With the Procession | Page 6

year she overhauled her previous entries, so to speak,
and added whatever new ones were necessary to bring her books down
to the present day.
She pleased herself, on the occasion of such reviews, with the thought
that her brother's long absence was so largely and so laboriously
educational. There, for example, was his winter and spring at
Heidelberg, which she figured as given over to Kant and Hegel. This
sojourn was attested by a photograph which showed her brother in a
preposterous little round cap, as well as with a bar of sticking-plaster
(not markedly philosophical, it must be confessed) upon one cheek.
Again, there was his six months' stay in Paris, during which time he
had dabbled in pigments at one of the studios affected by Americans.
Her vouchers for this period consisted of several water-colors; they
were done in a violent and slap-dash fashion, and had been inspired,
apparently, by scenes in the environs of the capital. They were marked
"Meudon" and "St. Cloud" and "Suresnes," with the dates; both names
and dates were put where they showed up very prominently. Jane was
rather overcome by these sketches on a first view, and after she had
pinned them up on the walls of her bedroom (she had made no scruple
over an immediate individual appropriation) she was obliged to
acknowledge that you had to step back some little distance in order to
"get them."
Then there was his year at Milan, during which he was engaged in the
cultivation of his voice at the Conservatory. "A whole year," said
innocent Jane to herself; "think of Dick's staying in one place as long as
that!" She made no account of the easily accessible joys of Monte Carlo,
but figured him, instead, as running interminable scales at all hours of
day and night, and as participating, now and then, in the chorus at the
Scala, for which purpose, as he wrote her, he had had a pair of tights
made to order. In another letter he sent her a pen-and-ink sketch of

himself as he appeared while studying the last act of "Favorita." He
explained that the large looking-glasses surrounding him were designed
to give the disillusioned Fernando opportunity to see whether his facial
expression was corresponding to the nature of the music he was
interpreting.
All this completely overpowered poor Jane; it enveloped her brother's
head in a roseate halo; it wrapped him in the sweet and voluminous
folds of a never-failing incense; it imparted a warm glow to his coolish
summer in the Engadine, and it illumined his archaeological prowlings
through the Peloponnesus; it opened up a dozen diverging vistas to the
enthusiastic girl herself, and advanced her rapidly in long courses of
expansion and improvement. Above all, it filled her with a raging
impatience for his return. "Between him and me," she would say to
herself, "something may be done. Pa'll never do anything to get us out
of this rut; nor ma. Neither will Roger nor Alice. And Rosy--well,
Rosy's too young to count on, yet. But Richard Truesdale Marshall, the
younger son of the well-known David Marshall, of Lake Street,
recently returned from a long course of travel and study abroad"--she
seemed to be quoting from the printed column--"can. Especially when
assisted by his sister, the clever and intellectual Miss Jane Marshall,
who--"
"Oh, bother this bang!" exclaimed Miss Jane Marshall, pettishly. She
threw her comb down between pin-cushion and cologne bottle, and
flattened a frowning and protesting glance against her mirror. "I guess
I'll give up trying to be beautiful, and just be quaint."
David Marshall received his son with less exaltation. He had a vivid
recollection of the liberal letter of credit which had started the young
man on his way, and this recollection had subsequently been touched
up and heightened by the payment of many drafts for varying but
considerable amounts; and he was now concerning himself with the
practical question, What have I got for my money? He felt his own
share in the evolution of this brilliant and cultured youth, whose corona
of accomplishments might well dazzle and even abash a plain business
person; and he awaited with interest a response to the reasonable

interrogation, to what end shall all these means be turned? He received
his son with a dry and cautious kindness, determined not to be too
precipitate in ascertaining the young man's ideas as to the future--a
week more or less could make no great difference now.
David Marshall was a tall, spare man whose slow composure of
carriage invested him with a sort of homely dignity. He wore a reddish
beard, now largely touched with white--a mixture whose effect
prompted the suggestion that his grandfather might have been a
Scotchman; and the look from his blue eyes