get moldy. After the next monthly luncheon of the heads of departments, O'Malley said to Henderson, as he feed the coat-boy, By the way, how are you making it with the bartered bride? Henderson smashed on his Panama, as he said. Any time you want her back, don't be delicate. But O'Malley shook his red head and laughed, Oh, I'm no Indian giver. End of Ardessa by Willa Couther.