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FAME

Y acquaintance with Mrs. Longbow

bor, but not of idleness. Whatever her

her son Charles. Mrs. Longbow and her two daughters swung into my orbit quite unimportantly at first as shadowy persons to whom Charlie wrote letters home while we were boys at school; later I came to know the mother as an imposing figure, shiny with black jet, who eyed the school from a platform on those great occasions when Charlie received prizes and I did not. I never learned her weight, but I saw that her displacement was enormous. By successive stages, as I increased in stature and in years, my knowledge of her grew. I visited her son, I danced with her daughters, I frequently conversed with her, she preferred to converse rather than to talk,—and I came to know as much of her habit and attitude of mind, perhaps, as one could who was thirty years her junior, not actively engaged in reforming the world, and of the despised sex.

Mrs. Longbow-Amelia E. Longbow, to designate her at once by the name that she made illustrious-was of the older school of philanthropists, who combined militant activity with the literary graces and a tremendous sense of personal dignity. She could despise men and yet receive them in her drawing-room without embarrassment; she could wage a bitter warfare on wickedness and, when deeply stirred, write a tolerable sonnet. She was indefatigable in her labors, but she was never, to my knowledge, flurried or hurried. A large presence, she moved through life with the splendid serenity of a steamroller. She was capable of prodigious la

might-and in her own way. At one time or another she was engaged in reforming most things that are susceptible of improvement or of disturbance. If she did not leave the world better than she found it, the fault was the world's, not hers.

It was a considerable shock to me that she should leave the world at all, so necessary had she seemingly become to its proper administration, let alone its progress. I read the news of her death in London just as I was sailing for home after a summer's holiday, and I felt a touch of pride that I had known the woman whose career was written large that day in the journals of a sister nation. But, as I reflected, neither America nor England had waited till her death to pay their homage. She had lived long, and on many great occasions during three decades she had been signally and publicly honored as the most remarkable of her sex. The cabledespatches announced that she left a comfortable fortune, and leading articles agreed that she was wholly admirable. I felt sure that she would have regarded the praise as unmerited if she had not shown her ability by leaving a respectable inheritance to her children. I had reason also to believe that she never lost her self-confident assurance of her own worth: she died, the newspapers said, quite peacefully.

Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I

had been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year's seniority, in protecting him from the consequences of his mother's celebrity. I even did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me. If I had seen less of Charlie in later years, it was merely because our paths did not often cross in a natural way. We boast about our civilization a good deal, but we keep to our trails much as savages do-or animals, for that matter. Besides, for some years I had a good reason, not connected with Charlie's mother or himself, for keeping away from the Longbow house. So I had been with him less than I could have wished, though I had never lost the habit of his friendship. I was busy in my own way, and he was occupied in his. He had never been the conspicuous success that his youth had promised, but he was more widely known than many men with a greater professional reputation. To the larger public he was always, of course, his mother's son. At forty he At forty he was what one might call a philanthropic lawyer. He did a certain amount of ordinary business, and he wrote on many topics of contemporary interest for the reviews, made many addresses to gatherings of earnest people, served on many boards and commissions. He had retained the modesty and generosity of his boyhood, which made some of us devoted to him even though we were not in full sympathy with all of his activities. Pride and vainglory in him were purely vicarious: he was a little conceited about his mother.

As far back as my college days I had begun to distrust the estimate in which Mrs. Longbow was held by her family and, as well as one could judge, by herself. All of them, be it said, were supported in their opinion of her greatness and her abounding righteousness by the world at large. It was one of my earliest disillusionments to discover the yawning vacuity that lay behind her solid front of fame; it was a sad day for me, though it fostered intellectual pride, when I found out that she was not such a miracle of goodness as she seemed. Though Charles, as a matter of course, knew her much more intimately

than I, I think that he never penetrated her disguise.

With his sisters the case was somewhat different, as I began to suspect not long after my own private discovery. They were a little older than Charles, and had better opportunities of watching their mother at close range. Helen married, when she was about twenty-five, a man of her own age, who eventually became one of the most prominent editors in New York-Henry Wakefield Bradford. She made him a good wife, no doubt, and had some share in his success both as debtor and as creditor. Whether she loved him or not, she supported his interests loyally. Though she had made an escape from her mother's house, she did not desert her. Indeed, in Helen's marriage Mrs. Longbow might truly have been said to have gained a son rather than to have lost a daughter. The Bradfords were ardent worshipers at the shrine, and they worshiped very publicly. In private, however, I detected a faint acidity of reference, a tinge of irony, that made me suspect them of harboring envious feelings. Perhaps they resented the luster of satellites, and would have liked to emulate Mrs. Longbow's glow of assured fame. Helen never seemed to me a very good sort, though we were accounted friends. She had many of her mother's most striking qualities.

Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She was her mother's secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining. Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events, she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother's company. She wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had

personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty novel she had published.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "one has to do something on one's own account in selfdefense. Mother swallows everybodyshe is so wonderful." The final phrase, I thought, did not altogether let Mrs. Longbow out.

They were all writers, you see, all well known on the platform and in the press, all active in good works and reform; but the children's celebrity shone mainly with a borrowed light. Irreverently enough, I used to think of the mother as being like a hen with chicks. The hen's maternal clucking calls less attention to her brood than to herself.

When I went to see Charles, I expected to find him overwhelmed with genuine. grief, and Margaret, if she appeared at all, endeavoring to conceal the relief that was sure to be mixed with her natural sense of loss. Of course, Helen-Mrs. Bradford, that is-I should not see, for she had her own house. I should have to pay her a visit of condolence separately. I dreaded this first meeting, though I was really very sorry for Charles, whose devotion to his mother could not be doubted. I knew that he would expect me to say things at once consoling and laudatory, which would be difficult to frame. With so vocal a family, the pressure of a hand and a murmured word would be insufficient expressions of sympathy.

When I reached the old house rather too far east on Thirty-eighth Street, I was in a state of mind so craven that I would gladly have shirked my duty on any pretext whatsoever; but I could think of none. Instead, I had to tell both Margaret and Charles how deeply I felt their loss. I found them up-stairs in the library, a dismal room with too much furniture of the seventies, a mean grate, and heavy bookcases filled with an odd collection of standard sets, reports of philanthropic societies and commissions, and presentation copies of works in all fields of literature and learning. I cherished a peculiar dislike for this room, and I found no help in its dreadful reminders of Mrs. Longbow's active life. I did not quit myself well,

but I managed to speak some phrases of commonplace sympathy.

Charles, lean, dark, and bearded, took up my words, while Margaret drooped in her chair as though some spring had gone wrong inside her.

"It was good of you to come so soon,' he said. "I'm sorry that you could n't have been here for the funeral. Our friends were magnificent. We were overwhelmed by the tide of sympathy. I think I might say that the whole country mourned with us. You would have appreciated it, as we did. It made one proud of America to see how she was revered; it made me personally ready to ask forgiveness for all my cheap outbursts of temper when I've thought the country was going wrong."

"The papers on the other side were full of praises for her," I remarked uncomfortably.

"I know," returned Charles. "The world must be better than we have thought. I'd like to believe that the moral awakening in which she was a leader has stirred men and women everywhere to right the wrongs of humanity. But it will take more lives like hers to complete the work."

"She interested a great many people in reform who would n't have taken it up if it had n't been for her influence. And all of you are carrying on work along the same lines." I had to say something, and I could think of nothing less inane.

"Yes," Charlie answered, wrinkling his forehead; "we must go on as well as we can. But it's like losing a pilot. She had genius."

Margaret Longbow suddenly straightened herself and began to wipe her eyes delicately.

"Mother had strength for it," she said in a broken voice; "she had wonderful energy.'

"But think what you have done all of you!" I protested. "As a family, you are the most active people I know."

"I can't go on-now. I'm going away as soon as things are straightened out. I'm going to Italy to rest." Margaret's figure relaxed as suddenly as it had stiffened. She lay back against a pile of cushions with the inertness of utter fatigue.

"Margaret!" Charles exclaimed sharply. "What would mother have said?"

Margaret's thin lip curled. She made me wonder what explosion was going to follow.

"It does n't matter about Robert," she said, turning her head ever so slightly in my direction. "He knows that I've tagged behind mother all my life; he knows that I never could keep up. He even knows how hard I used to try. I'm not good enough and I'm not clever enough. She was a whirlwind. I feel her death more than any of you,-I understood her better, but you don't know what it has been like."

She was sobbing now, gently, indeed, but with every sign of an hysterical outburst, save that her voice never rose above its ordinary key. I felt sure that she was not being histrionic even for her own benefit, sure that she was filled with despairing grief, sure that she was holding hard to the crumbling edge of self-control; but I wondered what martyrdom of stifled individualism she was keeping back. Evidently Charles and I did not understand.

Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister's weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.

"Margaret," he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, "I can't see, to be sure, why you should behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the importance of mother's work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had. a sense of duty."

"She had-oh, I know all about it!" Margaret had suddenly grown calm, and spoke with something like scorn. "But you don't know what it was to live with her so many hours every day-to be so dependent on her. I have n't cultivated. any sense of duty of my own."

"You must need to rest," I remarked, wishing more than ever that I could go away, and feeling sure that Charles would give anything to get me out of the house. "A winter in Italy would do both of you a lot of good, I feel sure, after all the strain you 've been through. Why don't you go with Margaret, Charlie?"

He looked at me, sad-eyed and a little wondering.

"I could n't possibly take the time, Bob; but I dare say Margaret does need

LXXXVI-8

a change. I'm sorry if I spoke impatiently. Only I can't stand it, Sister, when you speak as though mother were somehow to blame."

"It's all right, Charlie," said Margaret, smiling from her cushions. "I should n't have broken out so. My nerves are on edge, I suppose. Perhaps I shall come back from Italy after a while quite ready to take hold. And one can write even in Italy."

"That reminds me." Charles turned again to me. "I've been hoping to see you soon about one thing. We agreed the other day that you ought to be asked about it before we made any move. The public naturally expects an authorized biography of mother. The demand for it has already begun. Don't you think Henry Bradford is the person to do it? Helen thinks he would be willing to."

"He would do it well, undoubtedly," I answered, rather startled by the abruptness of the question. I was really unprepared to give a judicial opinion about the

matter.

"Henry would like to do it," said Margaret, "and he would give a very just estimate of her public life. Helen could look after the English; she always does. Only I won't have Henry or anybody else rummaging through all mother's private papers."

"Of course we should-I mean, you ought to look them over first," returned Charles, uneasily.

"Henry has no discretion whatever," commented Margaret. "Besides, mother never liked him particularly, as both of you know perfectly well. She liked you, Robert, a great deal better. Helen would be furious if I said it to her, but it's true."

"Yes, yes, Henry tried her sometimes," Charles murmured; "but he knows about everything in which she was interested."

"Why should n't you do it?" I asked him.

"Oh, it ought to be some one further removed from her," he answered-"some one who could speak quite freely. I could n't do it."

"There's one other possible plan," I remarked. "Have n't you thought of it? Why should n't the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of

you write; you have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why should n't you?”

"That plan has n't occurred to us," returned Charles, hesitatingly. "It might be appropriate: 'The Life of Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children.' What do you think, Margaret? Would Helen think well of it?"

"Helen might," replied Margaret. "I don't quite know. I'd rather be left out of it myself."

"Oh, I could n't work with Helen alone," said Charles. "She would overrule me at every turn."

"There you are!" Margaret put in. "It would be a beautiful idea, no doubt; but we should find it hard to agree."

"Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the book," said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind the library table.

self to say more than that, for I had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with Mrs. Longbow must have been like. "But the strain on her these last two months must have been very great."

Hardly greater than for me," remarked Helen Bradford, stiffly. "I relieved her at every turn. I think I did my full duty to mother. Besides, mother never gave trouble; she was almost painfully anxious to avoid doing so."

"I am sure of it," I hastened to say; "but I suspect that Margaret has not the strength of Mrs. Longbow. You are more like your mother in many respects." I was not quite sure whether Helen would take this as a compliment, whether she might not detect a flavor of irony in the speech; but I was relieved when it brought to her lips an amiable smile.

"That is very good of you," she said. 'Margaret-poor dear!-has always been perfectly well, but she has never had much

A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.

"I'm troubled about Margaret," she said. "You 've seen her. I'd like to know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a nervous collapse, but she won't see a doctor."

"She is very tired, evidently," I responded, "but I thought she had herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put through her plan of going to Italy."

"Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I'm not at all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself." Helen Bradford eyed me significantly. "What worries me is her fixed idea that mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea, and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I should n't speak of it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother's society than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege."

"Undoubtedly." I could not bring my

who are busy with so many kinds of work. Charles does n't get tired in the same way, but he gets worried and anxious. Mother never did. Margaret and Charles are more like my father. You never knew him, I think?"

All through her speech Helen Bradford had been pluming herself much as I have seen fat geese do. The comparison is inelegant, but it conveys the impression she gave me. At the end she sighed.

"No," I answered, "he died before I knew Charlie."

66

"I remember him vividly," said Helen, though I was a mere girl when he died, and I have often heard mother say that he fretted himself to death over non-essentials, quite selfishly. I am, I hope and believe, whatever my faults may be, not like that."

I could truthfully say that she was not, and I added some commonplace about Margaret's restoration.

"I shall have to look after her," she went on. "Charles can't be depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware that people will be waiting for it eagerly."