The Empty Sack

on Dauphin. To have owned Collingham Lodge and its occupants during all his conscious life, and then one day to find himself obliged to share this dominion with a stran

, though it was difficult not to be aware of the pre

distant burr of the motor-car first reached him. When the burr became a throb he knew it was passing the oak that marked the Collingham boundary; and, since it had arrived on his own ground, he could run down the driveway to meet it. This had been his exclusive right. To be j

me of late the chief elements in the aura she threw out, and by which dogs take their sense of men. It was not that her words or expressions betraye

felt the sweeping to and fro of an imperious will worried or frustrated, though he sat on his haunches and gave no sign. He couldn't give a sign, because Max would misunderstand it. There he was, down on the lawn before the portico, grinning, prancing, joking, calling names-names quite audible in dog intercou

he thought, was to sit and blink at the magnolias, hawthorns, and lilacs pursuing one another into bloom. All he had to thi

While she carried the cares of so many others, no one else carried hers. All through the winter she had had Edith and Bob on her mind, and now she had Bradley. On leaving for the bank that mo

to deal with, though she had not been difficult herself. Nearly seven months had passed, and yet her affair with Ayling was exactly where it had been in the previous October. That was the advantage of

him, whatever might be the consequences. She, his mother, had it "out" with him, and he had said so. It was a terrible

land connections were unexceptional, Junia had been attentive to him through the winter, making him feel that Collingham Lodge was a second home. What he didn't tell to her he told to Edith, and what Edith

nk-and-white hawthorn in the shade of which they sat in favor of extending the court so that Bob and Edith could both have parties simultaneou

o your father and me," Junia began, in a quaverin

could only ask, "What things?" a

he confessed. "You might as

while Edith could be controlled, Bob could only be managed. With Ed

whatever you do I shall try to accept. It will be har

hand and s

s, old

ur father. You know for yourself

lways seemed to me that he'd give in to

angerous, she glided to a

n love with her for seven or eight months, and yo

puffs at his cigarett

ike a shot,

she w

t y

think s

ure sh

es you so

g. I ju

r family and mold them for the best. When she called it "the best" she meant it as the best. She was not a worldly woman with mere fashio

out to dinner, and, though equal to all the social demands, her mind did not relinquish the purpose she had in view. Could she have accomplished it without her husband's aid, she woul

ng but a trained subconsciousness had carried her through that, and she looked for the same mainstay of the self to come to her aid again. One of the lessons she had learned at that time

he present. He was a tempestuous sea of passions right at the dangerous flood-tide, the middle forties. The first ardor of married life was at an end f

s more intensely a mother than she was a wife, living in the amazing careers she was planning for her children. Edith would marry an English peer, while Bob would t

ad only recently been laid and they were drinking t

e suspected it or not, but for so

ciousness. It seemed to her that she had been slain; and yet, with a nerve

" she said, at last, with only the slightest tremor in

that you don't c

is to be drawn into an affair from which your own good taste-me

d at her

sent it any m

g me the information-to s

rtl

bor for your pains. You'll never see m

ic. It enabled her to take blows without seeming to have felt them, and to

liked Collingham Lodge, she should remain there and let him go away. He would ma

she didn't plead; she didn't reproach him; she didn't treat h

ou to remain with me," wer

order to get rid of her. She was sufficiently in sympathy with her sex to insist on the terms being liberal.

impetuous, imperious, as he knew her to be, he saw her curb and compress these qualities till they became a prodigious motor f

ay morning, before he went to town, she gave her husband as muc

for a minute, Bradley? I've

he was propped up with pillows, a wicker tray with legs on the coverlet before her. In the canopied Louis Quinze bed of old rich-grained walnut, raise

A prie-dieu in a corner supported a bible and a prayer-book in tooled bindings with a coat of arms. The white-paneled wardrobe room seen thro

bank, Collingham sank into the armchair nearest to the bed. His thoughts were on th

a tone little more than casual.

g off his brief q

kind of scrape

give us a good deal of trouble

he was afraid of chickens coming home to roost. Though he had never broached the subject wit

ything ve

offee before letting him have the ful

ome sligh

hen it

rned. As to her-well I presum

tell you

d me hi

wo thousand dollars a year. Did he s

I suppose it would be what

on't give h

wanted to know.

call i

s not. But

pecial reason f

viously had never occurred. "Men are so guileless about women who have-who have love to sell. They're such simpletons. They

t it seemed to go down in spite of him as the

dn't Bob be sent with him? It would add to his experience and make him feel important. After he had left Asuncion, reasons could be found for keeping him at Li

irl? I suppo

bert Wray. Bob met her at

of the chair, he

Follett

ast year." Her eyes followed him as he stumbled to his feet. "Bu

me to roost" was too obscure. Listening in a daze to the rest of his instructions

uctance Bob might feel, he would see the opportunity as too important to forego. All Junia begged of her husband was to know nothing of Bob's love affairs. If Bob himself brought the

he approached Mr. Huntley on the subject of being responsible for Bob on the errand to Asuncion, and Mr. Huntley expressed

! How are t

" Bob admitte

I want to t

son's atmosphere. Whatever his mother had been told on Saturday, his father might have learned by

f the roosting chicken, he plunged nervously, with a tendency to redden, to stammer, and otherwise to betray himself. Bef

dad," he said, aloud; "and I suppose it woul

but he obeyed Junia's injunction as to

m giving you; it's-it's a decision of the bank of which you're an em

ed that you won't send m

re, preferring to consult Junia as to what he should d

uphin despised as he despised the police dog's ears. They were forever pointed, alert, inquisitive, ignoble. But there it was! Max was bounding down the driveway, co

perceived the conflict of auras when wife and husband met. Waves of unreasoned dread on the one side encounte

where only the strip of red carpet running its length and up the fine stairway, two or three bits of ol

briskly, having heard all that

he library, where she

d th

lines written in her l

ngham

llo

iss Fo

tant to you as to us. If you could make it convenient to come here to-morrow, Thursday, afternoon, you would find a very good train a

sinc

Coll

at her w

the bi

g we had anything to do with it. You personally needn't be supposed to know that this nonsense has ever b

the paper

ove I don't

down and I'