mrs. odd and miss odd, peter’s eldest and unmarried sister, were having an only half-veiled altercation when odd, after putting on dry clothes, came into the morning-room just before lunch. miss odd sat by the open french window cutting the leaves of a review. there were several more reviews on the table beside her, and with her eyeglasses and fine, severe profile, she gave one the impression of a woman who would pass her mornings over reviews and disagree with most of them for reasons not frivolous.

mrs. odd lay back in an easy-chair. she was very remarkable looking. the adjective is usually employed in a sense rather derogatory to beauty pure and simple, yet mrs. odd’s dominant characteristic was beauty, pure and simple; beauty triumphantly certain of remark, and remarkable in the sense that no one could fail to notice her, as when one had noticed her it was impossible not to find her beautiful. it was not a loveliness that admitted of discussion. in desperate rebellion against an almost tame conformity, a rash person might assert that to him her type did not appeal; but the type was resplendent. perhaps too resplendent; in this extreme lay the only hope of escape from conformity. the long figure in the uniform-like commonplace of blue serge and shirt-waist was almost too uncommonplace in elegance of outline; the white hand too slender, too pink as to finger-tips and polished as to nails; the delicate scarlet splendor of her mouth, the big wine-colored eyes, too dazzling.

mrs. odd’s red-brown hair was a glory, a burnished, well-coiffed, well-brushed glory; it rippled, coiled, and curved about her head. her profile was bewildering—lazily, sweetly petulant. “is this the face?” a man might murmur on first seeing alicia.

odd had so murmured when she had flashed upon his vision over a year ago. he was still young and literary, and, as he was swept out of himself, had still had time for a vague grasp at self-expression.

mrs. odd was speaking as he entered the room.

“i don’t really see, mary, what duty has got to do with it.” without turning her head, she turned her eyes on odd: “how wet your hair is, peter!”

mary odd looked up from the review she was cutting rather grimly, and her cold face was irradiated with a sudden smile.

“well, peter,” she said quietly.

“i fished a little girl out of the river,” said odd, taking a seat near alicia, and smiling responsively at his sister. “captain archinard’s little girl.” he told the story.

“an interesting contrast of physical and moral courage.”

“i have seen the children. they are noticeable children. they always ride to hounds.” hunting had been miss odd’s favorite diversion during her father’s lifetime. “but the pretty one, as i remember, has not the pluck of her sister—physical, as you say, peter, no doubt.”

“what sort of a person is mrs. archinard?”

“very pretty, very lazy, very selfish. she is an american, and was rich, i believe. captain archinard left the army when he married her, and immediately spent her money. luckily for him poor mr. archinard died—jack archinard; you remember him, peter? a nice man. i go to see mrs. archinard now and then. i don’t care for her.”

“you don’t care much for any one, mary,” said mrs. odd, smiling. “your remarks on your allersley neighbors are very pungent and very true, no doubt. people are so rarely perfect, and you only tolerate perfection.”

“yet i have many friends, alicia.”

“not near allersley?”

“yes; i think i count mrs. hartley-fox, mrs. maynard, lady mainwaring, and miss hibbard among my friends.”

“mrs. maynard is the old lady with the caps, isn’t she? what big caps she does wear! lady mainwaring i remember in london, trying to marry off her eighth daughter. you told me, i recollect, that she was an inveterate matchmaker.”

“she has no selfish eagerness, if that is what you understood me to mean.”

“but she does interfere a great deal with the course of events, when events are marriageable young men, doesn’t she?”

“does she?”

“well, you said she was a matchmaker, mary. there was no disloyalty in saying so, for it is known by every one who knows lady mainwaring.”

“and, therefore, my friends are not, and need not be, perfect.”

during this little conversation, odd sat with the unhappy, helpless look men wear when their women-kind are engaged in such contests.

“i am awfully hungry. isn’t it almost lunch-time?” he said, as they paused.

mrs. odd looked at her watch. “it only wants five minutes.”

odd walked to the window and looked out at the sweep of lawn, with its lime-trees and copper beeches. the flower-beds were in all their glory.

“how well the mignonette is getting on, mary,” he said, looking down at the fragrant greenness that came to the window. alicia got up and joined her husband, putting her arm through his.

“let us take a turn in the garden, peter,” she smiled at him; and although he understood, with the fatal clearness that one year of life with alicia had given him, that the walk was only proposed as a slight to mary, he felt the old pleasure in her beauty—a rather sickly, pallid pleasure—and an inner qualm was dispersed by the realization that he and mary understood one another so well that there need be no fear of hurting her.

after one year of married life, he and mary knew the nearness of the sympathy that allows itself no words.

there seemed to odd a perverse pathos in alicia’s lonely complacency—a pathos emphasized by her indifferent unconsciousness.

“mary is so disagreeable to-day,” said alicia, as they walked slowly across the lawn. “she has such a strong sense of her own worth and of other people’s worthlessness.”

odd made no reply. he never said a harsh word to his wife. he had chosen to marry her. the man who would wreak his own disillusion on the woman he had made his wife must, thought odd, be a sorry wretch. he met the revealment of alicia’s shallow selfishness with humorous gentleness. she had been shallow and selfish when he had married her, and he had not found it out—had not cared to find it out. he contemplated these characteristics now with philosophic, even scientific charity. she was born so.

“it will be dull enough here, at all events,” alicia went on, pressing her slim patent-leather shoe into the turf with lazy emphasis as she walked, for alicia was not bad-tempered, and took things easily; “but if mary is going to be disagreeable—“

“you know, alicia, that mary has always lived here. it is in a truer sense her home than mine, but she would go directly if either you or she found it disagreeable. had you not assented so cordially she would never have stayed.”

“don’t imply extravagant things, peter. who thinks of her going?”

“she would—if you made it disagreeable.”

“i? i do nothing. surely mary won’t want to go because she scolds me.”

“come, ally, surely you don’t get scolded—more than is good for you.” odd smiled down at her. her burnished head was on a level with his eyes. “like everybody else, you are not perfection, and, as mary is somewhat of a disciplinarian, you ought to take her lectures in a humble spirit, and be thankful. i do. mary is so much nearer perfection than i am.”

“i am afraid i shall be bored here, peter.” alicia left the subject of mary for a still more intimate grievance.

“the art of not being bored requires patience, not to say genius. it can be learned though. and there are worse things than being bored.”

“i think i could bear anything better.”

“what would you like, ally?” odd’s voice held a certain hopefulness. “i’ll do anything i can, you know. i believe in a woman’s individuality and all that. does your life down here crush your individuality, alicia?”

again odd smiled down at her, conscious of an inward bitterness.

“joke away, peter. you know how much i care for all that woman business—rights and movements and individualities and all that; a silly claiming of more duties that do no good when they’re done. i am an absolutely banal person, peter; my mind to me isn’t a kingdom. i like outside things. i like gayety, change, diversion. i don’t like days one after the other—like sheep—and i don’t like sheep!”

they had passed through the shrubbery, and before them were meadows dotted with the harmless animals that had suggested mrs. odd’s simile.

“well, we won’t look at the sheep. i own that they savor strongly of bucolic immutability. you’ve had plenty of london for the past year, ally, and nice and monte carlo. the sheep are really the change.”

“you had better go in for a seat in parliament, peter.”

“longings for a political salon, ally? i have hardly time for my scribbling and landlording as it is.”

“a salon! nothing would bore me so much as being clever and keeping it up. no, i like seeing people and being seen, and dancing and all that. i am absolutely banal, as i tell you.”

“well, you shall have london next year. we’ll go up for the season.”

“you took me for what i was, peter,” mrs. odd remarked as they retraced their steps towards the house. “i have never pretended, have i? you knew that i was a society beauty and that only. i am a very shallow person, i suppose, peter; i certainly can’t pretend to have depths—even to give mary satisfaction. it would be too uncomfortable. why did you fall in love with me, peter? it wasn’t en caractère a bit, you know.”

“oh yes, it was, ally. i fell in love with you because you were beautiful. why did you fall in love with me?”

the mockery with which alicia’s smile was tinged deepened into a good-humored laugh at her own expense.

“well, peter, i don’t think any one before made me feel that they thought me so beautiful. i am vain, you know. your enthusiasm was awfully flattering. i am very sorry you idealized me, peter. i am sure you idealized me. shall we go in? lunch must be ready, and you must be hungrier than ever.”

chapter iii

at four that afternoon odd, his wife, and mary started for the archinards’ house. mary had offered to join her brother; the prospect of the walk together was very pleasant. she could not object when alicia, at the last moment, announced her intention of going too.

“i have never been to see her. i should like the walk, and mary will approve of the fulfilment of my duty towards my neighbor.”

mary’s prospects were decidedly nipped in the bud, as alicia perhaps intended that they should be; but alicia’s avowed motive was so praiseworthy that mary allowed herself only an inner discontent, and, what with her good-humored demeanor, odd’s placid chat of crops and tenantry, and alicia’s acquiescent beauty, the trio seemed to enjoy the mile of beechwood and country road and the short sweep of prettily wooded drive that led to allersley priory, a square stone house covered with vines of magnolia and wisteria, and incorporating in its walls, according to tradition, portions of the old priory which once occupied the site. from the back of the house sloped a wide expanse of lawn and shrubberies, and past it ran the river that half a mile further on flowed out of captain archinard’s little property into odd’s. the drawing-room was on the ground-floor, and its windows opened on this view.

mrs. archinard and the captain were talking to young lord allan hope, eldest son of lord mainwaring. mrs. archinard’s invalidism was evidently not altogether fictitious. she had a look of at once extreme fragility and fading beauty. one knew at the first glance that she was a woman to have cushions behind her and her back to the light. there was no character in the delicate head, unless one can call a passive determination to do or feel nothing that required energy, character.

the two little girls came in while odd talked to their father. they were dressed alike in white muslins. katherine’s gown reached her ankles; hilda’s was still at the mi-jambe stage. their long hair fell about their faces in childlike fashion. katherine’s was brown and strongly rippled; hilda’s softly, duskily, almost bluely black; it grew in charming curves and eddies about her forehead, and framed her little face and long slim neck in straightly falling lines.

katherine gave odd her hand with a little air that reminded him of a velasquez infanta holding out a flower.

“you were splendid this morning, mr. odd. that hole was no joke, and hilda swallowed lots of water as it was. she might easily have been drowned.”

katherine was certainly not pretty, but her deeply set black eyes had a dominant directness. she held her head up, and her smile was charming—a little girl’s smile, yet touched with the conscious power of a clever woman. odd felt that the child was clever, and that the woman would be cleverer. he felt, too, that the black eyes were lit with just a spice of fun as they looked into his as though she knew that he knew, and they both knew together, that hilda had not been in much danger, and that his ducking had been only conventionally “splendid.”

“hilda wants to thank you herself, don’t you, hilda? she had such a horrid time altogether; you were a sort of perseus to her, and papa the sea monster!” then katherine, having, as it were, introduced and paved the way for her sister, went back across the room again, and stood by young allan hope while he talked to the beautiful mrs. odd.

hilda seemed really in no need of an introduction. she was not shy, though she evidently had not her sister’s ready mastery of what to say, and how to say it. odd was rather glad of this; he had found katherine’s aplomb almost disconcerting.

“i do thank you very much.” she put her hand into odd’s as he spoke, and left it there; the confiding little action emphasized her childlikeness.

“what did you think of as you went down?” he asked her.

“in the river?” a shade of retrospective terror crossed her face.

“no, no! we won’t talk about the river, will we?” odd said quickly. however funny katherine’s greater common sense had found the incident, it had not been funny to hilda. “have you lived here long?” he asked. captain archinard had joined mrs. odd, and with an admirer on either side, alicia was enjoying herself. “i have never seen you before, you know.”

“we have lived here since my uncle died; about eight years ago, i think.”

“yes, just about the time that i left allersley.”

“didn’t you like allersley?” hilda asked, with some wonder.

“oh, very much; and my father was here, so i often came back; but i lived in london and paris, where i could work at things that interested me.”

“i have been twice in london; i went to the national gallery.”

“you liked that?”

“oh, very much.” she was a quiet little girl, and spoke quietly, her wide gentle gaze on odd.

“and what else did you like in london?”

hilda smiled a little, as if conscious that she was being put through the proper routine of questions, but a trustful smile, quite willing to give all information asked for.

“the three fates.”

“you mean the elgin marbles?”

“yes, with no heads; but one is rather glad they haven’t.”

“why?” asked odd, as she paused. hilda did not seem sure of her own reason.

“perhaps they would be too beautiful with heads,” she suggested. “do you like dogs?” she added, suddenly turning the tables on him.

“yes, i love dogs,” odd replied, with sincere enthusiasm.

“three of our dogs are out there on the verandah, if you would care to know them?”

“i should very much. perhaps you’ll show me the garden too; it looks very jolly.”

it was a pleasure to look at his extraordinarily pretty little andromeda, and he was quite willing to spend the rest of his visit with her. they went out on the verandah, where, in the awning’s shade, lay two very nice fox terriers. a dachshund sat gazing out upon the sunlit lawn in a dog’s dignified reverie.

“jack and vic,” hilda said, pointing out the two fox terriers. “they just belong to the whole family, you know. and this dear old fellow is palamon; arcite is somewhere about; they are mine.”

“who named yours?”

“i did—after i read it; they had other names when they were given to me, but as i had never called them by them, i thought i had a right to change them. i wanted names with associations, like katherine’s setters; they are called darwin and spencer, because katherine is very fond of science.”

“oh, is she?” said odd, rather stupefied. “you seem to have a great many dogs in couples.”

“the others are not; they are more general dogs, like jack and vic.”

hilda still held odd’s hand: she stooped to stroke arcite’s pensive head, giving the fox terriers a pat as they passed them.

“so you are fond of chaucer?” odd said. they crossed the gravel path and stepped on the lawn.

“yes, indeed, he is my favorite poet. i have not read all, you know, but especially the knight’s tale.”

“that’s your favorite?”

“yes.”

“and what is your favorite part of the knight’s tale?”

“the part where arcite dies.”

“you like that?”

“oh! so much; don’t you?”

“very much; as much, perhaps, as anything ever written. there never was a more perfect piece of pathos. perhaps you remember it.” he was rather curious to know how deep was this love for chaucer.

“i learnt it by heart; i haven’t a good memory, but i liked it so much.”

“perhaps you would say it to me.”

hilda looked up a little shyly.

“oh, i can’t!” she exclaimed timidly.

“can’t you?” and odd looked down at her a humorously pleading interrogation.

“i can’t say things well; and it is too sad to say—one can just bear to read it.”

“just bear to say it—this once,” odd entreated.

they had reached the edge of the lawn, and stood on the grassy brink of the river. hilda looked down into the clear running of the water.

“isn’t it pretty? i don’t like deep water, where one can’t see the bottom; here the grasses and the pebbles are as distinct as possible, and the minnows—don’t you like to see them?”

“yes, but arcite. don’t make me tease you.”

hilda evidently determined not to play the coward a second time. the quiet pressure of odd’s hand was encouraging, and in a gentle, monotonous little voice that, with the soft breeze, the quickly running sunlit river, went into odd’s consciousness as a quaint, ineffaceable impression of sweetness and sadness, she recited:—

“allas the wo! allas the peynes stronge,

that i for you have suffered, and so longe!

allas the deth! allas myn emelye!

allas departing of our companye!

allas myn hertes quene! allas, my wyf!

myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf!

what is this world? what asketh man to have?

now with his love, now in his colde grave

allone, withouten any companye.”

odd’s artistic sensibilities were very keen. he felt that painfully delicious constriction of the throat that the beautiful in art can give, especially the beautiful in tragic art. the far-away tale; the far-away tongue; the nearness of the pathos, poignant in its “white simplicity.” and how well the monotonous little voice suited its melancholy.

“allone, withouten any companye,”

he repeated. he looked down at hilda; he had tactfully avoided looking at her while she spoke, fearing to embarrass her; her eyes were full of tears.

“thanks, hilda,” he said. it struck him that this highly strung little girl had best not be allowed to dwell too long on arcite and, after a sympathetic pause (odd was a very sympathetic person), he added:

“now are you going to take me into the garden?”

“yes.” hilda turned from the river. “you know he had just gained her, that made it all the worse. if he had not loved her he would not have minded dying so much, and being alone. one can hardly bear it,” hilda repeated.

“it is intensely sad. i don’t think you ought to have learned it by heart, hilda. that’s ungrateful of me, isn’t it? but i am old enough to take an impersonal pleasure in sad things; i am afraid they make you sad.”

hilda’s half-wondering smile was reassuringly childlike.

“oh, but it’s nice being sad like that.”

odd reflected, as they went into the garden, that she had put herself into his category.

after the shadow of the shrubberies through which they passed, the fragrant sunlight was dazzling. rows of sweet peas, their mauves and pinks and whites like exquisite musical motives, ran across the delicious old garden. a border of deep purple pansies struck a beautifully meditative chord. flowers always affected odd musically; he half closed his eyes to look at the sweeps of sun-flooded color. a medley of schumann and beethoven sang through his head as he glanced down, smiling at hilda archinard; her gently responsive little smile was funnily comprehensive; one might imagine that tunes were going through her head too.

“isn’t it jolly, hilda?”

“very jolly,” she laughed, and, as they walked between the pansy borders she kept her gentle smile and her gentle stare up at his appreciative face.

she thought his smile so nice; his teeth, which crowded forward a little, lent it perhaps its peculiar sweetness; his eyelids, drooping at the outer corners, gave the curious look of humorous sadness to the expression of his brown eyes. his moustache was cut shortly on his upper lip, and showed the rather quizzical line of his mouth. hilda, unconsciously, enumerated this catalogue of impressions.

“what fine strawberries,” said odd. “i like the fragrance almost more than the flavor.”

“but won’t you taste them?” hilda dropped his hand to skip lightly into the strawberry bed. “they are ripe, lots of them,” she announced, and she came running back, her outstretched hands full of the summer fruit, red, but for the tips, still untinted. the sunlit white frock, the long curves of black hair, the white face, slim black legs, and the spots of crimson color made a picture—a sunshiny whistler.

odd accepted the strawberries gratefully; they were very fine.

“i don’t think you can have them better at allersley manor,” said hilda, smiling.

“i don’t think mine are as good. won’t you come some day to allersley manor and compare?”

“i should like to very much.”

“then you and miss katherine shall be formally invited to tea, with the understanding that afterwards the strawberry beds are to be invaded.”

“i should like to very much,” hilda repeated.

“hullo! don’t make me feel a pig! eat some yourself,” said odd, who had finished one handful.

“no, no, i picked them for you.”

odd took her disengaged hand in his as they walked on again, hilda resisting at first.

“it is so sticky.”

“i don’t mind that: it is very generous.” she laughed at the extravagance.

“and what do you do all day besides swimming?” odd asked.

“we have lessons with our governess. she is strict, but a splendid teacher. katherine is quite a first-rate latin scholar.”

“is katherine fond of chaucer?”

“katherine cares more for science and—and philosophy.” hilda spoke with a respectful gravity. “that’s why she called her dogs darwin and spencer. she hasn’t read any of spencer yet, but of course he is a great philosopher. she knows that, and she has read a good deal of a big book by darwin, ‘the origin of species,’ you know.”

“yes, i know.” odd found katherine even more startling than her sister.

“i tried to read it, but it was so confusing—about selection and cabbages—i don’t see how cabbages can select, do you?” hilda’s voice held a reminiscent vagueness. “katherine says that she did not care for it much, but she thought she ought to look through it if she wanted a foundation; she is very keen on foundations, and she says darwin is the foundation-key—or corner-stone—no, keystone to the arch of modern science—at least she did not say so, but she read me that from her journal.”

“oh! katherine wrote that, did she?”

“yes; but you mustn’t think that katherine is a blue-stocking.” something in odd’s tone made hilda fear misunderstanding. “she loves sports of all kinds, and fun. she goes across country as well as any woman—that is what lord mainwaring said of her last winter during fox-hunting. she isn’t afraid of anything.”

“and what else do you do besides lessons?”

“well, i read and walk; there are such famous walks all about here, walks in woods and on hills. i don’t care for roads, do you? and i stay with mamma and read to her when she is tired.”

“and katherine?”

“she is more with papa.” in her heart hilda said: “he loves her best,” but of that she could not speak, even to this new friend who seemed already so near; to no one could she hint of that ache in her heart of which jealousy formed no part, for it was natural that papa should love katherine best, that every one should; she was so gay and courageous; but though it was natural that katherine should be loved best, it was hard to be loved least.

“you are by yourself a good deal, then?” said odd. “do you walk by yourself, too?”

“yes, with the dogs. i used to have grandmamma, you know; she died a year ago.”

“oh, yes! mrs. archinard’s mother.”

hilda nodded; her grasp on odd’s hand tightened and they walked in silence. odd remembered the fine portrait of a lady in the drawing-room; he had noticed its likeness and unlikeness to mrs. archinard; a delicate face, but with an emersonian expression of self-reliance, a puritan look of stanchness and responsibility.