Hills of the Shatemuc Part 63

"Feeling, or capacity of feeling."

"I wish you had a seat, Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth, looking round.

"Thank you -- I don't wish for one."

"It was very vexatious in Rose to go and leave me!"

"There isn't another box for her if she had stayed," said Winthrop.

"She would have me go out with her this afternoon to see her dressmaker, who lives just beyond here a little; and father had the horses. It was so pleasant an afternoon, I had no notion of a storm."

"There's a pretty good notion of a storm now," said Winthrop.

So there was, beyond a doubt; the rain was falling in floods, and the lightning and thunder, though not very near, were very unceasing. Elizabeth still felt awkward and uneasy, and did not know what to talk about. She never had talked much to Mr.

Landholm; and his cool matter-of-fact way of answering her remarks, puzzled or baffled her.

"That child sitting there makes me very uncomfortable," she said presently.

"Why, Miss Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth hesitated, and then said she did not know.

"You don't like the verification of my setting forth of life,"

he said smiling.

"But _that_ is not life, Mr. Winthrop."

"What is it?"

"It is the experience of one here and there -- not of people in general."

"What do you take to be the experience of people in general?"

"Not mine, to be sure," said Elizabeth after a little thought, -- "nor hers."

"Hers is a light shade of what rests upon many."

"Why Mr. Winthrop! do you think so?"

"Look at her," he said in a low voice; -- "she has forgotten her empty basket in a sweet fig."

"But she must take it up again."

"She won't lessen her burden, but she will her power of forgetting."

Elizabeth sat still, looking at her vis-a-vis of life, and feeling very uneasily what she had never felt before. She began therewith to ponder sundry extraordinary propositions about the inequalities of social condition and the relative duties of man to man.

"What right have I," she said suddenly, "to so much more than she has?"

"Very much the sort of right that I have to be an American, while somebody else is a Chinese."

"Chance," said Elizabeth.

"No, there is no such thing as chance," he said seriously.

"What then?"

"The fruit of industry, talent, and circ.u.mstance."

"Not mine."

"No, but your father's, who gives it to you."

"But why ought I to enjoy more than she does? -- in the abstract, I mean."

"I don't know," said Winthrop. -- "I guess we had better walk on now, Miss Elizabeth."

"Walk on! -- it rains too hard."

"But we are in the shed, while other people are out?"

"No but, -- suppose that by going out I could bring them in?"

"Then I would certainly act as your messenger," he said smiling. "But you can't reach _all_ the people who are so careless as to go out without umbrellas."

Elizabeth was betrayed into a laugh --a genuine hearty laugh of surprise, in which her awkwardness was for a moment forgotten.

"How came you to bring one, such a day?"

"I thought the sun was going to s.h.i.+ne."

"But seriously, Mr. Landholm, my question," -- said Elizabeth.

"What was it?"

"How ought I to enjoy so much more than she has?"

"Modestly, I should think."

"What do you mean?"

"If you were to give the half of your fortune to one such, for instance," he said with a slight smile, "do you fancy you would have adjusted two scales of the social balance to hang even?"

"No," said Elizabeth, -- "I suppose not."

"You would have given away what she could not keep; you would have put out of your power what would not be in hers; and on the whole, she would be scantly a gainer and the world would be a loser."

"Yet surely," said Elizabeth, "something is due from my hand to hers."