The Ordeal | Page 5

his smiling pink face, while his
blue eyes danced merrily between the tips of his fingers. Then he
advanced again, lunging slowly along, uttering the while a menacing
"Mew! Mew! Mew!"
His mother had no heart for his fun. She could scarcely summon the
strength and attention requisite for this fantastic infantile foolery when
all her capacities were enlisted to support her dignity in the presence of
this man, necessarily inimical, censorious, critical, who had once meant
so much in her life. But she could not rebuff the baby! She would not
humble his spirit! She must enter into his jest, whatever the effort cost
her.
It was poor acting certainly. She affected fright, as the child expected.
She cowered dismayed. "Oh, oh!" she cried, watching his erratic
approach. "What is that?" She pretended flight, but sank into a chair,
apparently overpowered. She gazed down at the child with the lifted
hands of horror as he clasped the folds of her gown, his eyes shining
with fun, his teeth glittering between his red lips, his laughter rippling
with delight. "Me scared oo,' mamma," he squealed ecstatically. "Oo
didn't know what me was. Oo t'ought me was a great big bear."
Whereupon she looked down at him with amazed recognition. "Is it you,
Archie? Dear me, I thought it was a great big bear."
"Mew! Mew! Mew!" he repeated in joy.
"Why, Archie, old man, bears don't mew!" cried the genial Briscoe,
recovering his equanimity. "Bears growl--didn't you know that?"
He straightway began to teach the little fellow a very noisy and
truculent vocalization of the ursine type, which Archie, who was a great
favorite with his host, eagerly imitated, Briscoe appearing throughout
the duet at the pitiable disadvantage of the adult imbecile disporting

himself in infantile wise.
The tumult of the child's entrance had the effect of relaxing for Briscoe
the tension of the situation, but when Archie's nurse appeared at the
door and he ran away at her summons, the host looked apprehensively
about the circle as the party ranged themselves around the fire, its glow
beginning to be welcome in the increasing chill of the evening.
Ordinarily, this was a household of hilarious temperament. Life had
been good to the Briscoes, and they loved it. They were fond of rich
viands, old wines, genial talk, good stories, practical jests, music, and
sport; the wife herself being more than a fair shot, a capital whip, and a
famous horsewoman. Even when there was no stranger within the gates,
the fires would flare merrily till midnight, the old songs echo, and the
hours speed away on winged sandals. But this evening neither host nor
hostess could originate a sentence in the presence of what seemed to
their sentimental persuasions the awful tragedy of two hearts. Indeed,
conversation on ordinary lines would have been impossible, but that
Bayne with an infinite self-confidence, as it seemed to Mrs. Briscoe,
took the centre of the stage and held it. All Bayne's spirit was up! The
poise and reserve of his nature, his habit of sedulous self-control, were
reasserted. He could scarcely forgive himself their momentary lapse.
He felt it insupportable that he should not have held his voice to normal
steadiness, his pulses to their wonted calm, in meeting again this
woman who had wrought him such signal injury, who had put upon
him such insufferable indignity. Surely he could feel naught for her but
the rancor she had earned! From the beginning, she had been all siren,
all deceit. She was but the semblance, the figment, of his foolish dream,
and why should the dream move him still, shattered as it was by the
torturing realities of the truth? Why must he needs bring tribute to her
powers, flatter her ascendency in his life, by faltering before her casual
presence? He rallied all his forces. He silently swore a mighty oath that
he at least would take note of his own dignity, that he would deport
himself with a due sense of his meed of self-respect. Though with a
glittering eye and a strong flush on his cheek, he conserved a deliberate
incidental manner, and maintained a pose of extreme interest in his own
prelection as, seated in an arm-chair before the fire he began to talk
with a very definite intention of a quiet self-assertion, of absorbing and

controlling the conversation. He described at great length the incidents
of his trip hither, and descanted on the industrial and political
conditions of east Tennessee. This brought him by an easy transition to
an analysis of the peculiar traits of its mountain population, which
included presently their remarkable idiosyncrasies of speech. When he
was fairly launched on this theme, which was of genuine interest to him,
for he had long fostered a linguistic fad, all