As Victoria kneeled there in the rain over the ruins of the precious violin and grew more and more conscious of her father's presence, and of his drunken condition, she almost lost heart at the thought of what lay before her. Her public career, however, had been a stern teacher of self control. She soon became aware of a curious crowd of all sorts of people that had gathered around her. She rose quickly and gathering up the pieces of the instrument, she walked resolutely up to her father and said to him firmly, "Father, I want you to go with me. Do you understand?"

The father nodded, half sobered by the accident.

Victoria almost pushed him into the cab and throwing the fragments of the case and violin upon the floor she entered herself, telling the driver her hotel. Once there she managed to get the father up to her room and throwing the pieces of the instrument on a chair, she flung herself on a couch and gave way to a good cry. The fact was she was nervous and exhausted with an unusually hard week's work. The sight of her father and the ruin of her instrument proved to be more than she could bear.

The father sat stupidly looking at her. The sight of her distress was rapidly sobering him. After awhile when Victoria's sobs had ceased he said feebly, "Don't cry, Victoria. Aren't you glad to see me/"

"Of course I am, father. But I had no idea that you were anywhere near me. Victor wrote that you were ill with your old rheumatic trouble and could not leave the house."

"I haven't been sick at all," said her father.

"Why did Victor write me so then?" asked Victoria a little sharply. She did not know how far she could trust her father's word in his present condition.

"Victor had been going to the bad. He doesn't drink, but he gambles."

Victoria trembled. For the time being she forgot all about her violin. This was a greater trouble if it were true.

"Tell me, father. Do you know that? Oh no! I can't believe it. Victor was vain and extravagant but he never had bad acquaintances. I'm sure he never had any vices."

"John King told me," replied the father who always confined himself to short sentences when under the influence of liquor.

It was an unsatisfactory explanation but in the morning Victoria learned the whole truth. Her father was sober and humble. He shrank before Victoria like a guilty child. But he told her why he had come.

John King had finally felt the pressure of his knowledge of Victor's course so great that he could bear it no longer and resolved to get word in some way to the sister. He thought of the two as they had stood before him that first Sunday, bright, gifted, handsome with health and youth. It was not right for the girl to remain ignorant of the boy's evil ways. She might have the power to redeem him if she knew. So John King had gone to the father and told him. He knew very little of the family. Nothing at all of Mr. Stanwood's drinking habits. He had impressed on the father the importance of letting Victoria know that facts in some way and his judgment was confirmed by Mr. Stanwood who declared that Victoria's influence over her brother had always been greater than his own. And so it happened that Mr. Stanwood, taking what money he could get together, had started the very next day to go and see Victoria. Once on the way he had yielded to his temptation and by the time he reached the town where Victoria was playing he was under the influence of the drink, not enough however to prevent his finding out where Victoria was playing. He lingered about the hall until Victoria came out and then approached her with the result we have seen.

As they talked over that morning, with the father seated in a dejected and depressed attitude and Victoria looking over towards the ruined violin every few moments with a look of grave sorrow, she began to understand the deception of Victor's letters. He had purposely lied to her about himself and his father in order to get more money with which to gamble. This fact as the father made it clear to Victoria filled her heart with indignation. She could not find any excuse for such deceit. She was perfect truthfulness herself in every detail, and much as she loved Victor she could not help rebuking him for yielding to his great vanity which had led him astray.

"How much is Victor getting now as St. Mark's Avenue?" she asked her father.

"He is getting twenty-two dollars a Sunday. I found out from friends of mine on the music committee there."

"And yet he wrote me that he was getting only three dollars a Sunday more than at John King's." Victoria flushed at the remembrance of the appeals made to her by Victor for more money. She found that her love for him was mixed with contempt and a loss of respect. At the same time it was all terrible to her. One thing however she was determined on. She would not send Victor another cent of money. She told her father so and made arrangements with him to place all the money not needed for the home expenses in the bank. Victoria could trust her father with that.. Weak and yielding as he was in the matter of the drink passion, he had never deceived Victoria in money matters and had not misappropriated what she had sent directly to him.

By the time everything had been talked over it was nearly noon. Almost for the first time that morning Victoria remembered that it was Sunday. She remembered, also, at the same moment that the manager had made an appointment to come with his wife, who was a member of the company, and go with her to the great Hospital of Incurables, as it was called, and be present while she played. The manager had been with the company only part of the time. His business relations with other companies on the road had prevented his being with his first concert company. He had expected to reach the city Saturday night. His wife had told Victoria the day before that he wished to go to the hospital in the afternoon and Victoria had felt pleased to have their sympathy and interest in what had become a real part of her best life.

But now she thought of the manager's coming with a feeling like terror. He was large hearted in many ways. His loan of the instrument to her was one token of that . But he was also an intense lover of rare articles gathered from the ends of the earth. He had in his collection daggers given to him by famous actors who had played Macbeth. Costly copies of rare books donated by great authors. Gems once worn by renowned singers. Musical instruments played be composers and singers. The Cremona given him by Camilla Urso was one of the choicest pieces of his collection. Victoria knew that he prized it as a peculiarly valuable instrument, both from its personal history and its intrinsic worth as a violin. Probably its duplicate could not be found in all Europe. Victoria looked over at the shapeless mass which was in the corner where she had thrown it and she shuddered again as she had done when she kneeled over it in the rain.

She wished that her father was not in the hotel. She dreaded his presence when the manager came. And yet she did not want to send him out of the hotel for fear he would get to drinking again. He had planned to start for home again Monday morning.

Victoria and the father went down to dinner although neither of them felt like eating anything. Victoria was wretched. Her thought of Victor was a thought of mingled love and indignation. Her heart bled for him. She wished she could see him and talk with him.

Father and daughter had been back in their room about an hour where they had been sitting silently when there was a knock, and as Victoria, her heart beating, opened the door, in came the manager and his wife. They were in good spirits and greeted Victoria heartily. She introduced her father nervously and tried to summon up courage for the confession before her.

"Well, Miss Stanwood," said the manager, "I always hear good reports of your success. The company is having a good season, thanks largely to your reputation on the Cremona. Come. Can't we have a little prelude on it before we go over to the Hospital? Give us the Paganini's Witch Dance if you don't object to it on Sunday."

Victoria caught her breath and then trembled. Then suddenly rising she went over to the corner where the fragments of the Cremona lay and gathering them up brought them over and stood holding them directly in front of the manager. Her cheeks were burning and her voice broke as she said,

"I had a accident last night. And here is the Cremona ruined. You can dismiss me from the company and I will work at something until I earn enough to pay what this cost. I know I cannot really ever pay for it. I--"

She could not say more. The look on the manager's face stopped her.

"Pay for it!" he exclaimed jumping up angrily. "I should think not! What a piece of folly on my part to let that go out of my hands! Why, do you know what the value of that instrument was?" Victoria did not say a word.

The manager went on excitedly,

"Why, it couldn't be duplicated anywhere. It cost over two thousand dollars and its real value as a souvenir of one of the greatest women players in the world was invaluable. I was a fool!" The manager was almost beside himself. Victoria, feeling as she did, offered no excuse, attempted no defense. She felt that all the manager could say was deserved. Had she not loved the instrument as much as he? Was it not like losing a dear friend, a relative, to lose its companionship. She stood there pale with agony, sensitive soul as she was, and not a tear came to relieve her. The manager was almost beside himself with anger. He forgot to be a gentle man. "Yes," he kept repeating, "I was a fool to let a mere girl have the care of--"

It was at that point that Victoria was amazed to see her father rise up from his seat by the window where he had apparently been forgotten by every one and walking across the room he confronted the excited manager, and said with a firmness and dignity that Victoria had never seen in him before, "Sir, it may be that you were a fool as you say to let my daughter have the violin to use, but I will not allow her to be humiliated by your reproaches when she is suffering sufficiently already. If you want to blame any one for this misfortune, blame me. I caused it."

The manager stopped and a great wave of blood crossed his face. For a moment Victoria almost feared he was going to strike her father. Then he sat down while Mr. Stanwood briefly but clearly related the circumstances connected with the accident. He made no attempt to conceal his own intoxication but related everything as it was. When he had finished, the manager was silent. He had had time to cool off. Victoria sat on the couch, her head buried in the cushions.

The manager was a person who had seen a good deal of life and he was not a fool in spite of his statement about himself so recently made. He was also a true gentleman at heart, and besides he had an eye for business and knew the value of Victoria to his company. There was an awkward pause broken by the manager as he rose again and holding out his hand said, "Miss Stanwood, I apologize for my loss of temper. Will you came and see me in the hotel parlor to-morrow morning? You will hardly care to go to the Hospital to-day." He added the last sentence with a slight smile and without another word went out of the room with his wife. After he had gone, Victoria broke down. She cried, this girl of nineteen, as if she were a little child instead of the woman who had begun to win the reputation of the first player on the violin in America. Her father after his manly defense of her had lapsed again into the weak impersonal character she knew so well. But he comforted her as best he could. He seemed to be preoccupied with something. It was so marked that Victoria, even in her anguish, noticed it. Later in the day he inquired if there was not some train for home he could take that night. There was one starting about midnight. To Victoria's surprise he insisted on going home on that train. She tried to persuade him to remain until morning. But he was firm and started that might. The last words he said were, "Don't worry over the violin. We shall find a way to pay for it."

In the morning after breakfast Victoria went into the parlor to see the manager. He came in, a few moments after, and greeted her gravely. Victoria was nervous.

"I can't conceal my regret at the ruin of the Cremona of course, Miss Stanwood. It was highly prized by me. It will seriously affect your playing also."

"Yes, it is a miserable thing for you. I have no excuse. I am ready to leave the company if you think best. I have no heart to play more."

The manage looked at her keenly. He was an experienced man of the world and something in Victoria's manner told him that something more than the loss of the violin was troubling her. He asked no questions but went on.

"No, that would be foolish." He looked at the small sorrowful figure and said, his face and manner lighting up, "Do you know, Miss Stanwood, you can make any violin, even a common one, talk as most performers cannot make a Cremona talk? You are not dependent on any particular instrument. I cannot afford to lose you out of my company. Besides I wish to tell you in confidence I am expecting to go abroad in less than a month with the best of the company and I want you to go with them."

Victoria stared and her pulses throbbed. Abroad! To play in London, Paris, Berlin! It had been the dream of her childhood. But then, could she leave her father and Victor? She must have time to think of it.

She told the manager so and he seemed willing to give her time to decide it.

"Take two weeks. At the end of that time let me know. Meanwhile I have secured a good instrument for you until you can send for your own if you wish to." And the manager rose and went away leaving Victoria thankful to him for his courtesy and the absence of any resentment against her, so far as she could see, for the ruin of the poor Cremona.

She wrote a brief note to the father asking him to send her own violin. Also a letter to Victor, a letter of loving entreaty that he would for her sake and the sake of his future success live the life of a true gentleman. She wrote him with the loving frankness and truthfulness that always characterized her.

"I cannot let you have any more money, Vic, until I am assured that you will make a good use of it. Gambling in any form has always had a great horror to me. I cannot endure the thought of you, dear, dear Vic, becoming a victim to this vice. I am almost unnerved for my work. But I must go on. I cannot even leave to come and see you. I am under sacred contract to remain with the company this month and there is a possibility that at the end of that time I may go abroad. O Vic, for the sake of the love you bear me, for the sake of the old times when we were so happy as children, be a man. Use your great gift to be a blessing to yourself and to others, You know I do not very often pray for anything. But every day I offer a prayer for you. God bless and keep you, dear Vic."

There came on answer to this letter. Through all the remaining weeks of her contract with the company, Victoria received no reply to it or to others written. Victor would not write a word. She wrote again and still no answer and it seemed to Victoria that a death had taken place, the death of the old loving relationship that once existed between them.

Two days after writing to her father for the violin Victoria was astonished to receive from him a letter containing a draft for two thousand dollars, explained by the letter.

Your mother, Victoria, at the time of her death was in possession of a certain portion of her older sister's estate which was in litigation. She charged me without your knowledge (you were only six years old at that time) to use the income from the property for you and Victor when you became old enough to receive most benefit from it. The two thousand is the accumulation from this income during the last twelve years. Under the legal terms by which the property is administered Victor will cone into the possession of a certain sum when he is of age. This two thousand is your own to use as you see fit. If the payment of all or part of it for the ruined violin will be more satisfactory to you than any other use, you are at liberty so to dispose of it. That was the price which the manager mentioned. Your poor old father, Vi, is a disgrace to you in many ways. But he has guarded this little inheritance for you and wants you to get out of it all that it can give you at the present time. Victor has not been home since I returned.

Your loving father,

George Stanwood

Victoria held the draft in her hand and wondered if it was all a dream. It read like a chapter out of a story. She thought with a tear in her eye of her father's care of this trust confided to him. It was like him to be willing that she should use the money to pay for the violin. He was always very simple in his thought of money and all its uses. But in her heart she felt glad to think she could pay the manager. She was like her father in that sensitive shrinking from being under obligation to such an extent.

So that very day she found an opportunity to present the draft to the manager. It was duly endorsed and the manager saw in a second that it was good for the cash in full.

He held it in his hand a moment, looking down at the little figure that stood before him so gravely.

"I did not know, Miss Stanwood, that I was employing in my concert company an heiress in disguise," he said, with a twinkle of the eye that belonged to his whole face.

Victoria felt a little annoyed. "I am not an heiress. That is simply a little money my mother left to me to use when I grew up. If you will take it I shall feel as if I had made part aments for breaking the violin."

There was a moment's hesitation and then the manager said quietly, "Very well." That was all. He put the draft into his pocketbook. Victoria felt better. Somehow she had anticipated a long discussion. She thought at first then, the manager would not accept the money. She thought that he had probably come to the conclusion that he could not afford to lose two thousand dollar violins without some compensation. Besides, as had been said, the manager had an eye for business. He was shrewd and careful and his expenses were large. So that while liberal and large hearted in many ways he generally reckoned very sharply with those in his employ. Victoria therefore saw her two thousand dollars vanish in the pocket book of the manager and being the daughter of her father with his ideas of money she did not feel any great loss. She had grown up without knowledge of money. It did not really mean so very much to her after all except in its power to give her a certain relief of mind for the irreparable loss.

When the two weeks were up, during which Victoria was debating over the trip abroad, she signed articles with the manager for six months to go abroad with the company. They were to start within a month. That gave she time to go home and visit a little.

She had been longing all the time to see Victor again. When she reached the city and stepped down from the train her father was there to meet her. She looked around for the familiar, boyish, exquisitely dressed figure of Victor.

"Where is Victor, father?"

"He has gone away. We had a quarrel and he left home. He would not tell me where he was going."

So Victoria's home coming was without much comfort. She wanted to see Victor, to talk with him before she sailed, to have some assurance that he was going to live a noble life. With a heavy heart she made her preparations for her trip in the few days left her, hoping every day that Victor would appear. But he had left the church at St. Mark's Avenue and no one of his few friends in the city knew where he was, and the day came when Victoria left for New York, to take the steamer there and the last look she cast tearfully back rested on her father standing in the station forlorn, alone. Victoria sighed with a sob of homesickness as she was him there. Her prayer went out for him and for Victor. Would they ever be united? God bless father and Victor, was her prayer as the train whirled her out into the new life before her.

When the Question Class met at John King's the Monday night after Victoria's departure it was unusually crowded and the questions were of a more varied character than he had ever had to answer. The first one he took out was--

"How shall I spend Sunday?"

"That depends on who you are. If you are a minister, you will spend the day in a certain manner. If you are a blacksmith, you will spend it in another manner. In either case you will attend church service if you are will and able otherwise to go. Every man needs the good which comes from attending public worship. Whether you will go more than once to church will depend on several things. If your cares and burdens of housework are such that the body demands physical rest it may be all that you ought to do to attend one service. If you are well and strong and blessed with plenty of energy the best way for you to spend Sunday is to do your share in all the church work on Sunday, the Sunday School, and the young people's meeting and the evening service. Some one has to take hold of there things or they wouldn't be done. And I have noticed that the people who are active in the Sunday School and Young People's meeting are, as a rule, to be found at the evening service, when there is one, and from my observation, these people live just as long and have just as good health and appear to be just as happy as the people who don't fo to but one church service or to none at all. Then there should be time and room on Sunday for some good quiet thinking and reading and resting of mind and heart. Rest and worship. These are the great ideas of the day that we need to insist upon. The day was made for man. It is full of possibilities. It is possible for us to spend it in a great variety of ways and still spend it right. This rule it seems to me can safely be made. Never do any thing on that day that will interfere with the rest and worship of yourself and others."

"Why are theaters considered immoral and questionable places of amusement by so many people?"

"Because too often immoral or questionable plays are to be found in theaters. A play recently traveled over the United States and was seen and heard in all the large cities in which the lesson taught was so productive of evil that several crimes were directly traced to it committed by young men and boys who had witnessed it. It is a terrible shame that so powerful a teacher of great moral lessons should have so bad a reputation. The theater started as a religious institution. Only plays with a tremendous religious moral were used by the Greeks, for the most part, in the beginning of the dramatic art. At present the use of plays with immoral love for the central idea is so common that very many people declare the influence of the theater is altogether bad. I do not go so fat as that, but I do think that the theater to-day is a long ways from being what it ought to be. If people would only discriminate and never go to any but the good plays, the managers would soon cease to give the public anything questionable. Because it wouldn't pay. And that is what the managers are looking for. But I have seen the very same people who went and applauded the lessons taught by as clean and wholesome a play as ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy,' go the very next night and sit through two or three hours of a questionable play concerning which a noted theater-goer in this city said to me, ‘It made me blush for shame for weeks afterwards.' And yet he went just the same because the acting was such a treat, and he would go again if he had a chance."

"Does it pay to be unselfish?"

"Yes, if feelings count for anything. You won't always make so much money or have so easy a time but you'll feel better inside."

What are the two best books for the average young man to read?"

"The Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. The young man who is familiar with these two volumes will be well educated so far as a knowledge of literature and humanity is concerned."

"What is a short rule for success in business?"

"Tell the truth. Be prompt, courteous, and kindly. Pray every morning for wisdom in details. Take God into partnership. Glorify Him in everything you do. Follow these directions and you will not always make money, but you will succeed. And success even in business does not consist in simply making money. It consists in making manhood. Anything which does not do that is failure.

"You said a few weeks ago that falling in love was as natural as coming of age. How does it happen then that so many young men make mistakes and fall in love with the wrong girl?"

"I didn't know they did. If they do they have themselves to blame. For true love is always a divine thing of divine meaning and it makes no mistakes. It is because young men do not make this great experience in life a serious as well as a happy experience, it is because they treat it as a sentiment instead of a part of God's thought of them that mistakes are made and unhappy marriages result. As I said several weeks age true love is always happy and always lasting it is your false article that disappoints and betrays people.

"Is life worth living?"

"What ! Do you young people ask this old question so soon? Yes! Yes! It is worth living if you live it right. Otherwise I am inclined to think it isn't worth while."

"I made a bet over the result of the state election and lost. If I pay it I shall lose a large sum of money and be unable to pay other bills that I owe for household expenses. What is my duty? Ought I to pay the money on the debt?"

"In the first place you had no business t bet at all. You not only broke a law of the state which expressly forbids betting on elections but you because a gambler when you made that bet. For a gambler is one who tries to get something for nothing out of another man. Betting is gambling. It is vicious in principle and immoral in practice. It is the shame of great political parties that the very men who control and direct party affairs break the laws of the state and set an example to all young men to do the same. There is no question however as to your duty now that you have bet. Pay the money over and never bet again on anything as long as you live. It ought to teach you a good lesson if you have trouble from all your other obligations. You had no right in incur such a risk when you knew the money you ought to pay your honest creditors would be endangered by the chances of a political campaign. Yes, pay your bet. That's the only thing for you to do now. And let it be the last one you will ever have to pay."

"I feel discontented and unhappy and blue a good deal of the time. What is the matter with me? How can I go to work to be contented and happy?

"Maybe your liver is out of order. Excuse that, if it sounds coarse. But the physical is so closely connected with the spiritual that a good many people are cross and discontented because their bodies are diseased. If you are healthy and have an average intellect and live in the United States and are young, you have no excuse whatever for being discontented and blue and unhappy. With all eternity before you, with God in history and yourself a part of it, with such endless possibilities to make the world better, what earthly excuse have you for not living a life of deep satisfaction and happiness? Oh, get out of yourself. Do something for some one else. Lift on the world to raise it up instead of bearing down on it with your selfish-personal unhappiness. If you believe in God and the future and the present and your part in the universe, it is wicked for you to go through life discontented and unhappy. Be someone. Believe in you beliefs with all your might. Live like an angel, not like an animal. If you are chronically unhappy something is wrong either with your body or your soul."

John King dismissed the class with the promise that next week his answers would be shorter so as to read the many questions still behind, and the class after a short social gathering departed.

At the wharf of the great steamship company in New York one day that week the usual busy scene was being presented which always attended the departure of a famous ocean traveler. The steamer was just casting loose from the slip. The gangway had been pulled off, the bow was slowly swinging around, and the people on the decks upper and lower were exchanging last farewells with friends on the slip. Clear up to the extreme edge of the wharf the people were massed and back in under the cover of it. Some were laughing and smiling. Others were crying. One little old woman in a faded calico dress with her hands clasped before her was looking up straight towards a boy who leaned out over the rail of the steerage deck. Down the faces of both of them, mother and son, the tears were streaming, each apparently entirely oblivious of all the other people as if they two were the only ones there. A chapter of tragic history was in their faces but so it was with many others on shore and on the steamer that day. In sharp contrast to these two tear stained faces was a laughing young girl who stood next the weeping mother, exchanging last greetings with one of the ship's stewards, evidently some familiar acquaintance who had made the ocean voyage many times. A little farther along the slip seated on one of the piles that projected high above the floor of the wharf was an Irishman, evidently a day laborer who had come down to see some of his relatives off on a visit to the old country. In his hand he held an immense bouquet of the most astonishing variety of garden flowers arranged apparently by his own hand. As the steamer widened the distance between himself and the dock he threw the bouquet with all his might at some person on the steerage deck. In the effort he lost his balance and almost fell off the pile into the water. A roar of laughter went up from ship and shore. Several bouquets were thrown up from the crowd, some falling into the water, others lighting on the decks or clutched at and caught by countless hands held out over the rails. There was a cheer form the crowd. All the faces on the slip were looking up now. Those on the vessel saw the white, intent, laughing, weeping, cheering mass of faces and laughed and wept and looked back again.

Victoria standing on the promenade deck by the side of one of the company watched all this as the steamer now rapidly swung her bow around heading down the harbor. In a minute the wharf would be lost to sight, hid by the steamer. There was not a soul there that she knew. She stood looking on as a spectator only. Suddenly close by the extreme end of the slip standing near the pile on which the Irishman was seated, Victor dressed us usual in the most exquisite taste and style. Victoria screamed out his name. He did not hear or see her. She leaned out over the rail and waved her hand and cried again. He turned his head and was her. She could see how the look on his face changed. He called to her. Through all the cheering and babel of sounds she heard him and her heart leaped to think of the old childish days. The steamer swung around and swept her the crowd on the wharf out of her sight. She left her place and hurried as fast as she could to the stern on the other side. But she had to struggle through very many people and by the time she caught sight of the wharf again the steamer was moving away fast and the distance was too great to talk over the people however stood on the wharf a long time. And out on the stern of the vessel a little figure in black with unconscious tears running down over her face stood with waving handkerchief murmuring the prayer, Victor! Dear Victor! Oh, how I wanted to see him and speak with him and have him kiss me good bye! The good God keep him safe until I come back again."

~ end of chapter 5 ~