FAN AT IC CHRISTIAN? HELEN R; MAR.TIN BifiKf irY LIBRARY UKiiva»rrT of CAUFORN1A FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN? BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR Barnabetta Betrothal of Elypholate, and Othsr Tales of THE Pennsylvania Dutch Crosswats Elusive Hildeqarde The Fighting Doctor Her Husband's Purse His Courtship Martha of the Mennonite Countbt The Parasite Revolt of Anne Royle Sabina, Story of the Amish Those Fitzenbergers Tillie, a Mennonite Maid Warren Hyde When Half-Gods Go FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN? A STORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH BY HELEN R. MARTIN TORONTO THOMAS LANGTON PUBLISHER j;/7/^^:3 PKIMTED IN GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCXUDtNG THAT 0» TRANSLATION OrrO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLT7DING THE SCANDINAVIAlf Ciyr^ "Are we preserving freedom in this land of our^, the hope of all the earth? . . . We stand in danger- of utter failure, except we . . . speedily . . . deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to> their deserts. Don't deceive yourselves for a mo- ment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an open question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or not. Go one step farther, make their organized power permanent, and it may be too late to turn back." WooDROw Wilson in The New Freedom 033 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fanaticorchristiOOmartrich FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN? FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN? CHAPTER I STELLA SWARTZ looked at her younger sister, Gertrude, with sharp, calculating scrutiny. Was it going to be a difficult task to manage her in the impending crisis? That it would be an impossible one never occurred to her; for when Stella Swartz greatly desired a thing, obstacles in the way of attainment only stimulated her indomitable energies. It seemed almost funny to imagine any difficulty in managing Gertrude in any contingency; in turning that amiable, yielding creature peremptorily Right-about-Face to march where her superior officer commanded; for Stella was, and always had been, a born Major General; while Gertrude, too good-natured as well as too indolent to protest, had all her life let herself be shoved here and there by Stella like a pawn on a chess board. Neverthe- less — Stella's keen examination of the young girl, four years her junior, seated on the grass a few feet away from her, grew sharper. There was that one instance of insubordination of three years ago — [3] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN it seemed unbelievable, even yet, that she, Stella, had been worsted in that conflict of their wills; that her easy-going, lackadaisical sister had actually, against the formidable opposition of her mother and herself, taken a stand, held to it and won! That instance, however, stood alone; the only time in all their lives that Gertrude had not been entirely acquiescent to Stella's dominance in the family. "Until that question of her going to college came up, I never thought she had any backbone. But it seems that it is only when she is indifferent that she is yielding. In cases where she couldn't pos- sibly be indifferent — in such big affairs as marriage — and money — will she oppose me again, I wonder.^" The look of a warrior girding herself for battle came into Stella's eyes. "She hasn't father to back her up now," she told herself. The girls were both in mourning. "What good has it done you, anyway — your going to college three years?" she interrupted Gertrude's reading to demand. Gertrude, startled, dropped her book to her lap. "What did you say?" "I asked you, Gertie, what good your three years at college have done you anyway?" "A large order, sister, to expect me to tell all that in a sentence at a moment's notice," Gertrude answered in the hesitating, half apologetic tone habitual to her in speaking to Stella, so ingrained [4] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN was her life-long sense of feeling herself a trouble- some superfluity in Stella's scheme of life. Yet Stella realised as she looked at her that although her countenance, like her voice, was mellow and womanly, it was by no means weak or characterless. What lent it character, however, and even distinction seemed to be, oddly enough, the expression of amiable drollery about the mouth, an expression at once arresting and winning; and agreeably at variance with the almost puritanic austerity of the earnest eyes and brow. "You know, Gertie, you never hurt yourself studying when you did go to college, though of course I know you consider yourself intellectual." "I studied only what interested me. *No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en. In brief, sir, study what you most affect,' " said Gertrude as she yawned, stretched, and raised herself from the ground to a chair. Stella, in another garden chair, was busily embroidering a piece of linen while she speculated and talked. It was five o'clock on a May afternoon and they were sitting on the wide shady lawn of their home; a tea table between them; a hammock suspended from two great trees a few yards away; several rustic chairs standing about on the well-kept expanse of green. Their home on the edge of the town was one of the most pretentious estates in the small Pennsyl- vania Dutch city. New Munich. The large red brick house was built in the so-called "Queen Anne" [51 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN style of forty years ago and was set in the midst of several acres of beautifully laid out land. In the rear of the grounds was a garage containing a variety of cars; there was a tennis court, a croquet lawn, summer houses covered with vines, an orchard of fruit trees. Withal the place looked inviting, home-like, comfortable. It suggested a family life of ease, pleasure and even of luxury. "Those three years at college were the best of my life, Stella, so far. Of course I hope to have even better ones. TheyVe helped to prepare me for better ones." "Sounds like a Christain Endeavour address! Please be definite! What practical good have they been to you.^" "Practical good?" "Of course that's the last thing you'd think of — the practical good to be got out of spending over two thousand dollars in going to school after you were already entirely educated!" "Well, suppose father's sudden death had left us poor — I'd be equipped to earn my living." "But it hasn't. So that's out. What else?" "I'm afraid I'm a little vague as to what you mean by practical good. Apart from earning one's living, what is it?" "Practical good in the case of a woman can mean only one thing — social advantage and a good mar- riage. As I so strongly protested when the question of your going to college was first brought up, so I 16] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN still say — one year at a first-class finishing school like the one I attended would have given you more social advantage than three years at college." "But as social advantage was not what I was seeking — not what you mean by social advantage anyway — " Gertrude paused a moment, then continued, **Stella, college has helped me to lay hold on the best that life has to offer — the best that the great of the earth have wrought and thought. You don't get that at a finishing school. At college you at least learn how and where to seek for it." "If you ask me, I say it has damaged your chances for making a good marriage. The young men in New Munich are afraid of you. And you are educated so far beyond them that you don't care for them." "Yet most of the young men that come here to see us (or rather you) are college men." "I know. But you can't see it on them as you can on a woman who has been to college! They seem to escape (what did you call it?) the *laying hold on the best that the great of the earth have wrought and thought.' Gee! Fancy Harry's going to col- lege for anything like that! I certainly can't see that it ever made any great difference in him — his four years at Yale." "Harry certainly came through unscathed," Ger- trude admitted. "He always was very agile in eluding learning. But you wanted him to go to college." "My brother — of course. What showing does a [7] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN young man have if he doesn't belong to a college fraternity? But in your case — well, I try to con- ceal it from people that you are a high-brow! Or get round it by saying that you write for the maga- zines. And of course they think that's simply grand!" "That I write for all the leading magazines," proclaimed Gertrude. "And of course you don't ha Ve to add that the leading magazines do not publish what I write for them." "Of course I don't. On the whole your going to college has been a real detriment." "Oh, I don't know. I think I'm equipped for a little higher usefulness than if I had not gone. And my old age may be less barren." "Stuff! Is it going to help you to marry more successfully — that's the only question of impor- tance." "More happily, I hope." "There's no use talking, men don't like intel- lectual women." "I've noticed myself that they don't go mad over me — but, Stella, dear, it's not my colossal intellect, it's my figure. If I had your figure, they'd overlook my Miltonian brains." "All your figure needs is a little plumping up; and if you can't accomplish that with milk and eggs, cotton wadding is cheap. You are a nice height; your face is pretty, your colouring lovely. It has always puzzled me that you attract men so much [8] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN less than I do. I'm not nearly so good-looking. And you have the faculty, as I haven't, of making men laugh — they find you droll, even witty — though I never could see it!" "I know you couldn't. But I am. The trouble with you is my humour is too subtle for you. You like Charlie Chaplin, I prefer Henry James. Why, there are people who don't know that Henry James is a humourist; just as they don't know that Bernard Shaw is almost the greatest living teacher because almost the only intellectually fearless teacher. But as I said, Stella, you have not only a figure, you have a fascination." Stella, twenty-seven years old, had never since her thirteenth year been without a train of suitors. Gertrude, on the contrary, was almost a social wall- flower, though three times in her girlhood she had been startled out of her indifference to the men of her (or rather, of her sister's) set, by finding herself most ardently adored. **The only three men who ever fell in love with you, Gertrude, were perfectly impossible. Impe- cunious and ordinary. You have now been home from college eight months and you are twenty-three years old. It's time you thought about getting married." "After you, sister." "You know perfectly well I couldn't be spared from home. What on earth would mother do without me, now that she hasn't father.?'* [9] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN It was not quite clear to Gertrude why Stella was so indispensable at home. To be sure she did manage things very capably; their comfortable household moved as on oiled wheels. And even the factory manager whom she had employed after their father's death consulted with her and deferred to her judgment. Nevertheless — "We could live our lives without her regulating them, if she'd only believe it!" thought Gertrude. In her heart she knew that it was not so much the needs of the family as an opportunity for a more dazzling marriage than any which had as yet presented itself that had thus far kept Stella unmarried. The needs of the family would never stand in the way of anything she really wanted. Gertrude had always been secretly amused at her sister's pose of a lofty self-sacrifice, for only in so far as the advancement of the family's social and other fortunes were indis- solubly bound up with her own did Stella further them. Gertrude had always taken it for granted that Stella expected some day to marry brilliantly — more brilliantly than would be possible in the little factory town of New Munich where their wealth was produced while they themselves toiled not. Indeed, one day when Stella had been expatiat- ing on the qualifications she would require in the applicant for her hand, Gertrude had ventured the audacious comment, "But such a paragon might just possibly think himself too good for you, Stella." [10] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Gertrude's gentle irony, however, usually rolled very easily off from Stella's rather obtuse sensi- bilities. "The reason you are not very popular with men, Gertrude,'* Stella now affirmed, "is that you're too indifferent to them, whereas, the thing to do is to flatter their egotism. Put your mind on it and make them aware of you. You're pretty enough and young enough to do anything you please with a man." Gertrude did not reply. "You certainly hope to marry, Gertie, don't you?" "To tell you the honest truth, Stella," said Ger- trude, lowering her voice and taking her sister into her confidence, "if there were any other way of having children, I'd be delighted to dispense with the care of a husband. But I do want a few children." "Then stir yourself and get married." *Why do you want me to.^" "You can't stay on here at home indefinitely." Gertrude looked at Stella in surprise. "Why not.? — when it isn't a question of money." **But in a way it is a question of money." "Isn't there plenty.?" "I don't see why a daughter, any more than a son, should live on a mother." "But my night classes for the factory hands.? My day nursery for their babies? Why, Stella, I work." "And it is all a waste of your time that I am [11] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN beginning to think does our factory people a lot of harm. They're utterly unappreciative and un- grateful." "I couldn't stand gratitude from them, the poor wretches! Gratitude to us! — when every dollar we have is created by their slavish labour for us! — for which their compensation is the barest living — while we live in comfort and ease!" "Absurd! Has Capital no claims? Our own father earned the capital that runs the factory." "That is, of course, quite apart from the question of our parasitism. But how do you know father earned his capital.?" "What do you mean, Gertrude?" "Father never told us (I asked him several times after I began to study sociology) how he got his start. He didn't want to talk about it. The fact is, Stella—" Gertrude hesitated, looked troubled, almost dis- tressed. "Father was always rather mysterious about his life in the West with his first wife. Mother says that she never could get him to tell her one word about his first wife, or about his life before he married her. Of late years I have realised (haven't you?) that there was surely a shadow over father's life!" **How perfectly absurd! You certainly do go wool-gathering. Anyway, we are certainly not responsible for our father. What you want to do is to get married and have your babies that you [121 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN say you want — and then you'll have something else to think about than the ruining of our business with your theories of reform !" "Stella," Gertrude asked with an impersonal curiosity, "is it that I am in your way here at home?" She suddenly realised, with startled insight, how Stella had manoeuvred, just after their father's death six months ago, to get their brother, Harry, away from home; how she had insisted that his slight attack of pneumonia had left his lungs so weak as to make the factory management a menace to him and life on a ranch his only hope. The family doctor had not agreed with her, but a New York specialist had been found to uphold her opinion, and Harry himself, who hated the factory and loved adventure and out-door life, had lent himself readily to the farce of his ill health. Gertrude had, at the time, been puzzled to understand what Stella's motive had been in all this. "Put yourself in my hands, Gertrude," said Stella earnestly, "and I'll have you married in six months." "But this is so sudden! Who is to be the happy bridegroom?" "A man of brains and of a good moral character." "Of 'good moral character'? It sounds too much like a Sunday School superintendent. Is he one of your own followers, Stella, that you wouldn't have?" [13] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "Just tell me this — will you co-operate with me and do your best?" Stella demanded. "But," pleaded Gertrude, "I would really prefer, Stella, if it's all the same to you, to be in love — at least temporarily — with the man I marry." "You're bright enough to know, Gertrude, that since the woman doesn't do the courting and select- ing, she doesn't marry the man of her choice, but the best she can get — or remains unmarried. And very often she even contrives to love this best-she- can-get — when she would never have dreamed of loving him if a free choice had been hers." "I suppose," Gertrude admitted, "that if every woman refused to marry unless she could marry a man she loved ideally, the race would soon become extinct. But we had a very cynical professor at college who maintained that it was the woman, not the man, who was the mating animal and that if women did not lay themselves out to entice and entrap defenceless, unsuspecting males, the race would cease." "What a very coarse-minded man he must have been!" exclaimed Stella, shocked. "Calling a woman *a mating animal!' Gertrude, I would not repeat such vulgar things! It's easily seen why many mothers object to the influence of college upon their daughters! They say it makes them averse to marriage." "College does teach girls," granted Gertrude, "that they need no longer be dependent upon mar' [14 1 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN riage as they were in times past. This is woman's day at last!" she proclaimed oratorically, "when she can forge out her own destiny independently of the Usurper of Privilege!" "She always could — if clever enough." Gertrude smiled. "Yes, I'm sure, Stella dear, that in any age of history and in any land, you would have been able to manage your own destiny. Of course," she added rather seriously, "there is a sense in which women will always be dependent upon men. Most women (poor donkeys that we are!) find the world a dreary waste without love." "I'm glad you admit it. I've heard it said that a woman is happier even in a bad marriage than in single life." "And you, Stella, don't you want to marry .?^ I mean, if the family could spare you, would you want to marry .^" Stella flashed a glance of suspicion upon her questioner, but Gertrude's face was solemn. "Perhaps," she answered. "Some day. It's your case I'm concerned with now." "Stella dear, I don't mind your choosing my clothes, regulating my pocket money, selecting my associates, — ^because these matters are not vital to me. But if you don't mind, I'd rather leave the question of my husband to Providence." "If left to you and Providence, you'd be an old maid and I'd have you on my hands forever!" "On your hands?" [15] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "You just leave it to me, Gertie," said Stella ingratiatingly (Stella did "have a way with her"), "and you'll never regret it. You — " "Here comes mother," interrupted Gertrude. She rose at once to move another chair near the table. A stout, elderly Pennsylvania Dutch woman, on whom the expensive mourning she wore seemed incongruous, was coming towards them across the lawn, carrying a basket of sewing. Her figure was heavy and she moved awkwardly; her hands were workworn, her face irredeemably plebeian. To a European unacquainted with the wide gulf that so often exists between American parents and their children, as to education and breeding, it would have seemed impossible that there could be a close relationship between this peasant woman and the young girl, Gertrude, whose aspect suggested unmis- takably a fine type of the cultivated product of a modem, first-class college — a girl of intelligence, fastidiousness and high ideals. But the elder daughter, Stella, though a sophisti- cated young woman of the world, bore a very marked physical resemblance to her mother. [16] CHAPTER n "TTF that there dopple of a hired girl ain't went I and put the clo'es to soak when it reads ■^ in the paper that we're to have fallin' weather!" Mrs. Swartz remarked in a mildly complaining tone, as she sat down with her daughters and began at once to sew industriously. "She hadn't ought to have wettened them clo'es when it's a-goin' to give rain! A rainy wash day — it jist wastes the wash lady's time." "Please, mother, don't call a washwoman a lady!" exclaimed Stella irritably. "I've told you so often!" Mrs. Swartz subsided, abashed, and Gertrude, who loved her mother, winced at seeing her rebuffed. It was not that Gertrude was less sensitive than was Stella to their mother's crudities. Both her pride and her affection were constantly lacerated by them. But she would have died before she would, by word or look of hers, have given her mother one pang because of them; and the keenest suffering her life had known up to the time of her father's death, had been the pain of constantly hearing her mother criticised by Stella. She never dreamed, however, of protesting against it to Stella, or of [17] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN reasoning with her as to the uselessness of trying to make their mother over. Trying to make Stella over would, she knew, have been equally useless; and Gertrude was not one to exert herself to no purpose. At Stella's sharp rebuke Gertrude had slipped her hand into her mother's lap. But Mrs. Swartz, though comforted by this sympathetic caress, gave no sign of being conscious of it. She had the Pennsylvania Dutch aversion to any least expression of affection. She had never in all her life voluntarily kissed one of her children and was always embarrassed when they caressed her. Her motherly love mani- fested itself in her anxiety over their health and her untiring unselfishness in serving them. To this purely instinctive love for the children of her body her younger daughter eagerly responded, idealising it, trying always to find with her mother some real point of contact. Mrs. Swartz was a woman of so little natural intelligence that twenty years of afl3uence had not altered either her provincial outlook upon life or her Pennsylvania Dutch habits of extreme frugality and industry. Not even the force of a personality like Stella's had been sufficient to wedge her out of her groove, for though of an extremely mild and gentle disposition and entirely submissive to Stella in most things, she had the sort of obstinacy that so often goes with the peasant placidity of tempera- ment and dulness of mind. For instance, the work [18] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN she was just now doing — sewing buttons on the dozens of overalls which she daily brought to and from her late husband's factory, earning five cents on every pair — neither the pleadings nor the com- mands of her husband and her children, nor the free use of more than all the money she could pos- sibly want, had ever made her give up the daily joy of "earning a little," the one real dissipation of her otherwise sober life. To be sure she had also a few minor intemperances, such as an occasional surreptitious gathering of **kindling" in the near-by patch of woods, for the kitchen fire, to make the "bought kindling" in the cellar last longer; or the stealing a march on the servants, whenever she found a chance, to catch them in some of the petty waste- fulness that so wracked her Pennsylvania Dutch soul. Gertrude had always been thankful that her mother's personal idiosyncrasies had never been nearly so glaring to Stella as to her; for Stella's realisation of them was blurred, as Gertrude's was not, by the deference with which New Munich treated the whole family, including their mother, in spite of the latter's ungrammatical English and provincial manners and habits which, in view of the fact that she had been the wife of a great em- ployer of labour, a man of wealth and power in the conmaimity, had always passed without more criti- cism than a Httle good-natured joking. "Has the mail came yet, girls.^" Mrs. Swartz [19] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN inquired when she had rallied a bit from Stella's snub. **Yes, mother. No letter from Harry," answered Gertrude gently. *Tt's too bad of him not to write to you." "I have afraid he ain't gettin' along out there and needs money," said Mrs Swartz anxiously. "He's full young to be so fur off all by hisself. And I could so easy send him my overall earnin's.'* Mrs. Swartz's income being upwards of fifty thousand dollars a year and her earnings from the overalls about three dollars a week, it will be seen that her idea of proportion in money values was that of a very young child. "Harry is twenty-five years old, mother," argued Stella, "and ought to be able to support himself. A lot of money was spent on his education. Now he must learn to depend on himself and not expect to live any longer on his mother." "But with his weak lungs, Stella?" "His lungs are all right by this time. No," added Stella firmly, though with a shadow in her eyes that reflected a conflict of feelings, for she was not without affection for her brother, "Harry must not form the bad habit of depending upon money from home." "But, Stella," Gertrude rather timidly suggested, "couldn't you let him have just the allowance that father always gave him? It doesn't seem fair, does it, that all of us except him should be living in [20] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN affluence on father's money? And he is such an awfully good, steady boy — ^he would not be hurt by having things made a bit less hard for him." Stella looked at Gertrude in sharp surprise. It was not like her to question her elder sister's regu- lations. Such interference must be nipped in the bud. "I have decided what is best for Harry," she answered conclusively. "Leave it to me." Gertrude did not reply to this. And Mrs. Swartz's head bent a little lower in submission. It was only since their father's death that Stella's supervision of the family affairs had extended over such an area as it now covered. "You see," she presently explained, "that is just why father's will left everything unconditionally to mother — so that Harry would learn to be a man and make his own way. If mother gave him money, she would simply be defeating father's purpose." "If I could only know fur sure that he's well and is gettin' on good!" sighed Mrs. Swartz tremu- lously. "I can't think why he has not answered my last two letters," said Gertrude. "Are you sure, Stella, you gave me his new address exactly right?" "Of course." "Harry knows how you worry about him, mother, and it isn't like him to be inconsiderate, so I'm sure we'll hear from him soon," Gertrude tried to offer a bit of comfort. [21] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "You mind all the time he was at college he never oncet missed writin' to me every Sabbath. That's why I have afraid he's sick now — his not writin' fur so long." "We shall surely hear soon, mother. Did you see in the paper that Roosevelt is in Rome?" she asked, trying to divert her mother from her anxiety with the sort of newspaper personalities she loved. "Yes, I seen that. I think it reads in the paper that whilst he's over there, he's to appoint a new Pope fur 'em. It would be a good thing if he'd give 'em a Protestant Pope fur oncet; ain't?" "Gracious, mother! The things you think you read in the newspapers !" exclaimed Stella, horrified, for she had no sense of humour. "For heaven's sake, when any people are here, do keep quiet about what you think the newspapers say! — ^for you don't understand the half that you read." Mrs. Swartz looked crestfallen and Gertrude wretched. "To be sure, I ain't no educated person; that I ain't," Mrs. Swartz admitted humbly. "I certainly never did git no sich a high education like what papa give yous girls and Harry. It's a pity of me, I guess. But still I don't miss it any. I guess it would worry me a good bit, havin' so much learnin' to think about. I guess it would git me all up- mixed. Yes, I'm uneducated — that I am — ^but I guess I'm better off so." "Mother," interrupted Stella, "if any one drops [22] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN in, don't forget to put the lid on that basket of overalls!" "All right, Stella, I will." "Gertrude, mother ought to be a sufficient answer to your notion that the factory employees are martyrs. I believe she envies them." "Ach, no," protested Mrs. Swartz. "I think it gives sich dumb* wives when girls work in factories till they're married a'ready. A factory girl is an awful poor soul when it comes to housekeepin'. A man that marries one he's certainly got a dopplelf And it ain't no wonder he gener'ly takes to drinkin' — ^yes, even when he didn't have no name fur drinkin' whilst he was single yet. Here this morn- ing come our milk man that got married, a week or so back, to one of the factory girls; and sure enough, in the quart bottle of milk he gimme, it was a fly! You jist guess I wouldn't take that bottle off of him! *Here!' I says to him, *yo^ jist take this here fly along back home with you !' Mebby that'll learn his dopplig wife, when she sees that there fly come along home again, to be a little careful." Gertrude smiled; but Stella looked bored and grim. "Are you lookin' fur strangers, Stella.?" her mother asked. "Mr. Ranck might stop if he happens to be passing." "He comes real often; ain't? Do you think he * Stupid. t Awkward person. [23] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN means it fur really?" she asked anxiously. "Much as I*d like to see anyhow one of yous girls git mar- ried and settled (and to be sure," she added in a tone of horror, "I wouldn't want fur my girls to be old maids!) yet that there Mr. Ranck — " "You hear, Gertie?" interrupted Stella, *'mother doesn't approve of old maids." "And do you hear, sister?" Gertrude answered. "I've been telling Gertrude, mother, that it is really her duty to get married. It isn't right that you should have two grown women on your hands forever." "Yes, but, Stella, as I was sayin', this here Mr. Ranck — much as I want to see yous git settled, I wouldn't like to see neither one of yous tied to sich an ugly dispositioned man as what he is! You kin both do better'n him, I guess! I hope," she added wistfully, "when yous do git married, you'll settle near home. It's so lonesome fur me without Harry and — and pop," she faltered a little. "I'd hate to see another one go fur away!" "Mr. Ranck, mother, is a very clever lawyer," Stella protested. "And very good-looking. And I'm Sure he is a strictly moral man too." Mrs. Swartz looked up quickly from her sewing. "Are you and him makin' up to each other, then?" "7/ Of course not! I mean," she hastily added, modifying her unequivocal rejection of the sug- gestion, "well, if I wanted to marry, I think I could look far in this town before I should find another [24] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN man of Mr. Ranck's education — and good looks — and worldly experience. And he is a man that reads everything." "Well, to be sure, he comes from educated folks — that he does — his father bein' the district attorney here and his mother playin' the 'Piscopal Church organ. But since he was a little boy a'ready, Stella, he was noted fur bein' ugly-dispositioned that way. And he ain't got nothin'." "He has his practice." "He ain't even got much of that. He's too onpop'lar to build up a big practice. As well off as yous girls will be and as high educated as what yous are, you kin do better 'n him." Gertrude, watching Stella's face wonderingly, saw that she looked distinctly annoyed at her mother's disparaging comments. Was her ambitious sister, after waiting so long for a brilliant marriage, succumbing to a man like Mr. Ranck? To be sure he was, as Stella had pointed out, more than ordi- narily well-educated. He had a social ease and experience unusual in New Munich and his extreme fastidiousness, as well as a tendency to snobbishness, would appeal to Stella. But then, on the other hand, Stella was far too astute not to know that her mother was certainly right in predicting that his intensely disagreeable disposition would prevent his ever having a very large practice, in spite of his reputed learning and ability. "What can be his attraction for Stella.?" Ger- [25] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN trude wondered. "I never noticed that she seemed to like or encourage him. Rather the contrary.'* "Don't you think, Stella," she ventured, "that for a man of his brains, Mr. Ranck is remarkably uninteresting.^ He has no opinions, only violent prejudices. And he's so strange! I never could imderstand him." "But he's such an absolutely upright man, Gertie. Do you know that he refused a three thousand dollar fee which the Marshall family offered him if he would try to prove their son's insanity when the son married that factory girl.^ Every one knows how honourable Mr. Ranck is. If he isn't extremely popular, he is at least greatly respected." "That's wery nice — to be so much respected — that it is," granted Mrs. Swartz. "But a wife could a good deal easier put up with her man's bein' a little dishonourable, Stella, than with his bein' so ugly-dispositioned that way." "Why, mother!" exclaimed Stella, scandalised. "Oh, yes, she could too. She wouldn't need to know nothing about the dishonour if he kep' it to hisself. But an ugly disposition she's got to take notice to all the time; set at table with it; go to bed at night with it; git up in the morning with it! No, Stella, I wouldn't want to see you married to no sich a person as what Mr. Ranck is!" "Dear me. Mother, he's not a monster, as you seem to think!" cried Stella. "I've even half sus- pected sometimes that he's rather — well, effeminate." [26] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN *Be is," Gertrude unexpectedly agreed. '"Now that you speak of it, Stella, that^s just what he is. I never realised it before, for of course he is a strong character. There's no denying that. But he is so pernickety-nice; so petty. He sees little details that a manly man doesn't see. And such an over- weening regard for social position as he has is cer- tainly not a masculine trait. He's both a toady and a snob. He nags. He's vindictive. He's vixenish like a shrewish woman ! I couldn't possibly reconmaend him as a husband for you, sister!" "Do you realise what insults you are offering your own sex in v*^hat you are saying.?" Stella asked. "I do owe my sex an apology for saying Mr. Ranck is like unto it ! And his voice, Stella — there's an unmistakably effeminate note in that voice!" "And yet," insisted Stella, "people do respect him and are afraid of him." "I know it. He frightens me horribly. Talk of the — Here he comes!" The sound of a small motor turning in at the drive was the signal for Mrs. Swartz to hastily hide the overalls. Stella, rising as the car stopped in the drive near where they sat, dropped the little sewing bag which held her scissors, thimble, and embroidery silk, and as Gertrude picked it up and handed it to her, she saw, with a shock that made her tremble, an unopened letter sticking out at the top of the bag, addressed to Stella in her brother Harry's hand. 127] CHAPTER m "^^^ OOD afternoon, Mr. Ranck Don't go, I -^ Gertie!" Stella interposed as her sister VJ rose. "Sit still!" She almost pushed Gertrude back into her chair as she turned from shaking hands with hei visitor. Mr. Ranck, offering his hand to Mrs. Swartz with what looked like a fastidious reluctance, spoke to her distantly; and his greeting of Gertrude was scarcely warmer. Gertrude always had, in his presence, a rather disturbing sense of his disapproval of her. She, therefore, avoided his society as much as possible. He was a slimly built man of medium height; but he carried himself with a stiffness, almost haughtiness, that gave him the effect of height. His hair was coal black, his eyes pale and cold, the expression of his thin lips bitter and harsh. He was immaculately groomed and faultlessly dressed to the minutest detail. He was a man without friends; for he not only did not attract — he repelled. The few temporary friends he did occasionally contrive to make never proved equal to the strain of continued association [28J FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN with him. While he seemed to long for companion- ship and to resent bitterly the defection of these temporary friends, he never even tried to modify the unpleasant idiosyncrasies which he knew drove people away from him. "Why will you persist in nicknaming your sister *Gertie'?" he demanded of Stella as he sat down with them. An inclination to educate and reform his acquaintances to his own ideas and standards of propriety and correctness was one of the many disagreeable characteristics which made for his unpopularity. "I dislike nicknames excessively." "Yes, well, but Gertie's her right name," spoke in Mrs. Swartz. "So Stella ain't nicking her. I named her Gertie so she couldn't get nicked like my other two children always got nicked." " *Nicked'? Oh, but why were they handled so carelessly, Mrs. Swartz?" Mr. Ranck returned facetiously, with an appreciation of his own humour that he never gave to any one else's. "And were they nicked beyond repair.^^" "Well, Stella she got Elite there fur a while; and Henry he got Harry; and the two little girls that died — Sarah she went by Sally and Louisa she got nicked Weesy. So when Gertie come, I says to papa, *Now,' I says, 'I'd like one child to go by her right name fur oncet,' I says. So I had her baptised Gertie. So she couldn't git nicked. I was jist bound — "^ "Any news in the evening paper, Mr. Ranck?" [29] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Stella desperately interposed, touching the news- paper that stuck from his pocket. "Nothing of any interest; a lot of discussion about prison reform, child labour laws, labourers' compensation laws — everything to make life easy and comfortable for every one. We are becoming a degenerate race because we are eliminating pain and effort." "But pain is Nature's signal to halt; and health, not sickness, is life's plan," Gertrude remarked a little timidly, for she did not want to invite con- troversy with Mr. Ranck. "Visit the Swartz overall factory if you imagine we have eliminated pain and effort." "A race which at the bottom of the social scale is stunted from overwork and privation; and at the top, degenerate from luxury and self-indulgence," pronounced Mr. Ranck. "There I agree with you," said Gertrude gravely. "Gertrude!" Stella reproved her, "your slams at our factory seem to me to be in very questionable taste when you consider that father organised them and that we live from them. And if there were no poor people, where would the exercise of Charity come in.^ And you know how St. Paul praises Charity. And how our Lord said, 'The poor ye have always with you.' " Gertrude stole a glance at Mr. Ranck to see how these characteristically bromidic remarks of Stella's impressed him since he was very far from being a [301 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN stupid man. She herself, entirely unsuspected by Stella, got a good deal of quiet amusement from her sister's views of things in general. "Charity!" repeated Ranek with a shrug. "What would our women of leisure do without the outlet that *sweet charity' gives them for their surplus energy, their overweening sentimentality, their long, empty days devoid of legitimate duties and labour! And then the socially ambitious who use charity as an Open Sesame to those otherwise charmed and inaccessible circles to join which is their highest earthly (if not, indeed, their only heavenly) hope!" "Hate as well as love," thought Gertrude, "has its insight into truth! Mr. Ranck does see through some things!" "Oh, come now!" laughed Stella. "Don't be so hard on our poor sex! Don't make us out so much worse than we are!" "I wouldn't dream of doing that — ^you're so very bad as you are!" "Really, Mr. Ranck, if one didn't know you didn't mean half you say!" cried Stella. "Surely there are many good and lovely women who, from the highest motives, go in for good causes and charity work." "The high motive of selfishness, with few excep- tions, though of course they easily fool themselves into believing in their own genuineness. Women are all natural hypocrites." "Let us apologise," said Gertrude meekly, "for [311 t^ANATIC OR CHRISTIAN so forgetting ourselves as to belong to such a per- fidious sex!" "Mr. Ranck," Stella reproved him, "you always talk as though you were not only a woman hater, but had not a particle of respect for women! Why will you give out such a false impression of yourself?" "It's not a false impression of himself," Gertrude mildly interposed. "It's his Pennsylvania Dutch blood that makes him spurn us. Isn't it, Mr. Ranck?" she asked with a touch of malice, for she knew that, unlike most of the Pennsylvania Dutch, he despised his origin. There was a flash of resentment in his eyes at her thrust. But ignoring her, he replied to Stella: "We don't have to look far to see signs of feminine degeneracy. Look, for instance, at the easy divorces of our day, and the laxity of family discipline that prevails. Children have no more idea of implicit obedience — " "Och, but mine always had," Mrs. Swartz gently maintained. "Papa always said, *They must mind on my first word.' And they did too." "Parents these days," Mr. Ranck continued as though Mrs. Swartz had not spoken, "seem afraid to punish their children! — afraid to make them suffer a pang." "Isn't it because we've learned that punishment doesn't reform, but only enslaves?" suggested Gertrude. "That's a mischievous belief," he frowned, "that [32] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN would lead to the disintegration of society. As for marriage and divorce, when a wife in these days finds her relation with her husband the least un- pleasant or hampering, what does she do? Divorce him! No adjustment or compromise or endurance of anything that isn't perfectly comfortable and easy! What sort of a race will this sort of self- indulgence produce? We are already seeing the effects of it. And you will notice one thing — it is the women, not the men, who sue for divorce." "That must be because fewer men have cause to," ventured Gertrude. "I wonder, Mr. Ranck, whether you can tell me something I've often wondered about — " "About which you've often wondered. Well?" "Thank you. About which I've often wondered. Why, since men are said to be natural polygamists and they, not women, have made the laws, did they ever come to make monogamy the universal law?" Mr. Ranck looked shocked and prim. **Men natural polygamists!" he repeated disapprovingly. "On the lips of a young lady, such an idea sounds, to say the least, singular!" "Can an idea sound? Wouldn't it be preferable to say, *Such a statement sounds, etc.?" Gertrude sweetly asked. "I'm surprised at you, Gertrude!" said Stella. Gertrude rose lazily. "Come, mother," she said, holding out her hand, while she picked up from her [33] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN mother's lap the big covered basket of overalls. "Will you excuse us, Mr. Ranck?" Mrs. Swartz acquiesced eagerly, for Mr. Ranck always made her feel like apologising for being alive and she was only too glad to get away from him. Stella offered no protests, now, to Gertrude's leaving, since she was removing their embarrassing mother. Gertrude reflected, as Mr. Ranck politely stood when she and her mother rose to go away, that although he never failed in conventional forms of courtesy to women, he performed them grudgingly, as though they went against the grain. "Because in his heart he has a contempt for women," she thought. "There are men that are made that way!" "Say, Gertie," Mrs. Swartz asked when they were out of earshot, "what do you think our Stella sees in him anyhow.'* And wouldn't you think a masterful man like that would git along more peaceable with a wife that would give in to him? He can't expect Stella to do that, as high-minded as what she is yet! If he does, he must be awful dumb!" "I can't believe that Stella dreams of marrying him, mother! Even if he were attractive, which of course he isn't, Stella would never be so carried away by her feelings as to act against what she considered her own interests." Gertrude spoke rather absently, for she was not nearly so much interested in the emotional pos- [341 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN sibiKties of Stella and Mr. Ranck as she was in that most disturbing fact which she had discovered when picking up Stella's bag. Why should her sister be withholding a letter from Harry when her mother was suffering tortures of suspense about him? And the letter was unopened. What could it mean? And why did Harry leave her (Gertrude's) letters unanswered and write to Stella? It was not like Stella to withhold ill news out of consideration for the family. What could be her motive? Gertrude asked herself why she had not instantly confronted Stella with the letter. Well, just at the moment of her discovery, Mr. Ranck had been coming in. "But if he had not been there, would I have had the courage to face her with it and force her to an explanation?" She smiled at the idea of her forcing Stella to anything she did not wish to do. She knew per- fectly well that Stella would not even feel embarrassed at the exposure of her deception. Gertrude wondered, as she left her mother on the piazza (sewing buttons on overalls) and went up- stairs to her own room, whether later, after dinner, she might be able to get up enough spirit to go to Stella and ask her about the letter. But her involuntary shrinking at the bare thought of Stella's withering treatment of such presumption, made her know she would not do it. "She would not explain a thing she didn't wish [35] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN to explain and she would simply put me in the wrong and make me suflPer for it! And I'm not, alas, of the stuff that martyrs are made of! I just seem naturally to take the line of least resistance — poor dolt that I am!" Yet she tried to persuade herself that it was not altogether weakness of character, but her certainty of the futility of trying to force Stella's hand, and the cruelty of letting her mother in for a knowledge of her sister's apparently heartless conduct, that made her decide not to "raise a fuss" about the letter, but merely to await developments — though she would certainly try, while waiting, to find out Harry's true address; for it seemed probable that Stella had, for some reason of her own, actually given her a false one; it was too wholly unlike Harry to write to Stella while leaving the many urgent letters of his favourite sister unanswered through many weeks. [36] CHAPTER IV MEANTIME alone with Mr. Ranck, Stella was cautiously feeling her way to the exe- cuting of a carefully thought-out plan. Her manner to him, the moment her mother and sister disappeared, became cool and aloof; and she declined unhesitatingly his invitation to take a spin in his car. "May I be permitted to ask why you won't ride with me?" he inquired with perfectly candid resent- ment, for he had an extraordinary way of flaunting emotions which most people feel it necessary to politely conceal. "If you like the truth, Mr. Ranck — because I don't want to." He flushed, bit his thin lip and looked furious. "This means — ?" he asked. "That I'm not nearly so fond of your society as you seem to be of mine — if, as I said, it is candour you want, Mr. Ranck." One who did not know him as Stella did, might have expected to hear him rage at such a snub; but experience had taught her that Mr. Ranck always ceased trying to bully the moment he recog- nised his equal in that gentle art. [371 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "Stella!" He bent forward, laid his hand on hers and spoke ingratiatingly. "Is it that you are afraid I would not make a good husband?" "Do you think you would?" "Yes — because," he said with decision, "I'd have too much sense to spoil a wife." "But I should wish and expect to be spoiled." "Women despise and hen-peck the men that spoil them." "And love and honour the men that bully them, I suppose you think." "Who bully them? No — who don't give in to their feminine whims," he retorted in a disciplinary school-master's tone of voice. "If you ask me, I think you'd make a simply horrible husband!" "Thank you!" "Welcome." "But shouldn't you find it rather more interesting, really, Stella, to be married to *a horrible husband' than to a tame sheep?" "Why on earth do you want to marry me? You don't expect me to believe you are in love with me?" "Why shouldn't I be?" "Because you are so in love with yourself, you couldn't possibly love any one else; least of all a woman. And you don't know yourself as well as I know you if you imagine that you could be happy liv- ing with any one you could not browbeat. You must [38] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN know you couldn't bully me; so what on eartk would you expect to do with me?" "I must say," he began stiffly — but she inter- rupted him. "Now listen, Mr. Ranck. I'm going to be bru- tally frank with you." "Going to be?" "The only sort of woman you could be happy with is the sort I am not — the manageable, docile kind; the kind that prefers to be dominated. You know there are even yet some women in the world who would take a kick for a love pat. That's your kind. No other sort would live with you, Alfred. You must marry that sort of a woman." "You speak as confidently," he returned coldly, "as though you had some one picked out for me!" Stella, toying with the embroidery in her lap, did not at once answer. "Have you?" he asked ironically "I am not so rash." "She must be your worst enemy, Stella — that you should want to marry her to a man such as you describe!" "When a woman doesn't mind being bullied — " "I should say, then, the bully would find no satisfaction in his occupation." "But, Alfred, for your own good let me warn you that while you go a-courting, you've got to draw in your claws a little bit, or you'll scare off even the meekest of our sex!" [39] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN **Who is the unhappy woman?" "You'll have to find out." "You are the only woman in this town I want to marry." "I actually do believe you think you could tame me! What an awakening you'd have, my friend! Indeed, Alfred, any woman in these times who was financially independent, and I know you'd never marry a poor girl, would be apt to give you a few shocks." "Even the one you've picked out for me?" *The girl who, I think, would suit you, Alfred, hi too lackadaisical to resist anything or anybody." Ranck repressed the start her words gave him. That word "lackadaisical" brought up so inevitably the limp figure of Gertrude, forever lying about in hammocks or easy chairs, with books, papers and magazines piled about her, when she wasn't making a fool of herself labouring to "uplift" the factory employees, that he could not fail to understand. "You are actually recommending your sister to me?" "Dear me, no! Advising you to recommend yourself to her. She's a dear! Don't you think so?" "You are the only member of this household to whom I've ever given a thought, Stella." "It seems to me," Stella said, her tone suddenly piously sentimental, "that Gawd made you and Gertrude for each other!" [401 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN **You can't possibly think so ill of me then as you pretend." "As a husband for me, you couldn't be worse. For Gertrude — Gawd made you." "Why will you, like all New Munich people, say 'Gawd'.?" "I'm sure Gertrude wouldn't. She pronounces it Godd. That's one consolation you'd have." "Does she know you are trying to marry me to her?" "So far from it that I warn you you'll have to do some mighty clever courting to win her over." "You said she was so very tractable." "When it comes to a thing like marriage, you'll not only have to make her think you love her — you'll have to make her think she loves you. In the process, you will learn to love her. For Gertrude is lovable. I am very sure, Alfred, that marriage in the abstract doesn't appeal to you — ^but as you seem to think you want to marry, I know you couldn't do better than — well, I'll say no more. A word to the wise!" She suddenly picked up her sewing bag from a chair at her side, thrust her embroidery into it and rose. "I'm going to leave you now to think about it, if you will excuse me. Don't let it worry you, for I may, of course, be all wrong. The idea occurred to me and I didn't see why I shouldn't pass it on to you. Good-bye. But just one more word. Under- [41] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN stand this — if you should fall in love with my young sister and induce her to marry you, you'd have to be good to her — as good as it is in you to be. Re- member that!" She turned away and walked up the path to the house. It will thus be seen that while an acquired (not an inherent) sense of fitness might sometimes hold in check Stella's dogged pursuit of her own ends, delicacy of feeling never deterred her for a moment. [42] CHAPTER V AS she strolled across the lawn, every graceful movement of her well-built body expressing her forceful, unwavering character, Mr. Ranck's sharp, critical eyes followed her appreciative- ly, regretfully. He felt as keen a pang as he had ever felt in his life at the realisation that the delectable joy of bringing this woman under his mastery was not to be his, for the primitive savage persisting in him to a greater degree than it appears to do in most men, this was actually the way he thought about mar- riage. To be sure he knew that in these days both law and custom so limited a man's power over his wife as practically to undermine the institution of the family; and that to adapt himself to this new order of things in marriage would, for one of his irascible and domineering disposition, be no easy matter. He recognised his own idiosyn- crasies sufficiently to question the wisdom of his ever marrying at all. Mere love could never drive him to it, for he was far too much of an egotist ever to lose himself in loving another. Marriage would always be for him a carefully considered ex- pediency. His old-fashioned belief in the superiority and [431 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN dominance of the male, made Stella's refusal far more galling to his self-esteem than he would admit to himself. Her recommending another woman in her place seemed an added humiliation. Why had she done it.? He pondered the matter earnestly as he continued to sit where she had left him. The Swartz girls, with their wealth, education and good looks, did not have to go out of their way for suitors. True, Gertrude had never been so popular as Stella; but that, he knew very well, was not because she was unattractive, but because most men require some encouragement, some little stimulus to their vanity, before they will thrust themselves too vigorously upon a woman's atten- tion. And this encouragement and stimulus they never seemed to receive from Gertrude Swartz, gentle and womanly though she was. Could it be that Stella was complimenting him in wishing him to marry her sister.? Did she sin- cerely mean that she thought him and Gertrude remarkably well-fitted to get on well together? Left to himself, it certainly would never have occurred to him. In so far as he had ever noticed Gertrude at all, it had been to disapprove of her. Her careless way of putting on her clothes — invari- ably minus a button or two; or with a skirt band sticking out below a girdle; or a rip somewhere — made him want to order her, whenever she came in sight, "Hitch yourself together, woman!" There [441 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN had been times when he had found it difficult to repress this incUnation. This reprehensible untidiness seemed to be ren- dered all the more conspicuous by Stella's stylish trimness . If Gertrude S wartz ever were his wife, he'd see to it that she kept herself mended up and neat! He would not tolerate any woman of his household going about with her skirt trailing where it shouldn't, her shoe untied, a safety pin showing! *T suppose, until I get her thoroughly cured of her annoying carelessness, I'd have her weeping on my hands every day! A nice prospect!" The dociUty Stella had commended in her sister did not greatly appeal to him, for he hated weakness and inefficiency. But he felt in his heart that he himself would be much more secure (Stella was right) with a wife of a gentle and yielding disposition than with one of Stella's spirit. He did not see that just because of the fact that to a natural tyrant the meekness of his victim is an irresistible temptation. his greater security would be in marrying a woman with whom he would be obliged to control himself. "Gertrude is really rather lovely looking," he reflected, "though her style never did attract me much. Her very delicacy makes a man too con- scious of his own coarseness and clumsiness." The only point in which, in his estimation, she measured up to Stella was in the ample fortune which they would both inherit. "And of course Gertrude has intelligence and [45 1 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Stella hasn't — ^but I'm not sure that I consider brains an asset in a wife — except of course as they may be transmitted to one's children." He rose at last and walked slowly and thought- fully toward his motor. On his way home he decided that it would not do any harm to at least turn an appraising eye in Gertrude's direction and see what he did think of her on closer inspection. Stella, meantime, had hurried to her room to read, in private, her letter from her brother. Had she had any idea that Gertrude had seen this letter it would have startled and annoyed her. It was under the impression of her absolute security that she sat down to her desk to answer, with relentless firmness, Harry's troublesome and insistent demands. Deab Harry, I see now how wise and far-sighted dear father was in making his will as he did. He realised that only the goad of necessity would ever give you and Gertie any backbone. And as he could not make an exception of me, I have to suffer for the weakness of my sister and brother and be debarred also from my inheritance so long as dear mother is with us. You know perfectly well that mother loved and respected father too much to go against his evident wishes with regard to you. That is what you are asking her to do when you beg her, like the Prodigal Son, to give you your inheritance now, or the interest of it, in order that you may make invest- ments. Why don't you get to work and earn the money [461 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN you need, as plenty of other young men do? You'll be all the better man for it. If mother yielded to you now, you'd no doubt lose it all and presently come home penniless and expect us to kill the fatted calf for you. As to her lending you the money for this *chance' you speak of, that is absurd when you've no security to give her. It is unmanly of you, Harry dear, to ask your widowed mother to risk money for you like that. Father's evident idea was that no young man should come into possession of money until he had proved his own ability to make money. Until he has done so, he isn't fit to have the care and use of the fortune his father laboured all his life to acquire. That you can't do a thing without a little capital is incredible. Most of the great fortunes made in the West were made by men that did not have half the start mother gave you. She isn't well, and she frets and worries over you awfully. So, I beg of you, write her a cheerful letter, not a begging one — ^and make her happy. As for Gertrude, she is so taken up with a love affair just now (Alfred Ranck is paying her marked attention) that I suppose that's why she hasn't written to you. I'll jog her up about it. Don't mention, when you write, that I told you about Ranck; she is quite touchy about him. It is rather strange she should fancy a man like that. I suppose she's just a little ashamed of it, so don't ask her why she has not written. Love from mother and Gertrude and from your ever devoted sister, Stella. "There! I've fixed Harry safe and tight!" [47] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN In her eyes and about her mouth there was a look of strangely conflicting triumph and shame, satis- faction and suffering. Having sealed and addressed her letter, she un- locked a drawer of her desk and took out two unopened letters addressed respectively to her mother and sister in Harry's hand. For three days these intercepted letters had lain hidden in this drawer. She had been unwilling to destroy them until she herself had heard from Harry. She had no curiosity as to their contents. They were no doubt only a repetition of what he had written to her — a plea that some part of his pro- spective inheritance might be advanced to him now, so that instead of struggling along as a poorly paid employee, he might buy some ranch land and him- self become an employer. He offered to pay interest to his mother on the sum advanced; or to let her take a mortgage on the full value of the land; or to rent it from her if she would buy it. Stella knew that even if these strong pleas from Harry had been read by her mother and Gertrude she could have managed to convince her mother of the wrong of yielding to him. And Gertrude was, of course, a negligible quantity in the faihily councils. But the easiest and surest way had been to withhold all Harry's letters until she had "got him where she wanted him." She fingered the letters uncertainly for a moment. Of course they must be destroyed. But it was not [48] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN pleasant to be forced to such expedients. While she was far from callous to the distress she caused, she did not really mind the lies she had to tell — they came easily. But to destroy other people's letters — wasn't that actually a crime against the law? — "tampering with the mails!" She shuddered. She certainly did not want to go so far as to violate the law! Her greater crime, which the law could not touch — her subtle deception in every line of her letter to her brother — far from troubling her con- science, gave her a little thrill of admiration for her own cleverness in thus carrying out the scheme begun a year ago when she had succeeded in per- suading her father of the wisdom of leaving all his wealth, without any qualifications, to his widow. Naturally, since such a will excluded her as well as Harry and Gertrude, her father had never for a moment questioned her motive in urging it. And in the same way that clever sentence in her letter, "I have to suffer for the weakness of my sister and brother and be debarred also from my inheritance so long as dear mother is with us" — would entirely convince Harry of her sincerity. Stella felt that really, a talent for diplomacy such as hers was wasted in a commonplace environ- ment. The only thing which cast a shadow upon her heart was the realisation that her real security from any suspicion on the part of her brother and sister and mother lay in the fact that they them- r49l FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN selves, being incapable of such guile, would not conceive it possible in her. "I take after father. Harry and Gertrude are like mother," she reflected, with a moment of melancholy regret at the fact. She often sincerely wished that she were less like her father. She had been unpleasantly startled this afternoon by the discovery of Gertrude's unexpected astute- ness in having surmised what she, Stella, had long ago known — that their father must have had some reason for concealing from them all the story of his life up to the time of his second marriage. "I wish Gertrude's brains were as feeble as her will — as mother's and Harry's are!" she thought, frowning with annoyance as she felt that her sister's keen intelligence was a thing she might have to reckon with in the execution of her purposes. She presently rose, went resolutely and unfal- teringly to the open fireplace of her room, laid the two letters from Harry on the grate, and applied a match to them. [50] CHAPTER VI s. WHILE Stella, shut up in her chamber, was writing to Harry; Gertrude in her room just across the hall, cogitating miserably on the line she ought to take with refer- ence to her accidental discovery of Harry's letter to Stella; and Mr. Ranck, going home in his car, absorbed in cynical and sombre reflections upon women and matrimony — Mrs. Swartz, whom Ger- trude had left on the piazza sewing buttons on overalls as though her daily bread depended upon it, was being visited by her sister, Mrs. Yinger, a sharp-faced little woman of middle age, dressed in the nun-hke black garb of the New Mennonite sect. She was the childless wife of a well-to-do farmer whose home was ten miles out of New Munich, and she had topped off a shopping excur- sion to town to-day with a call upon her sister. A more extreme contrast of character than that presented by these two sisters could not well be im- agined, Mrs. Yinger being as keen-witted and vixenish as Mrs. Swartz was dull and mild. The expression of Mrs. Yinger's face never failed to suggest a chip on her shoulder; a look of mingled injury and indignation towards life. Her thin, [51] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN tightly closed mouth seemed to preclude the possi- bility of her ever having a generous impulse. Even among the extremely frugal Pennsylvania Dutch New Mennonites she was considered "near." "Won't you spare your bonnet and shawl, Meely, and stop fur dinner?" Mrs. Swartz asked hos- pitably when she had welcomed her sister and they had seated themselves on the porch, Mrs. Yinger holding on her lap a long mesh bag filled with her purchases, as though she feared they might be snatched from her if she put them down. " 'Dinner'! At six o'clock in the afternoon yet! I eat my dinner at twelve o'clock. I'll eat my supper till I git home oncet. Call the meals by their right names, Weesy!" she snapped. "It don't sound natural on you, talkin' so high-minded that way — 'dinner' at six o'clock in the evening!'* "But, Meely, since our Stella was fifteen years old a'ready she never give us no peace till we'd have our dinner fur supper. To be sure when a body gits rich they have to live tony according, I don't like it. Me I like my hearty meal at twelve o'clock, too, the same as you." "In my own home I'd see myself leave my chil- dren walk all over me! I'd have what I liked!" "Well, you ain't got no children, so you don't know what you'd do if you had," Mrs. Swartz mildly returned. "I guess you'd do a good bit like they wanted you to after all." "I'd think a little more about their soul's salvation [52] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN than about leavin' them do as they pleased so much." "Ach, well, yes," Mrs. Swartz sighed resignedly, and changed the subject. "A body'd think, Meely, you'd take the trolley to town — it's so much handier to your place than what the train is.'* "Yes, but it comes three cents higher by the trolley. And I don't like that there tunnel we go through on the trolley. Jist oncet since the trol- ley's been runnin' I went in it with Mister and when we come to that there tunnel, *My Gawd, Jake!' I hollered, I'm goin' blind!' — It gave me sich a scare, I ain't never been on it since. And now that automobiles is so plenty on the pike, I have afraid always one of 'em might run into the trolley car. No, I take the train like I always done." "Yes, well, but you lose time by the train. Our Harry used to say that that there train out to your place stopped to leave the conductor see the baseball game. I'd think you'd hate to waste that much time on the way, Meely — to stop fur the baseball game." "Ach, Weesy, you're dumb! That there was one of Harry's chokes.* He's always plaguin' a body! How's he gittin' along out there in that West?" "I'm awful worried that he don't write to me, Meely!" Mrs. Swartz said in a tone of distress. "Och, you ain't got no need to worry ower Harry; ♦ Jokes. [53] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN he kin take care of hisself all right. And he's sich a good straight boy too." Mrs. Swartz's face lighted up with pleasure at this rare praise from her grim sister. If Meely had a soft spot in her tough heart it was for her teasing, warm-hearted nephew, Harry. **Not many boys gives their parents as little cause to worry ower 'em as what your Harry give you a'ready," she reiterated, "if I do say it." "You think, Meely?" "To be sure I think. Say, Weesy, I stopped in this after* to speak somepin particular to you." "Did you, now, Meely?" Mrs. Swartz asked with mild curiosity. Mrs. Yinger leaned forward and spoke in a lowered tone, a look of cunning in her small eyes. "Say, Weesy, ain't your Stella yet thinkin' about breakin' her pop's will?" "No, indeed! She's actin' awful good about it.'' I never would of believed she'd take it so easy! My goodness, no, I wouldn't! Why, Meely, she's perfickly satisfied to do without the money herself jist because she thinks it's better fur Harry and Gertie that they don't inherit right aways, till they're more settled and steady." Mrs. Yinger chuckled derisively. "Ain't you the poor soul, Weesy, that Stella kin make you believe that!" Mrs. Swartz was never resentful of her sister's • Afternoon. [54] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN mean opinion of her intelligence, for in her humility she shared it. "I must say, Meely," she admitted, "it ain't like our Stella and it does wonder me that she's so satisfied with papa's will — that it does." "If she's satisfied, then you want to keep your eye on her! — for there's more to it than what's plain on the surface — ^you mark my words! She's up to somepin!" "What could she be up to, do you think?" "How do I know? But this here I kin see — she's natured like her pop; she's all fur herself. And that's why I stopped in here to see you this after — to warn you that I jist b'lieve, if you don't watch out, Stella will git her hands on that there pile! To be sure it ain't so easy to git 'round the law. But you take warnin' anyhow and watch her !" "Well, but, Meely," Mrs. Swartz protested, "I know Stella's pretty much fur herself like papa was, but she anyhow wouldn't take what wasn't hern." "But it's wonderful the way some folks kin coax theirseKs into thinkin' that anything they want is theirn. You jist watch out — that's all!" Mrs. Swartz sighed helplessly. "I guess I couldn't stop her, whatever she was up to!" "It was an awful queer will your Mister made anyhow!" Mrs. Yinger frowned. "Why would he want to leave all to you fur as long as you live, to do what you please with — as common as what [55] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN you are yet! To be sure, he was a plain man his- self ; but he was smart — that he was." "Smart enough to know I wouldn't leave his hard-earned money git squandered, Meely.'* "Well, to be sure, us Kuntzes wouldn't never squander no money — that we wouldn't," admitted Mrs. Yinger. "Ach, Weesy," she suddenly ex- claimed irascibly, dropping abruptly the subject of the will, ^liow kin you stand it, havin* the room all opened up like that there?" She indicated the wide open windows of the parlour (always referred to by the Pennsylvania Dutch as "the room") which opened on the piazza where they sat. "It'll git all your grand furniture so fadey! Yi, yi, yi, sich a wicked waste!" Mrs. Swartz sighed again. "It kreistles* me, too, to have the room always kep' open up this way, like the high folks here in town always has 'em. I can't used myself to it.'* The past fourteen years of her life during which she had been forced to live in the style established by Stella's taste, had not uprooted a single one of the deeply-ingrained habits of her Pennsylvania Dutch up-bringing and she pined with a heavy nostalgia for the life of her own kind, with its hard work, stringent economy, plain living and unsani- tary inconveniences. "We was so much more comfortable livin* com- mon," she said sadly. "Leastways, I think so." * Rubs me the wrong way. [56] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN **0f course you was!" her sister severely retorted. "I'd like to see a pack of children make me forgit my Gawd the way yours makes you do!" This remark was only an apparent, not an actual, irrelevancy; for the New Mennonite creed in which the sisters had been reared enjoined an absolute abstinence from ornament in dress and in house- hold furnishings. Mrs. Swartz looked discouraged. "Well, Meely," she said plaintively, "I kin only hope that Gawd will soften my hard heart to repentance before I come to die. But so long as I'm able to be about, I hope He won't — fur if He did, Stella wouldn't leave me turn plain and wear the garb and give myself up — and then what would I do?" "You ain't ashamed to set there and tell me to my face that your own daughter wouldn't leave you do somepin your conscience tole you you had ought to do! Ach, Weesy, but you're the poor soul!" "But Stella feels it so that she's got an aunt that wears plain — what would she do if it was her own mother yet? It would give her sich a shamed face in front of all her stylish friends fur me to wear the Mennonite white cap all the time!" "Do you care more fur what Stella's stylish friends thinks than fur your Gawd's opinion of you? Ain't He sayed in the Scriptures that a woman's head shall be covered?" "Stella explained me that that there only means [57] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN a woman's hair must be long and not short like a man's." "Yes, well, but when her long hair become a pride to her. Gawd sayed she must cover it with a cap." "I'm sure I'd be only too glad to cover mine with sich a cap," said Mrs. Swartz, "so thin and stringy as it is yet! It would be pride that would make me wear the cap, Mee^y! How kin you come ower that argyment?" "The Scriptures says, *Cover your hair!' " Mrs. Yinger stubbornly repeated. "And obeyin' to the Scriptures is all I'm concerned about! Yes, and that's what I tole my neighbour lady, too, out there at Martz township — she belongs to one of them worldly churches, the Baptist — and when I tole her I always obeyed to the Scriptures, so I felt purpared to meet my Gawd, she sayed, *0h, I don't feel purpared, I feel I'm a sinner,' she sayed. " *A sinner!' I says. *Do you go to dances, mebby?' " *Do I go to dances !' she says after me awful scandalised. *Well, if that don't beat all! Whether I go to dances yet! Well, I guess anyhow not! Do I go to dances !' " *Ach, well,' I says, gettin' mad, 'don't keep on sayin' it after me, " Do I go to dances !" What ain that made her own heart feel like lead in her bosom. "Oh, if he loved me like that!" was the longing of her heart. "Gertrude!" he said miserably, "I don't know what to do! If she had said she did not love me, I should certainly not trouble her again. But as she does care for me — well, I must try to save her from making this mistake! — a mistake that will bring her only regret and unhappiness ! Who ever [2631 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN got anything else than misery from yielding to a lower desire?" Gertrude, looking upon him compassionately, wondered what would be the effect upon him if she should say to him, "But Stella has none but *lower desires/ The only decent thing I've ever known of her has been her love for you — and even that genuine love she must trample upon and desecrate! And perhaps even that love is not a high and worthy passion; for the real you — that which makes you what you are and sets you just a little apart from the average mere money-making male — she does not admire or like. What she probably does love in you is only your physical magnetism and the atmos- phere of power you bear about you!'* But what she did say was, "When Stella has decided to do a thing, David, we, her family, have learned the futility of trying to dissuade her from it. I say this only to spare you. I would give half my life to be able to comfort you!" "I know that she is very decided, very strong. But I think she misunderstands herself. And I must make her realise that she does care very much more for a life with the man she loves than for the hollow satisfaction to be got out of a title!" Gertrude slowly shook her head. "You think," he asked dully, "that I shall not be able to convince her.^" "She will marry Sir What's-his-name," pro- FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN nounced Gertrude sadly. "Think of mother and Aunt Amelia being related to a Sir Cecil Something!" She said it so tragically that David was almost moved to a feeble smile. "If," thought Gertrude, "I could make him feel the thing as the vulgar absurdity that it is, he would stop feeling it a tragedy." "I should have expected Stella to use more dis- cretion in picking out her nobleman, David (if a mere *Sir' is a nobleman; don't you have to be a lord to be nobility?) I should have thought she would select a German or an Italian, who would not have realised that mother's English was Penn- sylvania Dutch. Shouldn't you.^" "Gertrude! How can you?" "Joke about it? I don't feel funny, I assure you, David, though of course it is awfully funny, as you yourself will realise one of these days. I suppose the next steamer will bring me a letter about it all. Does she tell you any of her plans? Surely," Ger- trude suddenly asked in a startled tone, "she is not planning to keep mother in England? I know how mother is pining to be here with her flower-garden and her old friends! She won't be able to endure staying away much longer!" "Stella is coming home as soon as your mother is well enough to travel." Gertrude caught her breath. "To prepare at once for her marriage," he added drearily. [265] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "David! She is not bringing that relic of Medise- valism with her, is she?" "The Knight?" "Of course the k-night! Do brace up and enjoy with me the effect upon Aunt Amelia and mother of being related to a knight! — to be so closely associated with Feudalism! Oh, I know you are suffering, David, and that I seem heartless to you, but if you only knew how little cause you have for feeling badly!" "What can you mean?" "Do use your common sense, my dear, and reaHse that a woman capable of preferring a thing dangling to a title rather than you, is a woman incapable of truly loving you, of even knowing you! — of ever learning to share with you the passionate ideals which are the whole of your life!" He gazed at her with astonishment and with a dawning light of knowledge in his eyes. But before he could speak, they were interrupted. There was a knock at the library door, it opened and the maid entered with a cablegram. "From Stella!" Gertrude breathlessly exclaimed as she opened it. She read it aloud. "Mother has had a paralytic stroke. Little hope of recovery. Bringing her home on the Essex, April seventh." The paper fell from her hand; every drop of colour [ 266 ] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN left her face. David with a quick movement of compassion, turned to her. And then it was that suddenly the restraint of months gave way and Jn the agony of her grief Gertrude arraigned her sister, her passionate accusations carrying to David a conviction that they might never have borne had they been made calmly. Gasping and sobbing as she talked, her words incoherent and tumbling over each other, her whole body trembling as she walked feverishly back and forth across the floor, David gazed at her in amazement and consternation, hardly knowing in this overwrought woman the gentle and rather languid Gertrude of his acquain- tance. "She has ruined mother! She has killed her! All for her own selfish purposes! She dragged her from home — forcing her to go when poor mother begged and pleaded to stay at home — when I pleaded to have her stay where I knew she was happier and better off! Oh! I cannot forgive Stella this! She has taken mother from me and I love my mother, David! Stella never loved any living creature but herself! Not even you better than herself and her paltry ambitions! It is those accursed ambitions of hers that have wrecked all our Kves — mother's and Harry's and mine, too, if she had succeeded in her efforts to drive me to marry Alfred Ranck! She drove Harry from home on the pretext of ill health — he is not ill — and she is ruining him because she will not let mother part with a dollar to any one except [2671 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN her, when she can help it. She got mother out of our reach, got her to cut off Harry's and my allow- ance, to sign over to her the power of attorney — and now she is spending Mother's entire income for herself as she pleases and has got herself betrothed to a foreign title — with the result that mother is being brought home a wreck, to die! Why did Stella let herself become engaged to you? Because she was not sure she would land a title and next to her ambitions, she does love you. But never for a moment did she mean to keep faith with you if she found she could do better. Now, you know! Stella is not what you have supposed her to be! She is selfish, she is cruel, she is treacherous! I have always known it and I have always tried not to beUeve it. But now she has killed mother — and I can no longer pretend! I can no longer — " David, as white as death, a stunned look of consternation in his face as he heard her, sprang forward to catch her as she fell unconscious. [268] CHAPTER XXV THE weary days of waiting for the arrival of the Essex seemed to Gertrude the blackest she had ever known, for the terrible dread hung over her that her mother might die on the way home and be buried at sea. Yet through all this dark time of suspense she was never long unconscious of David's unfailing thoughtfulness and helpfulness. In the presence of her grief his own trouble seemed to be brushed aside as though it were not. Even when one morning he showed her a new letter from Stella, in which she requested him not to ask her, when she got home, to change her mind, because it would be useless, since she had considered well before writing to him — even in showing this letter to Gertrude his purpose seemed to be unselfish. "So, please, David," Stella's letter repeated, "don't harass me and yourself, too, by opening up this painful subject when we meet, as it would only distress us both to no purpose." "Stella could have spared herself the labour of making this request of me," he commented when FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Gertrude silently returned the letter to him: "I shall not trouble her." His tone was grave rather than bitter, as though to reassure Gertrude of his recovered sanity, and she hoped earnestly for his own sake that he was cured. Among the hardest things she had to bear during this waiting tinje were the visits of her Aunt Amelia and the sharp running commentary of that gentle dame on the affliction that had overtaken her mother. "Well, I guess Stella's satisfied now with what she's did a'ready to her mom yet!" she would say, rocking monotonously in a big chair in Gertrude's bedroom during a long hour's call. "I always knowed, ever since Stella was a little girl a'ready, that some day that little feist would jist break her mom's heart! — the way she was always schemin' to git 'round her mom and pop to git her own way! Nothin' stopped her! It made nothin' to her how many lies she had to tell! And your pop he used to think it was cute! Yes, you mind if he didn't! I guess it never bothered him much neither, tellin' a lie to git ahead of another one! They do say it gives some big liars in business! You kin read in the papers that it does. But, Gertie, whilst I always did think it awful probable that that there Stella Swartz would some day break Weesy's heart fur her, I must say I never did think it would be by draggin' her out to a dangerous place like Europe [ 270 ] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN yet — that I didn't! I'm awful surprised it turned out this here way! — fur I did anyhow look to see Weesy meet her doom in the United States! Well," she would end with a long sigh, shaking her head mournfully, "I warned Weesy not to leave Stella take her to a country where they don't even speak English — so's you can't even make your wants knowed! — and where your life and liberty ain't safe on the streets! — if, indeed, they're got streets in sich a place! More likely not. But, Gertie, you know yourself how your mom never could go agin Stella. And now look what's happened her! Yi,yi,yi!" Several times after the arrival of the cable, Gertrude told David how much she wished that Harry were at home. "It would almost restore mother to health to see him when she gets here, she is so devoted to him!" It was an unspeakable comfort to her, then, when, the day before the ship came in, Harry, to her amazement, walked in upon her while she was over-seeing the last arrangements at her mother's house for the reception of the travellers. "Mr. Phelps wired me the price of a ticket home," he explained when he had warmly greeted his favourite sister. "Oh, Harry, and this very afternoon, for the pure joy of pretending you were coming, I got your room ready for you!" you! You're the same old Gert, [2711 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN aren't you?'* he cried, giving her another rough hug. He and Gertrude had always been good comrades. He was a commonplace youth enough, except that he had always been rather more upright in principle and cleaner morally than the average young man of his station. Gertrude was shocked at the change she saw in him — ^his shabbiness and other signs of the hard struggle he had been having. "And all that energy spent to avert starvation might, with so much better results, have been spent in doing the sort of work that Harry can do best," she thought with fresh resentment against Stella. It was when on the next morning Gertrude was going over the house to finish up the little remaining work of preparation which Harry's unexpected arrival had interrupted, that she came upon some- thing which startled and troubled her. She was dusting the compartments of a large desk which, ever since she could remember, had stood in her mother's bedroom, when upon opening a small drawer, she came upon a package of letters that were yellow with age. She glanced at them idly and was about to throw them into a waste basket, when she decided first to examine them to make sure that they were of no importance. They were all addressed to her father, she found, as she shuffled them; the envelopes of some of them were [2721 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN postmarked "Dakota" and were dated twenty- eight or thirty years back. All at once a folded paper not in an envelope turned up in the pack, and as she opened and glanced at it, a name caught her eye — J, M. Quick- man. It instantly struck her as familiar. Some- where she had seen or heard that name before. She read the few crudely written lines which the sheet contained "Farley sville, Dakota. "Received five hundred dollars for the care for two years of the three years old boy left with me October twenty-first, 1882." Gertrude, gazing at the words in amazement, found herself trembling, her teeth chattering, the paper shaking in her hands. "Quickman! I remember! David said the name had always had *a grim humour' for him!" It all came back to her with a rush. David was three years old when the Quickmans of Dakota took him. Five hundred dollars was the sum left with them for his care — "and I find this in my father's desk!" Memories rushed upon her thick and fast — David's statements that he had come East to look up his inheritance; that it was not "mere chance" that had led him to settle in New Munich; that the death-bed confession of an old man had revealed to him that he was neither penniless nor illegitimate. [273] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "What was father's connection with all this?" she wondered with fast beating heart. "Was it something wrong and dishonourable? A death-bed confession, David said." She thought of all the years of her father's life during which his family had suflPered with him in witnessing helplessly his more and more frequent spells of deep melancholy, of dreadful nervous depression. "Well," she concluded, with a long breath, folding the paper and tucking it away in the bosom of her blouse, *T shall some day show this to David." In the rush of events during the next few days, however, the mysterious paper was, for the time being almost forgotten — to be recalled only when its mystery had been explained through an unexpected and astounding stress of circumstances. Indeed, not only was this significant paper tem- porarily lost sight of, but even the deep sense of injury at the hands of her sister which Gertrude felt, dropped into oblivion, or at least passed above and beyond the smallness of resentment, before the anguish she suffered when two days after they carried her unconscious mother into her home, she died without even for a moment having recognised any of them. It was a few days after the funeral that the three [274] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN heirs of the Swartz estate assembled, at Stella's instigation, in the library of their old home to hear the reading of their mother's will. Gertrude, the first to enter the library for the occasion, sat down beside a window and gazed listlessly out upon the cold, dreary rain of the April afternoon, while she waited for the others to join her. She had been alone but a few minutes when Stella, strolling languidly into the room, sat down in an armchair before the open fire. She looked well and strong and handsomer than ever. But there was an expression of discontent on her face that was new to it. "She is really fretting about David," thought Gertrude, "She does care for him, in her way — whatever that way is. I don't understand it." Stella had seemed, even to Gertrude and Harry who knew her, strangely cold about their mother's death. "Where's Harry?" Stella inquired. "Do you know, Gertrude?" "No." "I hope he won't keep us waiting. It would be like him, wouldn't it?" Gertrude did not reply. She had avoided Stella ever since her return and had as yet had no talk at all with her. This was the first time they had been alone together and Gertrude would even now have gotten up and left her but that she was obliged to stay. She had reached a point where she shrank [275] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN from and almost feared a moment alone with her sister. "Mr. Ranck will be here in a minute. You know how prompt he is always," said Stella. Still Gertrude offered no response. "Poor mother did worry so over your unfortunate Moncaster experience, Gertrude! I can't help feel- ing it helped to bring on her stroke!" Gertrude's hands lying loosely in her lap closed upon each other with a grip. "I am so glad, now, that I denied myself marriage and devoted myself to mother! She felt so deeply the sacrifices I was making for her that you and Harry will understand when her will is read, Ger- trude, why she did as she did." No answer from Gertrude. Stella, glancing up from the &re to look at her, saw an expression in her usually gentle countenance that startled her. "Gertrude!" she exclaimed, "you have acted most strangely ever since I came home! You are letting poor mother's death affect you too much! You should get better control of yourself. It is not as though mother had been young. She had lived her life. The parting with her was inevitable soon- er or later. One has to take these things philo- sophically. You and Harry both act as though you were the only people in the world who had ever lost a mother!" Her voice broke in a choking sob. Gertrude did not reply. She could not. [2761 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN For some moments they sat in silence. Both Harry and Mr. Ranck seemed to be late in arriving. Presently Stella again spoke, her tone fretful. "David is taking it very foolishly — my breaking off our engagement! I don't know why he should let it upset him so completely!" And now at last Gertrude roused herself to answer. "Oh, I don't think you need worry about David. What makes you think he takes it so hard?" Stella stared at her incredulously. "Well!" she exclaimed, "why should he not take it hard?" "But why should he?" Stella shrugged her shoulders. "You are awfully changed, Gertrude! You have been horribly dis- agreeable to me ever since I came home!" Gertrude was silent. "What reason have you," Stella demanded, "for supposing that David doesn't care?" "I was just wondering what reason he had given you for supposing that he cared so very much?" *^The fact that he has not trusted himself to come near me since I came home — a whole week! We have not once spoken together alone! He has avoided me!" "No, he has not avoided you. He has simply not sought you." Again Stella shrugged her shoulders. "If it pleases you to think so ! But I know he has avoided me. I wish he would be sensible and consent to be [277] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN just friends with me. I see no reason why he should not." "He probably sees no reason why he should." "Indeed.^ That is your amiable and sisterly opinion of it, is it.?^ Well, why.?" "David is a man of too much fineness to be able to give friendship where he has lost respect." " 'Lost respect' ! Nonsense! That is your absurd idea, not his. And I am not interested, Gertrude, in your idea of my conduct. Have you and David talked me over.^^ Discussed all my failings? — ^you helping David to see them as he would not be likely to if left to himself?" Gertrude looked at her sister with an expression on her face that made her seem an utter stranger to SteUa. "When the news came to me, Stella," she answered breathlessly, "that you were bringing mother home a paralytic, I said everything in my power to make David know you as I have known you all my life!" "Yes?" said Stella, lifting her eyebrows, while every drop of colour left her face. "And just how have you known me all my life?" "As untruthful, treacherous, selfish, scheming, cruel — " The door opened and Harry walked into the room, followed by Alfred Ranck. [278] CHAPTER XXVI THOUGH both Harry and Gertrude thought it probable that Stella had managed to secure for herself a lion's share of the estate, neither of them was mercenary enough to waste any anxiety over the likelihood. So when Mr. Ranck read in cold and even tones that Mrs. Swartz bequeathed to her beloved daughter, Gertrude, and to her beloved son, Harry, each, the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars and to her beloved daughter, Stella, in token of her years of service, the entire residue of her estate, Harry and Gertrude not only failed to recognise in Ranck an accomplice in Stella's machinations, but did not even grasp the purport of what they heard. It was not until Ranck, with no more change of countenance than a wooden image would have shown, was slowly folding the will and returning it to its envelope; and Stella, in her armchair before the fire, was almost equally rigid and expres- sionless; that the words that had been read seemed to penetrate to Harry's understanding. "Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece to Gertrude and me? But father's estate was estimated at eight hundred thousand!" [2791 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "Twenty-five hundred dollars apiece to you and your sister, Mr. Swartz," the attorney corrected in a toneless voice. With a start Gertrude sat upright in her chair. Harry stared at Ranck uncomprehendingly. "Twenty-five hundred dollars?" he repeated. "Did you say twenty-five hundred dollars .f^" "Twenty-five hundred dollars," repeated Ranck. "Two thousand ^yq hundred dollars .f*" — Harry still tried to take it in — "You say my mother left Gertrude and me each two thousand five hundred dollars.?" "Two thousand ^ve hundred dollars." For an instant the room was deathly still. Stella, in her armchair, did not stir. Gertrude's face had turned white. Harry stared in bewilderment. Suddenly he sprang up with a laugh. "But you are not an ass, Ranck! You can't imagine that Gertrude and I are such nuts as to let that will stand? Why didn't you tell Stella and my mother that it was impossible, when they got you to draw it up.?" "I should have done so, if it had been 'impos- sible.'" "Look here! Gertie and I may be easy marks (far too easy, I see now!) but we're not letting our- selves be done out of our own to this extent! Well, rather not!" "If you contest the will, you get even less than if you let it stand." [ 280 ] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Harry, who had begun to stride about the room excitedly, stopped short. "Explain yourself, will you?" "The residue of the estate, which goes to Miss Stella, is less than the five thousand dollars which you and Miss Gertrude jointly receive. Your mother's estate, divided equally among you, would give you each about two thousand dollars." "My mother's estate worth six thousand dollars! Is that what you are telling me?" "Exactly what I'm telling you." Harry controlled a choking lump in his throat, and after an instant asked quietly: "What has be- come of the eight hundred thousand dollars my father left?" Mr. Ranck was prepared for his answer. "Your mother, feeling that your character was not suffi- ciently formed, or of a strength, to be entrusted with great wealth, and that Miss Gertrude would surely misappropriate anything left to her decided that the best thing she could do for the protection of her two younger children was to make over the bulk of her property, before her death, to her daughter, Stella, being convinced that the wise judgment and strong, steady character of her eldest child would insure the property from waste, and that Miss Stella would know how to use it in the wisest possible way for her brother and sister." Again, for a throbbing moment, the room was deathly still. Then Harry, still speaking with a [2811 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN quiet self-control, asked, "My mother, before her death, made over to Stella all of her estate except six thousand dollars?" "Just so." Harry stood for a moment, thinking. Then he turned and looked at Gertrude. She rose and came to his side. He took her hand in his. "Gertrude and I will of course contest this — we shall bring suit. We shall plead the perpetration of a plot; that mother, in feeble health, was fraudu- lently influenced to commit this insufferable injustice. I'll get Danny Leitzel on the case and promise him half the estate if he wins! He never loses a case!" "We'll have David Phelps, Harry," spoke in Gertrude. "He is just as apt to win and he will win honestly." "You are talking very foolishly, both of you," said Ranck with cool precision. "The property was legally made over to your sister and is beyond your reach absolutely. Abide by your mother's wishes, and your sister will do well and generously by you, according to her discretion. Get involved in a law- suit, and you will squander all that your father accumulated." "We would both know exactly what to expect of Stella's 'discretion' in parting with money!" returned Harry. "We refuse to accept from her gifts of what is our own. We'll have what is our own, if we have to squander half the estate in getting it!" 'I trust. Miss Gertrude," said Ranck, quite 1 «i FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN unmoved, "that you do not share your brother's ill-considered view of your beloved mother's last will and testament and that you will not unite with him in desecrating her revered memory?" Gertrude looked at Ranck and smiled. Ker reply was not what he was looking for. "How nicely you serve up your words on a napkin, Alfred! — if you will pardon my drawing attention to it." "This is hardly a subject for levity, I should say.'^" he returned with a slight lift of his eyebrows. "It will be before we are through with it!" retorted Harry. "I shall see to it that — " He stopped short. A tall, broad-shouldered figure had suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Aha, here's our lawyer now!" exclaimed Harry. "Come in, Mr. Phelps! We'll put it to him right now and see what he has to say for our case, Ger- trude!" Phelps — ^his glance moving swiftly from Gertrude and Harry standing together, to Stella before the fire, and then to the cold, unmoved face of Mr. Ranck — walked into the room and stood in their midst. [283] CHAPTER XXVII r^ was strange, Gertrude thought, how trouble seemed to fall away from her at the approach of David. Even while her blood throbbed at his presence, there was at the same time a deep inward peace in the sense of security she felt in his strength and in his goodness. Some subtle emanance from him to her seemed always to envelop her when she was near him. "Tell Mr. Phelps, Ranck," commanded Harry: "or rather, you, Stella — you tell Mr. Phelps just what Ranck has been handing out to us — and let us hear what an honest lawyer has to say about such a deal as you and Ranck are trying to put up on Gertie and me! Go ahead, Stella!" "I am perfectly ready to explain it all to Mr. Phelps, in spite of the fact that he has nothing whatever to do with it." Stella very white, rose and came over to the group of three in the centre of the room — Ranck standing, like a wooden image, a few feet away. "David!" she appealed in the rich warm voice that had never failed to thrill him with a sense of her feminine charm. "I am listening, Stella." [284] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN **Because my mother lacked confidence, and justly so, in her son's discretion in the management of money, and because she realised, from a long and unhappy experience, his inability to *make good'; and because she was averse to turning over one- third of my father's hard-earned fortune to Gertrude to be used in demoralising the poor — because of these considerations, mother, before her death, made over to me the bulk of her estate, to be used by me for myself, Harry and Gertrude as I deemed for their best good. She left to them, outright, twenty-five hundred dollars each." "Exactly," remarked Mr. Ranck. David did not speak. For a moment they were all silent. "I suppose," Stella presently continued, "it is perfectly natural that Harry and Gertrude should be unable to do justice to mother's motives; to see that she acted only for their best good; for their protection. Naturally they do not themselves realise their own weaknesses — Gertrude, how impracticable her social theories are; and Harry, his want of stamina in faihng to earn a living, even with no one dependent on him. David, help me to make them be fair to dear mother! — not to desecrate her memory by these threats of prosecution — of ven- geance! It is disgraceful, horrible! And all for the sake of money! Oh, it is disgusting!" Her eyes, raised to his with an expression of mingled distress and indignation, were bewilderingly [285] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN convincing. Pven Harry and Gertrude, themselves too guileless to doubt readily another's sincerity, were almost persuaded of Stella's belief in herself. "You recognise, of course," David said, looking gravely and sadly down into her upturned face, "the light in which you are placed by this whole transaction?" "I? Oh, I am not thinking of myself, David!" she said pleadingly. "If only they don't wrong poor mother! I can bear their unjust and unworthy suspicions of me in the face of my lifelong self- sacrifice for their sakes! — but when they rave against her—'' Her voice broke and she quickly put her black- edged handkerchief to her eyes. "I cannot bear it!" She sobbed heart-brokenly into her handkerchief. David turned puzzled, questioning eyes to Gertrude. But she was not looking at him. Her glance and Harry's had met upon Stella's sobbing — and an involuntary, irrepressible laugh broke from them both, so perfectly natural and spontaneous that David's first instinctive wincing at their seemingly untimely amusement was turned to wonder; and the haziness and confusion of thought and feeling in which he had contemplated Stella ever since the day of Gertrude's outbreak about her, was increased tenfold. At the sound of that laughter, Stella's sobs ceased, and she dried her eyes. "You see!" she pointed out to David with a little FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN hopeless gesture. "They are incapable of any fineness of feeling!" " 'Fineness of feeling'?" he repeated dubiously. "They mock at me because I weep over their unfilial attitude towards dear mother!" "Then — since they have called upon me to help adjust this matter between them and you — why not adjust it, Stella, by making over to them their thirds of the estate and washing your hands of all further responsibility for them? Or at least arrange that they shall have the income of their thirds." "To be wasted by Harry; to be misapplied by Gertie!" "If you keep the principal, you need not concern yourself about what they do with the interest." "Then I should be neglecting a sacred trust com- mitted to me by my dying mother!" "Do you feel convinced that your mother would have preferred a family rupture and possibly a law- suit over this matter, rather than that Gertrude and Harry should have their thirds?" "I can only do what my mother commissioned me to do. And I trust to your wise counsel, David, to influence Gertrude and Harry against the wicked- ness of a lawsuit." "My counsel to them would be to fight for their own. **But why, David?" cried Stella in pained surprise. "Do you doubt my integrity in this matter?" "Entirely, Stella." [287] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Their eyes met for an instant; then Stella's fell, her face growing crimson. *T thought better of you, David," she said softly. *T did not think that you would stoop to petty retaliation!" "Nor do you think it now." "What else can I possibly think — your urging these two impracticable young people to outrage their mother's memory; to try to set aside her wishes; her conscientious arrangements for their best good.^" "We are to believe, are we, that your mother was entirely uninfluenced in making these arrangements? — that entirely of her own accord she made them.?" "I don't deny that she consulted me and that I advised her — conscientiously advised her — to do what I knew would hurt 7?z^; for I could not hope that Harry and Gertrude would be fair tome; they never have been; never have appreciated my efforts, through all their lives, to help and serve them!" "If it came to a lawsuit, Stella, you would have to be able to prove that your mother was unin- fluenced in making over to you her estate, to the exclusion of her other children. Eh, Ranck?" he curtly demanded of the motionless figure standing apart from the group. "I can testify that Mrs. Swartz was entirely uninfluenced." "Oh, you can? When the transfer of the estate took place in Europe at the office of an American consul?" FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "Just so — ^I managing the affair at this end and corresponding with Mrs. Swartz." "With Mrs. Swartz's daughter, you mean? Mrs. Swartz herself never wrote letters. Least of all, business letters. You would have to produce the correspondence in court." "Can't you see," cried Stella, appealing to Ger- trude and Harry, "how dreadful it would be to drag such a thing as this into court.^" "Then settle with us, if you would not like the court room!" responded Harry. "You don't imag- ine that Gertrude and I would hesitate out of regard for you — when you have contrived to do us out of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece!" "I will not go against mother's wishes," repeated Stella firmly. "And if you and Gertie choose to do so, Mr. Ranck will know how to defend mother against her undutiful children!" "Mr. Phelps," said Harry, "will you take the case for Gertrude and me.^^" "It will not be necessary to go to law," was David's unexpected reply. He paused a moment and they waited for him to explain. "Stella will settle without a lawsuit." "You cannot make me!" said Stella. "He cannot possibly make you," aflBrmed Mr. Ranck. "There will be no lawsuit. Gertrude and Harry will share equally with you, Stella, what there is to share." [2891 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN The crimson died out of Stella's face, leaving it again white; for none knew better than she that David was not given to idle words. "Well?" she demanded, her tone curt to conceal her fear. "What have you up your sleeve?" "Your mother could not deed the estate to you because it was not hers. Your father could not will it to her because it was not his. The so-called Swartz estate belongs to me." While the others stared at him as at a demented creature, Gertrude's heart beat suffocatingly with the quick realisation that David was about to reveal to them the secret of her father's mysterious past and of his own connection with it. "It is an unpleasant fact I have to make known to you," he continued. "I would have kept it to myself forever, if it were not necessary to tell it now in order to right this wrong which you, Stella, would do against your brother and sister. But since I must now tell it to you — " He paused and looked at Ranck. "It is better that we should be alone. Will you excuse us, Mr. Ranck?" But Stella interposed. "As Mr. Ranck is my lawyer, there is no reason why he should not hear anything you may have to say, David. And as I seem to be in the midst of enemies — " She paused, her lips quivering, her eyes in sad reproach on David's face. "I prefer a witness present, David," she said. [290] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "As you please, Stella. It is only fair to warn you, however, that you will not wish any one outside your own family to hear what I have to say." "Mr. Ranck remains," pronounced Stella. "Very well. Understand, then, that I am your father's step-son and that I was defrauded by him of my inheritance from my mother, his first wife." At the consternation on the faces before him, he had to summon all his resolution to proceed. "My mother was a widow at the time she mar- ried your father and I was two years old. An uncle of mine, my father's brother, had died before my mother's marriage to your father and had left to me a vast tract of ranch land, my mother being its sole trustee. A year after her marriage to your father, she died in a premature confinement. Your father at once put me with a poor ranch labourer's family, leaving with them five hundred dollars to pay them for keeping me until he should return to get me. He never did return and he left them no name or address. Cruelty and drudgery were the portion of my childhood. Your father then contrived to sell the ranch land, of which my mother had been sole trustee, used the money therefrom in building up, here in New Munich, the Swartz fac- tory, and married your mother. On his death-bed, he summoned an obscure lawyer, here in New Munich, and secretly made a will, giving to me the whole Swartz estate except fifty thousand dollars [291] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN which he kept back for his family — explaining why he did so. This will the young lawyer, bound to secrecy, was asked to withhold unless I came to claim my own. Your father then wrote to me at the address of the people with whom, thirty years before, he had left me. He sent papers and letters identifying me, a written obligation to pay me seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a copy of his secret will, a statement as to his entire trans- action in defrauding me, and a request that I come East, make myself known to the young lawyer who held the secret will and claim my property. If I never turned up, your father's earlier will, leaving everything to your mother, was to stand — unless his children chose to break it. Now, as I had gone away at the age of sixteen, from the family with whom I had been left, it was not until two months after your father's death that his letter and docu- ments found me. "When I came here to investigate things, I — well, you all know what happened to me — I promptly fell in love with Stella. So I decided to settle here and probably never tell you this story and never claim my own. No doubt, if your mother had made a just division of the estate, you never would have learned what I have told you to-day. But to stand aside and see such injustice — to see what is really mine passed over to an Englishman who hopes to enrich himself through marriage — well, no use going into that! I shall now do what [292] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN I came to New Munich to do — take over my property and divide it equally among us four." He paused, and for a moment no one broke the silence. Then Stella, turning her white face to Mr. Ranck, spoke huskily: "He can't do this, can he? Even supposing his story is true, he can't take my whole fortune from me! Surely he can't?" she passionately demanded. "Stella!" cried Harry, his face crimson, "don't make us blush to own you as we must to own our father! — ^to think that you'd suggest continuing to so deeply injure Mr. Phelps after all the wrong he has already suffered at father's hands! — and this in the face of such an unusually generous proposition as he holds out to us all! Mr. Phelps!" Harry turned to him. "I speak for Gertrude as well as for myself in refusing, though with the deepest appreciation of your generosity, to take another dollar of the money that is all yours." "Alfred!" cried Stella, "tell me that this thing cannot be done! — that I have some rights, even if my father did do wrong!" "It all depends upon the sort of proofs Mr. Phelps can show, Stella. I am afraid, knowing Mr. Phelps to be a man who usually understands what he is talking about, that he probably has a perfectly clear case against the estate. It looks a bit that way." The hopeless finality of this from Alfred Ranck left Stella stricken and horrified. She felt her self- control leaving her and she realised that too much FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN was at stake for her to risk remaining another moment in David's presence. She must get away alone, get herself in hand, think out what she must do under this utterly confounding turn of affairs, to avert the ruin of all which, with such infinite pains and patience, she had accomplished. She turned abruptly to leave the room. And as David stepped forward to open the door for her, she hfted beautiful eyes swimming in tears to his grave face, then sobbed heart-brokenly into her handkerchief as she passed him by. It was' a new experience to Stella Swartz to find herself more afflicted by some one's bad opinion of her than by the foiling, in any least degree, of her ambition. Alone in her room, prone on her bed in an abandonment of trouble, she realised that her paramount grief was not for the prospective loss of the fortune she had so schemed to possess — bitter as that was; but for the look of disillusionment in the eyes of the one and only man she had ever found irresistibly fascinating; his ideal of her shattered; his belief in and respect for her turned to contempt and aversion; his adoration to an indifference more deadly than hatred. Of a truth her world was crumbling about her head : for if David carried out his threat of claiming the estate as his own and giving her only one- .[ 294 ] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN fourth of it, she could not, without making herself penniless, give to her foreign lover more than a small part of the sum he had cold-bloodedly named as his share of her marriage dowry; and she was far too worldly-wise to dream of jeopardising her own independence by making herself poor to enrich a husband. "What shall I do about it?" she frantically asked herself. Her fianc6 was even now on the ocean en route for New York and would be with her in a few days. How could she bear the humiliation of having him reject her? She would not bear it. Some way must be found to avert it. "I'll wire to the steamer! I'll tell him not to come here; that I've changed my mind and will not marry him! He will be the humiliated one, not I! He will not have a chance to throw me over first!" A great relief and joy swept over her at the thought that by this step she could have back the lover for whom she yearned. She realised that until this moment she had not known how much she longed for him, nor how great had been her sacrifice to her ambition. Her blood throbbed, her nerves quivered, at the prospect of going to him and telling him she had been mistaken, that she loved him too well ever to marry any one else; that no sooner had she returned to him than she had known how impossible it was to her to give him up; that she [295] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN had cabled at once to her English fiancS and told him she would not and could not marry him. She could see in fancy David's studied indiflFerence melt to his old passionate love for her and the grave melancholy of his eyes turn to exultant joy as he heard her confession; for she did not for a moment believe that his apparent indifference was anything more than a cloak for his wounded pride. "After all," she thought, "could money and a great position give me half the real happiness I shall find with him.^" And then like an inspiration it came to her that she could make her returning to him depend on a certain condition — a condition which would restore to her all which for a dreadful hour she had thought lost; a condition which she was sure he would unhesitatingly accept. Her face flushed and her eyes sparkled with renewed hope and eagerness as she reflected upon this new plan for her own aggrandisement. Without a moment's loss of time she rose, bathed her eyes, smoothed her hair, and went down stairs to the telephone to send her telegram to the incoming vessel which was bearing her confident and mer- cenary suitor to America. Then, going back to her room, she sat down before her writing desk and wrote a note to David asking him to call to see her that night. 296] CHAPTER XXVIII IN response to Stella's summons, Phelps pre- sented himself at the Swartz home again that same evening at eight o'clock. Stella, dressed beautifully in a soft, clinging black gown of cr^pe de chine, cut low at her very white throat, was, he felt with something of his old thrill at her charm, "very stunning." Her manner, too, was disarming of his doubts as to her reason for summoning him — so pensive was her countenance, so dignified and quiet her bearing and tone, as she led him from the parlour to the more cozy hbrary. "I was confused this afternoon, David," she began in a tone of reserve and not at all as though pleading an excuse for herself, when they were seated before a crackling wood fire. "I did not realise all that you were telling me. When I thought about it and really grasped it, — the story of how you were defrauded by my unhappy father, — I wish to tell you, David, that I entirely agree with Harry and Gertrude — you must not give us a dollar of the estate." David politely controlled his shock of surprise at this very unexpected speech. "What's up now.^" he wondered. "Have I been misjudging her.^*" [297] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "No," he replied, shaking his head. "I don't want all that money. I intend to persuade you all to let me divide it equally among us four." "David — please! It would scorch me to touch a dollar of it! I couldn't bear it! And Gertrude and Harry feel just the same way. Our pride and self-respect, no less than our honour, will not suffer us to accept any further sacrifice from you after all the terrible wrong my father did to you! So, please put from you all idea of a division — for it would humiliate and shame us!" Phelps was genuinely puzzled. The look of anxiety and distress in her eyes seemed very genuine. And yet — ^here she had been ready, a few hours ago, to take the whole fortune away from her brother and sister! — and now these unsurmountable scruples against accepting an arrangement to which the most perfectly upright person might reasonably agree. **But, Stella, I feel that it is only right and fair that your father's blameless children should not be the victims of his wrongdoing." "But when we all feel we can't accept your offer, David, why should you force it on us?" "Look at it this way — your father's business acumen made my capital yield far more than it would have done in less skillful hands. His children are entitled, then, to the results of his skill." But Stella shook her head. "I appreciate your goodness, David — dear! But I cannot accept what you offer. And neither can Harry and Gertrude. Now, [2981 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN David, they are both, as you know, weak of resolu- tion. Your sophistry about our right to part of the estate might possibly convince them — because, you see, they'd want to be convinced. So, I beg you, don't tempt them — don't persuade them to do violence to their own highest ideals — as they cer- tainly would do if they accepted this money." "Their case is different from yours, Stella. You are about to marry a man who, presumably, can support you." "David," she said earnestly, "this morning 1 wired the ship on which Sir Cecil Royle arrives in New York next Wednesday, telling Sir Cecil that he must not come here." For a time the silence between them was porten- tous. Stella's pensive, earnest face did not betray the fast beating of her heart. She was staking her all on this venture — and if it failed! But it must not fail! She had given up her Englishman; she had refused David's gift of an independent fortune; she had, she beheved, persuaded him not to persist in offering one half of his estate to Gertrude and Harry. And now if he did not rise to her bait and ask her to renew their engagement; if he did not promise her that he would keep the entire Swartz estate and not give half of it away — she would be undone! If he kept the estate, she, as his wife, would be pretty much where she had been before he had stepped in to smash all her prospects; for an Ameri- [2991 FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN can wife, unlike an English one, practically, if not legally, owns and controls her husband's money. But if David did not fall in with her scheme? And if, in addition, taking her at her word, he did not insist upon thrusting upon her one fourth of the estate, but did give Gertrude and Harry each one fourth — ^how would her ambitions be wrecked! Never in her life had she felt herself in so tight a place! Breathlessly she waited for his response to the news she had just given him. David, on his part, had no least suspicion of her deep scheming. He had too recently idealised this woman to be able to see in her, all at once, a Lucretia Borgia. He did half surmise that he was expected to rise nobly to the situation she had just presented to him — the breaking off of her engagement to the Englishman — "It's getting to be a habit with you, Stella-— breaking your marriage engagements!" "A bad and dishonourable habit, you think, of course! But in the case of Sir Cecil, I had no compunctions." "Of course not." A moment's silence. Then Stella — "But in your case, dear David — " she raised her eyes and looked at him pleadingly. "I never said I had ceased to love you!" "If you had," he answered gravely, "I would not have suffered as I did — in the shattering of my ideal of you." [SOO] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN "We grow and learn by our mistakes, David! I have always been ambitious. I see now that I was ambitious for the wrong things." "Yes." "I am learning that true happiness does not come with money and place and the other worldly things that I so valued. And it is true happiness that I want! The happiness that I would so blindly have thrown away for those other paltry things!" "And what is it that has taught you all this about *true happiness'.^" "David! The moment my eyes rested on you again when I came home, I knew where my happi- ness lay!" "But — when did you cable to Sir What's-his-name that you would not marry him.? Not until after you had learned that you did not have his price.'^" "Oh, David! How can you be so vulgar — so hard to me?" "I gather that it is your idea now (Sir Cecil being out of the running) that you and I renew our engagement?" "Can you forgive me, David, for making you, as you say, suffer for my blindness?" "I have nothing to forgive, Stella." She looked at him doubtfully, not knowing how to interpret this ambiguous reply. "As to your scruples about accepting one fourth of the factory estate — do I understand that your idea is for you and me to keep it all — and not — er — [301] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN humiliate Harry and Gertrude by forcing any of it upon them?" "My idea is for you to keep it all, David." "As my wife, you would have no scruple against using it?" "Only as your wife," she reassured him, "could I consent ever to take a penny of it." "I see." "On this point, David, Harry and Gertrude and I are in entire agreement." "The difference being that Harry and Gertrude are not expecting to marry me." "No," said Stella, smiling wanly. "What would you say, Stella, if I told you that you are entirely mistaken about Harry and Gertrude; that I have persuaded them to accept one fourth of the estate?" "It would not be right, David!" she said sharply, unable to keep from her tone a note of keen anxiety. "You ought not to pamper the natural weakness of both of them! Don't do it! It would not be for their best good! Surely you must see that it would not. Indeed, I could never consent to it!" "You would not consent?" "No, David!" "Isn't your jurisdiction limited to your own case?" "As the 'partner of your joys and sorrows,' David," she smiled, "would I not have some rights over your fortune?" "But we are not married yet, are we? I expect [302] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN to settle with Harry and Gertrude before that happy event." "No, David!" she exclaimed, leaning forward in her chair and speaking with a repressed eagerness, her eyes flashing, her face crimson, "it is not to be thought of! Parting with four hundred thousand dollars to two perfectly irresponsible people like Gertrude and Harry! Where is your conscience, David dear?" "Not yet in your keeping, Stella!" **But I should feel the responsibility of coun- tenancing such an act on your part, David, if we are ever to be married. And I cannot agree to it. If you do it, it will be absolutely against my sense of right and justice." David was silent. "Isn't that enough, for you, David?" "You mean that if I go ahead and do it, — ^you'll again break off our engagement?" "I mean that I would greatly doubt your love." **Too much to trust yourself to me?" *'That is what I mean, David," she ventured. **Ah, that is what I was waiting to hear from you. For seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars you'll marry me, but not for half that amount." "It is a principle, not money, I am contending for." "Is it? Well, Stella, not to prolong this discus- sion — I may as well tell you that I am going to marry Gertrude — if I can win her." [303] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN Stella stared at him uncomprehendingly. "What?" she managed to inquire. "You heard me." "You are going to marry Gertrude!" "If she'll have me." "But — but you are betrothed to me, David!" "That is interesting — but a bit inaccurate — eh?" "Why — why, David, you are trifling with me!" He smiled. "And you, Stella, juggling with your Englishman and me like pawns on a chess board!" Stella's blazing gaze fell from his for an instant. But she rallied and in a voice freighted with sarcasm, asked, "Since when have you known you were in love with Gertrude?" "Since the hour I discovered I was not in love with you. You want to know when that was? The morning your cable came announcing that you were bringing your mother home a helpless invalid — and Gertrude fainted in my arms — after first pouring out to me her anguish in a wild frenzy that showed you, Stella, stripped to the soul! When Gertrude fell into my arms, I knew what, during all those months of your absence, and of my close and sym- pathetic association with Gertrude, had happened to me!" He paused, Stella stared at him stonily. After a moment he went on — speaking very deliberately and, as he felt, relentlessly. "I know now, that my mental image of you, during those months away from you, had been [ 304 ] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN gradually, almost imperceptibly, undergoing a change; that removed from the immediate effect of the charm you had for me, I was perceiving your actions stripped of all false halo and somewhat in their true import and that what I saw was slowly but surely, — " he paused, but added resolutely, — "dis- gusting me! And yet, when your letter came, casting me off, I suffered — ^for my new impressions of you were, up to that time, subconscious — ^I neither recognised nor understood them." "You understood them only when Gertrude showed me ^stripped to the soul'?" "Exactly." "I have Gertrude to thank, then, for robbing me of you — that she might win you for her lover! My sister false to me!" "Tut, tut, Stella! Gertrude and I have never exchanged a word of love. We've not yet had a chance — I have so recently been engaged to you. But—" "You speak of the long months of my absence and of your 'close and sympathetic' association with Gertrude!" "And those months taught me that Gertrude is my true mate. I hope I shall be able to persuade Gertrude of that fact." Stella rose, looking very white. David also rose and picked up his hat from the library table. "Since I find you so unworthy, David, of the fortune my father earned for you and which he so [305] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN honourably (though I think most quixotically) returned to you, — since his reward for doing so is your jilting one of his daughters and inducing the other to behave in a dishonourable way to her sister — in view of these things I have no scruples whatever in consenting to a division of the estate." "I thought you would not have." "And I wish you would settle the whole miserable business as soon as possible so that I may go away and never see any of you again!" "It may take me longer to persuade Harry and Gertrude than it has to persuade you, Stella, to accept the division." For answer Stella walked out of the room and left him alone. "Game to the bitter end!" he reflected as he left the house. "One is moved to admire her splendid nerve! It's Napoleonic! And her sophistry! It's genius, nothing more nor less!" But he was not without a sense of sadness that such talent, with the added gift of personal charm, should be so miserably misdirected. Meantime, Stella alone in her room, was staring down into the abyss of failure into which her success in the schemes of her life had plunged her. "Everything I planned I accomplished. And I am alone and have nothing. And Gertrude who never lifted a finger to get anything for herself, except a bit of college education, is having everything I worked for poured right into her lap!" [306] FANATIC OR CHRISTIAN She shudderingly covered her face with her hands as though to shut out the vision of her beaten and miserable self. Later that night, David and Ger- trude alone together, looked, with their hands clasped, into their future. "What a life we'll have together, Gertrude! Our faces set against all that makes for our own comfort and security, we would suffer horribly, no doubt, if we each worked alone; suffer from all the ills that fall to the man or woman who does not prescribe to prevailing opinion — ostracism, poverty, loneliness, a loveless life. But having each other, we can never be lonely or really unhappy, Gertrude. And as for the rest, we may count the whole world well lost for the work to which we have set our hands." "And for the freedom to which we have dedicated our lives!" she added. "I'm not naturally brave, David; but with you at my side I shall be fearless to live out any truth I ever learn, no matter how unpopular it may be!" "We may leave a more just and decent world for our children, dearest!" "And if we don't, David, your children will, I know, be equipped well to go on with the fight you have waged!" "And you will equip them," he added, folding her to his heart, "with all that a woman's love can give!" THE END [307] THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. MAY 5-196G2 5 2PR21'6625RG0 MM 13 1968 3 5 1 ! (JU12 "^ * -y.]i^.%%'ir -«!gi^-' YB 67090