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A Modern Instance

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Bartley laughed so that he could hardly get the cork out of the second
bottle.

"You see," said Kinney, leaning forward, and taking Bartley's plump, soft
knee between his thumb and forefinger, "I felt awfully about the way we
parted that night. I felt _bad_. I hadn't acted well, just to my own mind,
and it cut me to have you refuse my money; it cut me all the worse because
I saw that you was partly right; I _hadn't_ been quite fair with you. But I
always did admire you, and you know it. Some them little things you used to
get off in the old Free Press--well, I could see 't you was _smart_. And I
liked you; and it kind o' hurt me when I thought you'd been makin' fun o'
me to that woman. Well, I could see 't I was a dumned old fool, afterwards.
And I always wanted to tell you so. And I always did hope that I should be
able to offer you that money again, twice over, and get you to take it just
to show that you didn't bear malice." Bartley looked up, with quickened
interest. "But I can't do it now, sir," added Kinney.

"Why, what's happened?" asked Bartley, in a disappointed tone, pouring out
his second glass from his second bottle.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, with a certain reluctance, "I undertook to
provision the camp on spec, last winter, and--well, you know, I always run
a little on food for the brain,"--Bartley broke into a reminiscent cackle,
and Kinney smiled forlornly,--"and thinks I, 'Dumn it, I'll give 'em the
real thing, every time.' And I got hold of a health-food circular; and I
sent on for a half a dozen barrels of their crackers and half a dozen
of their flour, and a lot of cracked cocoa, and I put the camp on a
health-food basis. I calculated to bring those fellows out in the spring
physically vigorous and mentally enlightened. But my goodness! After the
first bakin' o' that flour and the first round o' them crackers, it was all
up! Fellows got so mad that I suppose if I hadn't gone back to doughnuts,
and sody biscuits, and Japan tea, they'd 'a' burnt the camp down. Of course
I yielded. But it ruined me, Bartley; it bu'st me."

Bartley dropped his arms upon the table, and, hiding his face upon them,
laughed and laughed again.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, with sad satisfaction, "I'm glad to see that you
don't need any money from me." He had been taking another survey of the
parlor and the dining-room beyond. "I don't know as I ever saw anybody much
better fixed. I should say that you was a success; and you deserve it.
You're a smart fellow, Bart, and you're a good fellow. You're a generous
fellow." Kinney's voice shook with emotion.

Bartley, having lifted his wet and flushed face, managed to say: "Oh,
there's nothing mean about _me_, Kinney," as he felt blindly for the beer
bottles, which he shook in succession with an evident surprise at finding
them empty.

"You've acted like a brother to me, Bartley Hubbard," continued Kinney,
"and I sha'n't forget it in a hurry. I guess it would about broke my heart,
if you hadn't taken it just the way you did to-night. I should like to see
the man that didn't use you well, or the woman, either!" said Kinney, with
vague defiance. "Though _they_ don't seem to have done so bad by you,"
he added, in recognition of Marcia's merit. "I should say _that_ was the
biggest part of your luck She's a lady, sir, every inch of her. Mighty
different stripe from that Montreal woman that cut up so that night."

"Oh, Mrs. Macallister wasn't such a scamp, after all," said Bartley, with
magnanimity.

"Well, sir, _you_ can say so. I ain't going to be too strict with a _girl_;
but I like to see a married woman _act_ like a married woman. Now, I don't
think you'd catch Mrs. Hubbard flirting with a young fellow the way that
woman went on with you that night?" Bartley grinned. "Well, sir, you're
getting along and you're happy."

"Perfect clam," said Bartley.

"Such a position as you've got,--such a house, such a wife, _and_ such a
baby! Well," said Kinney, rising, "it's a little too much for _me_."

"Want to go to bed?" asked Bartley.

"Yes, I guess I better turn in," returned Kinney, despairingly.

"Show you the way."

Bartley tripped up stairs with Kinney's bag, which they had left standing
in the hall, while Kinney creaked carefully after him; and so led the way
to the guest-chamber, and turned up the gaslight, which had been left
burning low.

Kinney stood erect, dwarfing the room, and looked round on the pink
chintzing, and soft carpet, and white coverleted bed, and lace-hooded
dressing-mirror, with meek veneration. "Well, I swear!" He said no more,
but sat hopelessly down, and began to pull off his boots.

He was in the same humble mood the next morning, when, having got up
inordinately early, he was found trying to fix his mind on a newspaper by
Bartley, who came down late to the Sunday breakfast, and led his guest into
the dining-room. Marcia, in a bewitching morning-gown, was already there,
having put the daintier touches to the meal herself; and the baby, in a
fresh white dress, was there tied into its arm-chair with a napkin, and
beating on the table with a spoon. Bartley's nonchalance amidst all this
impressed Kinney with a yet more poignant sense of his superiority, and
almost deprived him of the powers of speech. When after breakfast Bartley
took him out to Cambridge on the horse-cars, and showed him the College
buildings, and Memorial Hall, and the Washington Elm, and Mount Auburn,
Kinney fell into such a cowed and broken condition, that something had to
be specially done to put him in repair against Ricker's coming to dinner.
Marcia luckily thought of asking him if he would like to see her kitchen.
In this region Kinney found himself at home, and praised its neat
perfection with professional intelligence. Bartley followed them round with
Flavia on his arm, and put in a jocose word here and there, when he saw
Kinney about to fall a prey to his respect for Marcia, and so kept him
going till Ricker rang. He contrived to give Ricker a hint of the sort of
man he had on his hands, and by their joint effort they had Kinney talking
about himself at dinner before he knew what he was about. He could not help
talking well upon this theme, and he had them so vividly interested, as he
poured out adventure after adventure in his strange career, that Bartley
began to be proud of him.

"Well, sir," said Ricker, when he came to a pause, "you've lived a
romance."

"Yes," replied Kinney, looking at Bartley for his approval, "and I've
always thought that, if I ever got run clean ashore, high and dry, I'd
make a stagger to write it out and do something with it. Do you suppose I
could?"

"I promise to take it for the Sunday edition of the Chronicle Abstract,
whenever you get it ready," said Ricker.

Bartley laid his hand on his friend's arm. "It's bought up, old fellow.
That narrative--'Confessions of an Average American'--belongs to the
Events."

They had their laugh at this, and then Ricker said to Kinney: "But look
here, my friend! What's to prevent our interviewing you on this little
personal history of yours, and using your material any way we like? It
seems to me that you've put your head in the lion's mouth."

"Oh, I'm amongst gentlemen," said Kinney, with an innocent swagger. "I
understand that."

"Well, I don't know about it," said Ricker. "Hubbard, here, is used to all
sorts of hard names; but I've never had that epithet applied to me before."

Kinney doubled himself up over the side of his chair in recognition of
Ricker's joke; and when Bartley rose and asked him if he would come into
the parlor and have a cigar, he said, with a wink, no, he guessed he would
stay with the ladies. He waited with great mystery till the folding-doors
were closed, and Bartley had stopped peeping through the crevice between
them, and then he began to disengage from his watch-chain the golden
nugget, shaped to a rude sphere, which hung there. This done, he asked
if he might put it on the little necklace--a christening gift from Mrs.
Halleck--which the baby had on, to see how it looked. It looked very well,
like an old Roman _bolla_, though neither Kinney nor Marcia knew it. "Guess
we'll let it stay there," he suggested, timidly.

"Mr. Kinney!" cried Marcia, in amaze, "I can't let you!"

"Oh, _do_ now, ma'am!" pleaded the big fellow, simply. "If you knew how
much good it does me, you would. Why, it's been like heaven to me to get
into such a home as this for a day,--it has indeed."

"Like heaven?" said Marcia, turning pale. "Oh, my!"

"Well, I don't mean any harm. What I mean is, I've knocked about the world
so much, and never had any home of my own, that to see folks as happy as
you be makes me happier than I've been since I don't know when. Now, you
let it stay. It was the first piece of gold I picked up in Californy when
I went out there in '50, and it's about the last; I didn't have very good
luck. Well, of course! I know I ain't fit to give it; but I want to do it.
I think Bartley's about the greatest fellow and he's the best fellow this
world can show. That's the way I feel about him. And I want to do it. Sho!
the thing wa'n't no use to me!"

Marcia always gave her maid off all work Sunday afternoon, and she would
not trespass upon her rule because she had guests that day. Except for the
confusion to which Kinney's unexpected gift had put her, she would have
waited for him to join the others before she began to clear away the
dinner; but now she mechanically began, and Kinney, to whom these domestic
occupations were a second nature, joined her in the work, equally
absent-minded in the fervor of his petition.

Bartley suddenly flung open the doors. "My dear, Mr. Ricker says he must
be go--" He discovered Marcia with the dish of potatoes in her hand, and
Kinney in the act of carrying off the platter of turkey. "Look here,
Ricker!"

Kinney came to himself, and, opening his mouth above the platter wide
enough to swallow the remains of the turkey, slapped his leg with the
hand that he released for the purpose, and shouted, "The ruling passion,
Bartley, the ruling passion!"

The men roared; but Marcia, even while she took in the situation, did not
see anything so ridiculous in it as they. She smiled a little in sympathy
with their mirth, and then said, with a look and tone which he had not seen
or heard in her since the day of their picnic at Equity, "Come, see what
Mr. Kinney has given baby, Bartley."

They sat up talking Kinney over after he was gone; but even at ten o'clock
Bartley said he should not go to bed; he felt like writing.




XXIX.


Bartley lived well now. He felt that he could afford it, on fifty dollars a
week; and yet somehow he had always a sheaf of unpaid bills on hand. Rent
was so much, the butcher so much, the grocer so much; these were the great
outlays, and he knew just what they were; but the sum total was always much
larger than he expected. At a pinch, he borrowed; but he did not let Marcia
know of this, for she would have starved herself to pay the debt; what was
worse, she would have wished him to starve with her. He kept the purse, and
he kept the accounts; he was master in his house, and he meant to be so.

The pinch always seemed to come in the matter of clothes, and then Marcia
gave up whatever she wanted, and said she must make the old things do.
Bartley hated this; in his position he must dress well, and, as there was
nothing mean about him, he wished Marcia to dress well to. Just at this
time he had set his heart on her having a certain sacque which they had
noticed in a certain window one day when they were on Washington Street
together. He surprised her a week later by bringing the sacque home to her,
and he surprised himself with a seal-skin cap which he had long coveted: it
was coming winter, now, and for half a dozen days of the season he would
really need the cap. There would be many days when it would be comfortable,
and many others when it would be tolerable, and he looked so handsome in it
that Marcia herself could not quite feel that it was an extravagance. She
asked him how they could afford both of the things at once, but he answered
with easy mystery that he had provided the funds; and she went gayly round
with him to call on the Hallecks that evening and show off her sacque. It
was so stylish and pretty that it won her a compliment from Ben Halleck,
which she noticed because it was the first compliment, or anything like
it, that he had ever paid her. She repeated it to Bartley. "He said that I
looked like a Hungarian princess that he saw in Vienna."

"Well, I suppose it has a hussar kind of look with that fur trimming and
that broad braid. Did anybody say anything about my cap?" asked Bartley
with burlesque eagerness.

"Oh, poor Bartley!" she cried in laughing triumph. "I don't believe any of
them noticed it; and you kept twirling it round in your hands all the time
to make them look."

"Yes, I did my level best," said Bartley.

They had a jolly time about that. Marcia was proud of her sacque; when she
took it off and held it up by the loop in the neck, so as to realize its
prettiness, she said she should make it last three winters at least; and
she leaned over and gave Bartley a sweet kiss of gratitude and affection,
and told him not to try to make up for it by extra work, but to help her
scrimp for it.

"I'd rather do the extra work," he protested. In fact he already had the
extra work done. It was something that he felt he had the right to sell
outside of the Events, and he carried his manuscript to Ricker and offered
it to him for his Sunday edition.

Ricker read the title and ran his eye down the first slip, and then glanced
quickly at Hubbard. "You don't mean it?"

"Yes I do," said Bartley. "Why not?"

"I thought he was going to use the material himself some time."

Bartley laughed. "He use the material! Why, he can't write, any more than a
hen; he can make tracks on paper, but nobody would print 'em, much less
buy 'em. I know him, he's all right. It wouldn't hurt the material for his
purpose, any way; and he'll be tickled to death when he sees it. If he
ever does. Look here, Ricker!" added Bartley, with a touch of anger at
the hesitation in his friend's face, "if you're going to spring any
conscientious scruples on me, I prefer to offer my manuscript elsewhere. I
give you the first chance at it; but it needn't go begging. Do you suppose
I'd do this if I didn't understand the man, and know just how he'd take
it?"

"Why, of course, Hubbard! I beg your pardon. If you say it's all right, I
am bound to be satisfied. What do you want for it?"

"Fifty dollars."

"That's a good deal, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. But I can't afford to do a dishonorable thing for less money,"
said Bartley, with a wink.

The next Sunday, when Marcia came home from church, she went into the
parlor a moment to speak to Bartley before she ran upstairs to the baby. He
was writing, and she put her left hand on his back while with her right she
held her sacque slung over her shoulder by the loop, and leaned forward
with a wandering eye on the papers that strewed the table. In that attitude
he felt her pause and grow absorbed, and then rigid; her light caress
tightened into a grip. "Why, how base! How shameful! That man shall never
enter my doors again! Why, it's stealing!"

"What's the matter? What are you talking about?" Bartley looked up with a
frown of preparation.

"This!" cried Marcia, snatching up the Chronicle-Abstract, at which she had
been looking. "Haven't you seen it? Here's Mr. Kinney's life all written
out! And when he said that he was going to keep it and write it out
himself. That thief has stolen it!"

"Look out how you talk," said Bartley. "Kinney's an old fool, and he never
could have written it out in the world--"

"That makes no difference. He said that he told the things because he knew
he was among gentlemen. A great gentleman Mr. Ricker is! And I thought he
was so nice!" The tears sprang to her eyes, which flashed again. "I want
you to break off with him. Bartley; I don't want you to have anything to
do with such a _thief_! And I shall be proud to tell everybody that you've
broken off with him _because_ he was a thief. Oh, Bartley--"

"Hold your tongue!" shouted her husband.

"I _won't_ hold my tongue! And if you defend--"

"Don't you say a word against Ricker. It's all right, I tell you. You don't
understand such things. You don't know what you're talking about. I--I--I
wrote the thing myself."

He could face her, but she could not face him. There was a subsidence
in her proud attitude, as if her physical strength had snapped with her
breaking spirit.

"There's no theft about it." Bartley went on. "Kinney would never write it
out, and if he did, I've put the material in better shape for him here than
he could ever have given it. Six weeks from now nobody will remember a word
of it; and he could tell the same things right over again, and they would
be just as good as new." He went on to argue the point.

She seemed not to have listened to him. When he stopped, she said, in a
quiet, passionless voice, "I suppose you wrote it to get money for this
sacque."

"Yes; I did," replied Bartley.

She dropped it on the floor at his feet. "I shall never wear it again," she
said in the same tone, and a little sigh escaped her.

"Use your pleasure about that," said Bartley, sitting down to his writing
again, as she turned and left the room.

She went upstairs and came down immediately, with the gold nugget, which
she had wrenched from the baby's necklace, and laid it on the paper before
him. "Perhaps you would like to spend it for tivoli beer," she suggested.
"Flavia shall not wear it."

"I'll get it fitted on to my watch-chain." Bartley slipped it into his
waistcoat pocket.

The sacque still lay on the floor at his feet; he pulled his chair a little
forward and put his feet on it. He feigned to write awhile longer, and then
he folded up his papers, and went out, leaving Marcia to make her Sunday
dinner alone. When he came home late at night, he found the sacque where
she had dropped it, and with a curse he picked it up and hung it on the
hat-rack in the hall.

He slept in the guest-chamber, and at times during the night the child
cried in Marcia's room and waked him; and then he thought he heard a sound
of sobbing which was not the child's. In the morning, when he came down to
breakfast, Marcia met him with swollen eyes.

"Bartley," she said tremulously, "I wish you would tell me how you felt
justified in writing out Mr. Kinney's life in that way."

"My dear," said Bartley, with perfect amiability, for he had slept off his
anger, and he really felt sorry to see her so unhappy, "I would tell you
almost anything you want on any other subject; but I think we had better
remand that one to the safety of silence, and go upon the general
supposition that I know what I'm about."

"I can't, Bartley!"

"Can't you? Well, that's a pity." He pulled his chair to the
breakfast-table. "It seems to me that girl's imagination always fails her
on Mondays. Can she never give us anything but hash and corn-bread when
she's going to wash? However, the coffee's good. I suppose _you_ made it?"

"Bartley!" persisted Marcia, "I want to believe in everything you do,--I
want to be proud of it--"

"That will be difficult," suggested Bartley, with an air of thoughtful
impartiality, "for the wife of a newspaper man."

"No, no! It needn't be! It mustn't be! If you will only tell me--" She
stopped, as if she feared to repeat her offence.

Bartley leaned back in his chair and looked at her intense face with a
smile. "Tell you that in some way I had Kinney's authority to use his
facts? Well, I should have done that yesterday if you had let me. In the
first place, Kinney's the most helpless ass in the world. He could never
have used his own facts. In the second place, there was hardly anything in
his rigmarole the other day that he hadn't told me down there in the lumber
camp, with full authority to use it in any way I liked; and I don't see how
he could revoke that authority. That's the way I reasoned about it."

"I see,--I see!" said Marcia, with humble eagerness.

"Well, that's all there is about it. What I've done can't hurt Kinney. If
he ever does want to write his old facts out, he'll be glad to take my
report of them, and--spoil it," said Bartley, ending with a laugh.

"And if--if there had been anything wrong about it," said Marcia, anxious
to justify him to herself, "Mr. Ricker would have told you so when you
offered him the article."

"I don't think Mr. Ricker would have ventured on any impertinence with me,"
said Bartley, with grandeur. But he lapsed into his wonted, easy way
of taking everything. "What are you driving at, Marsh? I don't care
particularly for what happened yesterday. We've had rows enough before, and
I dare say we shall have them again. You gave me a bad quarter of an hour,
and you gave yourself"--he looked at her tear-stained eyes--"a bad night,
apparently. That's all there is about it."

"Oh, no, that isn't all! It isn't like the other quarrels we've had. When I
think how I've felt toward you ever since, it _scares_ me. There can't be
anything sacred in our marriage unless we trust each other in everything."

"Well, _I_ haven't done any of the mistrusting," said Bartley, with
humorous lightness. "But isn't sacred rather a strong word to use in regard
to our marriage, anyway?"

"Why--why--what do you mean, Bartley? We were married by a minister."

"Well, yes, by what was left of one," said Bartley. "He couldn't seem
to shake himself together sufficiently to ask for the proof that we had
declared our intention to get married."

Marcia looked mystified. "Don't you remember his saying there was something
else, and my suggesting to him that it was the fee?"

Marcia turned white. "Father said the certificate was all right--"

"Oh, he asked to see it, did he? He is a prudent old gentleman. Well, it is
all right."

"And what difference did it make about our not proving that we had declared
our intention?" asked Marcia, as if only partly reassured.

"No difference to us; and only a difference of sixty dollars fine to him,
if it was ever found out."

"And you let the poor old man run that risk?"

"Well, you see, it couldn't be helped. We hadn't declared our intention,
and the lady seemed very anxious to be married. You needn't be troubled. We
are married, right and tight enough; but I don't know that there's anything
_sacred_ about it."

"No," Marcia wailed out, "its tainted with fraud from the beginning."

"If you like to say so," Bartley assented, putting his napkin into its
ring.

Marcia hid her face in her arms on the table; the baby left off drumming
with its spoon, and began to cry.

Witherby was reading the Sunday edition of the Chronicle-Abstract, when
Bartley got down to the Events office; and he cleared his throat with
a premonitory cough as his assistant swung easily into the room. "Good
morning, Mr. Hubbard," he said. "There is quite an interesting article in
yesterday's Chronicle-Abstract. Have you seen it?"

"Yes," said Bartley. "What article?"

"This Confessions of an Average American." Witherby held out the paper,
where Bartley's article, vividly head-lined and sub-headed, filled half a
page. "What is the reason _we_ cannot have something of this kind?"

"Well, I don't know," Bartley began.

"Have you any idea who wrote this?"

"Oh, yes, I wrote it."

Witherby had the task before him of transmuting an expression of rather low
cunning into one of wounded confidence, mingled with high-minded surprise.
"I thought it had your ear-marks, Mr. Hubbard: but I preferred not to
believe it till I heard the fact from your own lips. I supposed that our
contract covered such contributions as this."

"I wrote it out of time, and on Sunday night. You pay me by the week, and
all that I do throughout the week belongs to you. The next day after that
Sunday I did a full day's work on the Events. I don't see what you have to
complain of. You told me when I began that you would not expect more than a
certain amount of work from me. Have I ever done less?"

"No, but--"

"Haven't I always done more?"

"Yes, I have never complained of the amount of work. But upon this theory
of yours, what you did in your summer vacation would not belong to the
Events, or what you did on legal holidays."

"I never have any summer vacation or holidays, legal or illegal. Even when
I was down at Equity last summer I sent you something for the paper every
day."

This was true, and Witherby could not gainsay it. "Very well, sir. If this
is to be your interpretation of our understanding for the future, I shall
wish to revise our contract," he said pompously.

"You can tear it up if you like," returned Bartley. "I dare say Ricker
would jump at a little study of the true inwardness of counting-room
journalism. Unless you insist upon having it for the Events." Bartley
gave a chuckle of enjoyment as he sat down at his desk; Witherby rose and
stalked away.

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