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  "'My dear Ethel,' I replied, 'she will not. And only see how you are making it all up out of your head. You have never seen her, but you speak of her as a grey-haired grandmother.'"

  "'She must be, Richard. You have told me that Mr. Beverly is a married man and about forty-five. No doubt he has older sisters and brothers. But if he has not, his mother can hardly be less than sixty-five, and he has probably been married for several years. He might easily have a daughter coming out, next winter, and a son at Harvard or Yale; and if their grandmother's hair is not grey, that is quite as unnatural as her speculating in monopolised eggs in this way at her age. She must be a very unladylike person.'"

  "Ethel, I saw, was excited. Therefore I made no more point of her theories concerning the appearance and family circle of old Mrs. Beverly. But in justice to myself I felt obliged to remind her, first, that I was investing, not speculating, and second, that it was Mr.

  Beverly's advice I was following, and not that of his mother. 'Had he not spoken of her,' I said, 'I should have remained unaware of her existence.'"

  "'She is at the bottom of it all the same,' said Ethel. 'Everything you have bought has been because she bought it.'"

  "'That is not quite the right way to put it,' I replied. 'I was willing to buy these securities because Mr. Beverly thought so highly of them that he felt justified in--'"

  "'There is no use,' interrupted Ethel, 'in our going round this circle as if we were a pair of squirrels. I do not ask you to hate that woman for my sake, but I cannot change my own feeling. Do you remember, Richard, about the City of Philippi Sewer Bonds? You did not want to buy them at first. You told me yourself that you thought new towns in Texas were apt to buzz suddenly and then die because all the people hurried away to some newer town and left the houses and stores standing empty. But Mr. Beverly's mother got some, and all your hesitation fled. And now I see that the Gulf, Galveston, and Little Rock is going to build a branch that may make Philippi a perfectly evaporated town. If you sold these bonds to-day, how much would you lose?'"

  "I did not enjoy telling Ethel how much, but I had to. 'Only fifteen thousand dollars,' I said."

  "'Only!' said Ethel. 'Well, I hope his mother will lose a great deal more than that.'"

  "It is seldom that Ethel taps her foot, but she had begun to tap it now; and this inclined me to avoid any attempt at a soothing reply, in the hope that silence might prove still more soothing, and that thus we might get away from old Mrs. Beverly."

  "'She cannot possibly be less than sixty-five,' Ethel presently announced. 'And she is far more likely to be seventy.'"

  "I thought it best to agree to any age that Ethel chose to give the old lady."

  "'Do you suppose,' Ethel continued, 'that she does it by telephone?'"

  "'My dearest,' I responded, 'he must do it all for her, of course, you know.'"

  "'I doubt that very much, Richard. And she strikes me as being the sort of character for whom a mere telephone would not be enough excitement. The nerves of those people require more and more stimulants to give them any sensation at all. I believe that she sits in his private office and watches the ticker.'"

  "'Why not give her a ticker in her bedroom while you are about it, Ethel?' I suggested."

  "But Ethel could not smile. 'I think that is perfectly probable,' she answered. And then,

  'Oh, Richard, isn't it mean!' At this I took her hand, and she--but again I abstain from dwelling upon those circumstances of the engaged which are familiar to you all."

  "The change of May into June, and the change of June into July, did not mellow Ethel's bitter feelings. I remember the day after Petunias defaulted on their interest that she exclaimed, 'I hope I shall never meet her!' We always called Mr. Beverly's mother 'she'

  now. 'For if I were to meet her,' continued Ethel, 'I feel I should say something that I should regret. Oh, Richard, I suppose we shall have to give up that house on Park Avenue!'"

  "I put a cheerful and even insular face on the matter, for I could not bear to see Ethel so depressed. But it was hard work for me. Some few of my investments were evidently good; but it always seemed as if it was into these that I had happened to put not much money, while the bulk of my fortune was entangled in the others. Besides the usual Midsummer faintness that overtakes the stock market, my own specialties were a good deal more than faint. On the 20th of August I took the afternoon train to spend my two weeks' holiday at Lenox; and during much of the journey I gazed at the Wall Street edition of the afternoon paper that I had purchased as I came through the Grand Central Station. Ethel and I read it in the evening."

  "'I wonder what she's buying now?' said Ethel, vindictively."

  "'Well, I can't help feeling sorry for her,' I answered, with as much of a smile as I could produce."

  "'That is so unnecessary, Richard! She can easily afford to gratify her gambling instinct.'"

  "'There you go, Ethel, inventing millions for her just as you invented grandchildren.'"

  "'Not at all. Unless she constantly had money lying idle, she could not take these continual plunges. She is an old woman with few expenses, and she lives well within her income. You would hear of her entertaining if it was otherwise. So instead of conservatively investing her surplus, she makes ducks and drakes of it in her son's office.

  Is he at Hyde Park now?' Hyde Park was where the old Beverly country seat had always been."

  "'No,' I answered. 'He went to Europe early last month.'"

  "'Very likely he took her with him. She is probably at Monte Carlo.'"

  "'Scarcely in August, I fancy. And I'll tell you what, Ethel. I have been counting it up.

  She has lost twenty-four thousand dollars in the Standard Egg alone. It takes a good deal of surplus to stand that.'"

  "'Serve her right,' said Ethel 'And I would say so to her face.'"

  "September brought freshness to the stock market but not to me. Mr. Beverly, like the well-to-do man that he was, remained away in Europe until October should require his presence as a guiding hand in the office. Thus was I left without his buoyant consolation in the face of my investments."

  "Petunias were being adjusted on a four per cent basis; Dutchess and Columbia Traction was holding its own; I could not complain of Amalgamated Electric, though it was now lower than when I had bought it, while had I sold it on that Wednesday in May when Ethel begged me, before the increased dividend turned out a mistake, I should have made money. But Philippi Sewers were threatened; Pasteurised Feeders had been numb since June; Pollyopolis Heat, Light, Power, Paving, Pressing, and Packing was going to pass its quarterly dividend; and Standard Egg had gone down from 63 to 7 1/8. My million dollars on paper now was worth in reality less than a quarter of that sum, and although we could still make both ends meet fairly well in some place where you wouldn't want to live, like Philadelphia, in New York we should drop into a pinched and dwarfed obscurity."

  "I must say now, and I shall never forget, that Ethel during these gloomy weeks behaved much better than I did. The grayer the outlook became, the more words of hope and sense she seemed to find She reminded me that, after all my Uncle Godfrey's legacy had been a thing unlooked for, something out of my scheme of life that I had my youth, my salary and my writing; and that she would wait till she was as old at Mr. Beverly's mother."

  "It was the thought of that lady which brought from Ethel the only note of complaint she uttered in my presence during that whole dreary month."

  "We were spending Sunday with a house party at Hyde Park; and driving to church, we passed an avenue gate with a lodge. 'Rockhurst, sir,' said the coachman. 'Whose place?' I inquired. 'The old Beverly place, sir.' Ethel heard him tell me this; and as we went on, we saw a carriage and pair coming down the avenue toward the gate with that look which horses always seem to have when they are taking the family to church on Sunday morning."

  "'If I see her,' said Ethel to me as we entered the door, 'I shall be unable to say my prayers.'"

  "But only young peopl
e came into the Beverly pew, and Ethel said her prayers and also sang the hymn and chants very sweetly."

  "After the service, we strolled together in the old and lovely grave yard before starting homeward. We had told them that we should prefer to walk back. The day was beautiful, and one could see a little blue piece of the river, sparkling."

  "'Here is where they are all buried,' said Ethel, and we paused before brown old headstones with Beverly upon them. 'Died 1750; died 1767,' continued Ethel, reading the names and inscriptions. 'I think one doesn't mind the idea of lying in such a place as this.'"

  "Some of the young people in the pew now came along the path. 'The grandchildren,' said Ethel. 'She is probably too old to come to church. Or she is in Europe.'"

  "The young people had brought a basket with flowers from their place, and now laid them over several of the grassy mounds. 'Give me some of yours,' said one to the other, presently; 'I've not enough for grandmother's.'"

  "Ethel took me rather sharply by the arm. 'Did you hear that?' she asked."

  "'It can't be she, you know,' said I. 'He would have come back from Europe.'"

  "But we found it out at lunch. It was she, and she had been dead for fifteen years."

  "Ethel and I talked it over in the train going up to town on Monday morning. We had by that time grown calmer. 'If it is not false pretences,' said she, 'and you cannot sue him for damages, and if it is not stealing or something, and you cannot put him in prison, what are you going to do to him, Richard?'"

  "As this was a question which I had frequently asked myself during the night, having found no satisfactory answer to it, I said: 'What would you do in my place, Ethel?' But Ethel knew."

  "'I should find out when he sails, and meet his steamer with a cowhide.'"

  "'Then he would sue me for damages.'"

  "'That would be nothing, if you got a few good cuts in on him.'"

  "'Ethel,' I said, 'please follow me carefully. I should like dearly to cowhide him. and for the sake of argument we will consider it done Then comes the lawsuit. Then I get up and say that I beat him because he made me buy Standard Egg at 63 by telling me that his mother had some, when really the old lady had been dead for fifteen years. When I think of it in this way, I do not feel--'"

  "I know,' interrupted Ethel, 'you are afraid of ridicule. All men are.'"

  "Had Ethel insisted, I believe that I should have cowhided Mr. Beverly for her sake. But before his return our destinies were brightened. Copper had been found near Ethel's waste lands in Michigan, and the family business man was able to sell the property for seven hundred thousand dollars. He did this so promptly that I ventured to ask him if delay might not have brought a greater price. 'Well', he said, 'I don't know. You must seize these things. Blake and Beverly might have got tired waiting."

  "'Blake and Beverly!' I exclaimed 'So they made the purchase. It Mr. Beverly back?'"

  "'Just back. To tell the truth I don't believe they're finding so much copper as they hoped.'"

  "This turned out to be true. And I am not sure that the business man had not known it all the while. 'We looked over the property pretty thoroughly at the time of the Tamarack excitement,' he said. And in a few days more, in fact, it was generally known that this land had returned to its old state of not quite paying the taxes."

  "Then I paid my visit to Mr. Beverly, but with no cowhide. 'Mr. Beverly,' said I, 'I want to announce to you my engagement to Miss Ethel Lansing, whose Michigan copper land you have lately acquired. I hope that you bought some for your mother.'"

  "Those," concluded Mr. Richard Field, "are the circumstances attending my engagement which I felt might interest you. And now, Ethel, tell your story, if they'll listen."

  "Richard," said Ethel, "that is the story I was going to tell."

  ** End **

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  Owen Wister

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