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7
REDDER BLOOD





RED DER BLOOD
A NOVEL
BY
WILLIAM M. ASHBY
NEW YORK
THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS
1915


COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS


“Ila M
LII/554"’
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916 ,0”
A WORD, PLEASE
Whoever reads this story must remember that
it does not advocate miscegenation nor does it
hint at the justification of intermarriage between
the races except on a sentimental basis, and who-
ever interprets it otherwise reads into the story
that which is not there.
The book does say, however,—and, I hope,
strongly,—that where two persons love each other
deeply neither custom, nor convention, nor law
are great enough barriers to keep them apart,
else we should never have had an Othello and a
Desdemona.
Prohibitive legislations are not the best means
to promote moral growth, for where attraction
1.5 strong, even in the face of law, subterfuges and
illicit dealings abound very greatly.
THE AUTHOR.





8 REDDER BLOOD
He did not even care for their “Join us to-
night at Wallack’s, Box I,” to see Modjeska,
Ellen Terry, MacCullough, or Iefierson. The
invitations generally came from persons who were
narrow, devoid of artistic sense, or unapprecia-
tive. He sometimes accepted them, however, be-
cause he was sociable, and he could not ignore
kindnesses even though they were often shams
or subterfuges.
There was not a charity organization in New
York that had not his name on the list of its
contributors, and he always responded to such
appeals with liberal donations.
But his pastime and his hobby were horses, and
the trainer and owner of the most fashionable
riding-school in the city said that he was the
best horseman he had ever seen.
He was a striking figure one bright morning
late in November as he rode down Fifth Avenue
on his superbly caparisoned Arabian mare and
turned at Seventy-second Street into Central Park.
The air had in it a crispness that was enliven-
ing, a freshness that was energy-creating. With
her head high in the air, her eyes spirited, her
ears vacillating, and her step lively, the mare
might easily have had her prototype in one of
Besnard’s sleek, lifelike animals jaunting over a
red, sunlit Moroccan hill.
He rode her at a good gallop through the
Park until he came to Sixty-fifth Street, near the
animal cages, and then suddenly a cry went up.
:Ltii


REDDER BLOOD 9
He saw men, women, and children running like
savages, making the strangest and most hideous
noises.
Turning, he saw not far distant from him and
approaching with accelerating speed a firey-eyed
lion that had broken loose from one of the cages.
The imperturbability that he always possessed
did not forsake ‘him, so he put spurs to the horse.
This he thought his only hope, but the mare had
already been terrified by the roars of the on
coming beast, and she ran wild. .
Before him seemingly lay two paths to death,
if he could not fight out some way of escape.
The lion, approaching him from behind, would
tear him into bits; the mare, if he could not drop
from the saddle unhurt, with her mad, reckless
running, would be very likely to throw him
against a tree or stone and dash his brains out.
He quickly drew the reins ‘to turn the mare
behind a .hedge, but by his sudden drawing of
the reins he turned her into a park bench, which
she had to jump. Her front feet went over like
those of a trained fox-chasing animal, but the
hind ones hung on the bench.
She went down, and Stanton Birch was thrown
against a huge tree. The wild beast, alarmed,
did not stop for the fallen prey, but kept on
across to Eighth Avenue and through Sixty-fourth
Street.
One of the park employees ran to the spot
where the mare had gone down; there lay the


IO REDDER BLOOD
rider limp and unconscious, and the mare with
a broken leg.
As the fallen man was lifted up, some one said,
“My God! it’s Mr. Stanton Birch.” Every park
employee knew him.
The man felt Stanton Birch’s pulse. It moved
faint and weak. “Send for an ambulance,” he
commanded; “he’s still alive.”
From his pocket he took a flask of whiskey,—
one could not vouch for its quality,—and forced
a little of it down Mr. Birch’s throat to warm
him until the ambulance should come.
In a few minutes the big red hospital wagon
from Bellevue arrived and took him away.
In those exciting moments news of this acci-
dent had spread rapidly throughout the city;
every paper in town had an extra. Publishers
and newsboys are always glad when something
happens to a personage.
Over the whole city one could hear their yells:
“Extree! Extree! Stanton Boirch hoirt,”—“Ex-
tree! Extree! Stanton Boirch almost k-ilt by acci-
dent wid ‘his hoss! Git ’-em here; two cents a
coppee.” . -
As fast as the driver could he rushed the uncon-
scious man to the hospital on Twenty-sixth Street.
An examination showed that the blow had
produced a blood clot in the cerebrum.
Every noted brain specialist and surgeon was
sent for at once. An immediate consultation was
held; undelayed action was imperative.


REDDER BLOOD I I
Scientific surgery was then in its incipiency;
even the most experienced surgeon would attempt
so serious an operation with the gravest fear.
It required the most masterful piece of trephin-
ing; one little mistake meant death, yet it was
the only hope.
The operating table was put in order, and the
unconscious man was placed upon it. His skull
was opened, and the wielder of the sharp instru-
ments moved them with skillful accuracy. Around
him stood the other surgeons, with faces serious,
-—hopeful,—anxious.
Pretty young girls upon whom he might have
cast a meaningless smile heard of the accident
and hoped sincerely for his recovery. “Who
knows?” they soliloquized. “I may yet win his
heart.”
The old darky ‘head-waiter at the Albion Club
ceased praying for the blessings of the Deity on
himself and his family and now supplicated Him
to restore to health “Missah Boirch, ’cause he
sho is a good man.” He knew that Mr. Birch’s
life meant fifteen or twenty dollars a week more
to him. The directors of .the charity institutions
were in a quandary; whether they would rather
have him die and thus take a chance on what
he might will them or whether his yearly dona-
tions to them meant more was a problem that
required close calculation; but they too concluded
that it would be better to hope for his recovery
than to assume an indifferent air. Whether he


12 REDDER BLOOD
died or not was immaterial to them so long as
they were remembered.
“I believe the operation will be successful,” re-
marked Dr. Post, the head surgeon, with confi-
dence, when he had finished. The expression on
all their faces became less tense, more hopeful,
more confident. “Send for Miss Mars.ton,” the
doctor continued.
“She’s the pretty, black-haired nurse, is she ?”
asked Dr. Munn.
“Without an equal to my knowledge,” an-
swered Dr. Post, looking hopefully at the patient.
A young lady of twenty,—with widely set,
tender, generous, expressive eyes,—entered.
A sprightly little smile played around her lips.
“Miss 'Marston,” began Dr. Post, “this is a
very serious case and one that requires the utmost
care; that’s why I sent for you. . . . You are
not to leave his bedside until orders come from
me. I’ll give you an attendant to wait on you.
If you notice any change, if he seems to regain
consciousness, notify one of the surgeons at once.
You understand?”
“I think so, sir,” she answered.
“Then I may ‘trust you .i'”
“I’ll do the .best I can,” she replied.-
The doctors turned and left the room, and
Miss Marston went about her work with more
than her usual assiduity and earnestness.
For two days the patient lay in a state of coma.
The doctors came frequently, always to hear the


REDDER BLOOD 13
same reply from the pretty nurse, “No change.”
On the third morning Miss Marston, who was
dozing,—-she had slept only a few hours during
the three days’ confinement,—was awakened by a
cry of “Jump, Dell! Jump, my girl!” Mr.
Birch was regaining consciousness and was calling
his mare to jump the park bench into which he
had pulled her.
The nurse immediately sent for Dr. Post, who
found the patient sitting up in bed, his eyes blaz-
ing with a wild expression.
“Did she get hurt?” he asked curtly.
“Did who get hurt?” returned Dr. Post, sooth-
ingly.
“My 'mare? Where am I, anyway?” he de-
manded.
“In Bellevue Hospital,” was the reply.
“I want to go home; I want to go home,” he
said, determined to have his own way.
“You are not well enough yet.” The doctor
tried to convince him, but without effect.
“I want to go home, home,” he kept repeating.
“How do you feel this morning?” asked Miss
Marston as she came into his room.
“Never hungrier in my life,” .he answered
smilingly. “I should feel a thousand times better
after some grapefruit, broiled chicken, and a pot
of cofiee.”
“Fish is a better food for you,” said the nurse.
A flood of sunbeams searched into every nook


14 REDDER BLOOD
and corner of the sumptuous room that over-
looked Fifth Avenue and Central Park; and a
flood *of the sunshine of happy hearts made glad
by the approach of Christmas,—the season when
everyone, everything, is glad,—crowded Stanton
Birch’s 'heart as he looked out .and saw the ped-
dlers with their holly, cedar, and mistletoe, as
he heard the “ding-a-ling-a-ling” of the Salvation
Army bell, the happy children asking one another,
“What is Santa Claus going to bring you ?” and
all the other messengers announcing the joyous
holiday.
Just why Miss Marston should have been more
anxious about this patient than about any of the
others that she had nursed she could not under-
stand. -
Fresh in her memory were many distorted
faces and numbers of pain-racked bodies, some of
which she ‘had nursed back to health, and others
that the unconquered Conqueror had taken for
his own.
To all these she .had been faithful, dutiful,—
. she had given to them every attention. In Stan-
ton Birch’s behalf she had given even more,—
her prayers. She was certainly too sensible a
girl to imagine herself in love. . Still, the little
fancy came and she beat it back with all her
might, but each time it returned—reinforced.
“Oh, pshaw,” she would say a thousand times
a day, “I have no feeling for this man.” “Why
then,” would come the inner response, “do you
,l"


REDDER BLOOD I7
Stanton Birch had had everything he had
wanted in life, and a great deal of it he had got
by asking for it. Yet, here was this beautiful
girl, lovely in every way, and his lips refused him
that which his heart wished to speak. He was
not afraid; he was ashamed. His covert manner
in his lovemaking to her had been unworthy of
the way in which gentlemen make queens of the
women whom they love.
If he had dazzled her beautiful white neck
with jewels, if he .had brought her orchids and
roses, if he had sent her 'bonbons, if he had
taken her to operas and suppers, he would have
felt differently about it, but not one thing had he
done for .her pleasure, there had been no love-
’ making save the fervent glances and friendly
words that had passed between them in his
room.
But to‘let such an opportunity pass would have
been madness. He knew that he loved her.
Each-day since he first saw her he had been tell-
ing himself so more and moie positively. In her
he-reoognized qualities that he had found want-
ing in the girls of his set; she was natural, she
had a knowledge of the things in life that are
worth while, and she had a willingness to learn
what she did not know; added to this, nature had
given her the crowning piece of all things that,
according to a man’s way of thinking, go to
make a woman,—beauty.
He got up, resolute, and went over to the .girl,
. ,.‘


REDDER BLOOD 19
“If your past were as black as midnight,” he
said passionately, “your face would still have its
heavenly light for me. Between us stands noth-
ing but the unbreakable chain of love to which
every lhuman being must link himself if he would
find happiness.”
“Won’t you release me, please?” she whispered.
“I must go back.”
She felt .herself beginning to weaken. If he
had taken his arms from her waist then, hers
would have wandered up and clung to his neck.
She felt his pulsating hear-t; she breathed .his warm
breath; was she conscious of what she was doing
when she asked to be released?
“Why not stay in my country?” he went on
jestingly.
“Where is your country?” Her words were
scarcely audible.
“’Tis this old Fifth Avenue home, the walls
of which are embellished with paintings and
tapestries made by men when men had patience,
genius; the floors of which are covered with bear
skins from the frigid Arctic and tiger skins from
torrid India,—skins that foolish adventurers have
given their lives for. In the closets are the cost-
liest porcelains and there are a few jewelry chests
that contain many valuables. .Over all this rules
King Love. Let us be his never-sleeping, never-
wearying bodyguards.”
_ “How do you know I can stand the immigra-
tion test?” she asked, almost with a smile.


20 REDDER BLOOD
“I am the sole inspector and will pass you
with honors, if you but enter my port.”
“Do you think you’ll always want me for an
inhabitant?” she asked, troubled, uneasy.
“I swear to treasure you always 'as my most
prized citizen; will you enter?”
She did not speak but stood on her toes and
kissed his waiting lips.
He rang for the butler to come for the break-
fa‘st tray.
“John,” he said as the butler came in, “tell
André to cook with more care.” Then turning
to Miss Marston .he continued, “He’s an old-time
cook, but he makes far better bouillon and roasts
than that Irish chefess you had at the hospital.”
John took the tray and went out.
A few days ‘afterward Stanton Birch and his
nurse were married.


II
The years passed.
They were happy. And why not, when every
gentle breeze that, bearing the winged messenger
of love and striking the cords of their hearts,
made the strings reverberate, lyre-like, with per-
fect harmony; when glittering-headed Gold had
opened her vault and poured her treasure into
their hands until they were running over, and
when in themselves was that bigness of soul and
soundness of mind that taught them the best use
of their blessings?
Moreover, to crown their happiness the future
of their twenty-two-year-old son blazed with
brightness.
They held up to the world a mirror of wonder-
ful transparency; and the world, smiling back at
them, said: “I am not such a bad thing, after
all, if only cynics, critics, and pessimists would
boost sometimes rather than ‘knock’ always.”
If on this mirror they saw a blur,—a hungering
soul, a painful body, a diseased 'brain,—the phil-
anthropic spirit within them said at once: “I am
here, your ever ready and willing servant. Send
me as a comforter to do the best I can for them.”
Naturally, they were happy.
21


22 REDDER BLOOD
Their costly home stood on the top of one of
the mountains in Clairmont, and its bronzed roof
caught the sun’s first rays as they awoke in the
morning and the last danced on it as they re-
tired at night.
Perhaps it was the deep reddish golden rays
streaming over the tops of their house that gave
Inness the inspiration for some of his masterly
landscapes—who knows?
A convention of representative Americans had
recently met in a Southern city to discuss means
by which the American people might be bettered,
but one learned gentleman had 'digressed from the
purpose of the meeting to hurl bitter philippics
against a certain element of the nation. Nor
would he take his seat, though the cries of “Sit
down!” and “Shut up!” made his speech in-
audible.
They were in the library, she sitting upright in
an old-fashioned chair while .he was half reclin-
ing in a Morris chair on the opposite side of the
table.
The light from the bluish-green shade of the
electric light struck the side of his face, accentuat-
ing the noble outlines of his intellectual temples.
He had been reading an account of the above-
named convention in the Tell Tale, which journal
discussed American problems and conditions more
liberally, with greater judgment, and with less in-
justice than any other American periodical, and
to a man of his unbiased mind the bitter philippics


REDDER BLOOD 23
were naturally disgusting. He seemed annoyed.
“Oh botherationW—this was his favorite and
strongest expression—“why can’t they let these
people alone?” he said, with force and a frown.
“Between them and us lie centuries of African
wildness and two hundred ‘and fifty years of Am-
erican bondage !”
“The colored people, you mean?” she ques-
tioned.
“Yes,” quickly. “I don’t see why a people that
have proved themselves thriving, earnest, and
willing since we’ve freed them should not be al-
lowed civil and human rights without always be-
ing attacked by fanatics.”
“Remember the ‘hewers of wood and drawers
of water’ story, Stanton,” she said, apparently
unconcerned. .
“My dear wife,” hereplied a little impatiently,
beating the palm of his hand against the table,
“be sensible; that’s a perversion of ignorance that
has caused the blood of a million souls. I tell
you we are all the same in essence. Whether
you believe that man was evolved from the plastic
little Amoeba, whether you believe that life was
hurled on earth-by some flying meteorite from
another world, or whether you wish to be old-
fashioned and accept the Biblical explanation of
things—”
“I accept the Biblical explanation.”
“As you please,” 'he went on; “but in any case
the basis, the essence, the one little cell, that


REDDER BLOOD 25 -
him because he was to leave for Pemberton on
the following day.
“Well, Bookworm,” he addressed his father,
“not gone to bed yet?”
“Hello, Ad,” said the father.
“And you awake too, Mother?” He .had gone
around and now stood at the back of ‘her chair
framing her face in his hands.
“We waited for you because it was the eve
of your departure,” and the mother affectionately
pressed his hand against her face. “You’ve come
home early,” she continued. .
“Yes. Bob Norton was taking some friends
to the station and I came up in his car.”
“You’ve enjoyed yourself, I hope, Adrian?”
“Immensely; you know Eloise makes the most
charming little hostess and Roy Houston was
never more facetious than he was to-night. It
was a whole round table of merriment and good
cheer. Elsie Van Deman sang some of the arias
from the latest French operas and Charlie gave
by request a performance of the last creation of
the Parisian tango.”
‘Mrs. Birch was particularly delighted to hear
about the Van Demans. Elsie ‘had been one of
her favorites and, though she had never breathed
it to anyone, she had at one time fancied that she
would like .her as a daughter-in-law, but Charlie
Van Deman had captivated Elsie. They had for-
saken America immediately after their marriage
for a European stay of five years and had just


REDDER BLOOD 27
“As you please, Mother; but you must admit
that my jest has truth as its fundamental prin-
ciple.’’
“Truth demands proof.”
“This particular ‘truth is easily demonstrated.”
“But how; how?” she asked, with emphasis.
He took her finely-shaped little bejeweled hand
in his. “Now, Mother,” he began, “hold up your
hand; count on your fingers every girl of our set
that you remember who has married 'in the past
five years, and see how many of .them have pro-
geny.”
In her mind she saw beautiful girls to whom
the best of the earth had been given at their
nuptials,—rnansions, ‘tiaras, diamonds, millions,
everything,—and on her fingers she enumerated
six-teen to whom Hymen had come during the
preceding five years.
“You’ve counted them?” asked Adrian.
“Yes-7,
“How many?”
“Sixteen.”
“Now, how many have ofi'spring, Mother?”
She tried to convince herself that the little
foster daughter of Mrs. Conover and the little
foster son of.Mrs. Woody were their own, but
each of these children was seven, and both Mrs.
Conover and Mrs. Woody had been married only
five years.
“How many children among them all?” he
asked again.'


28 REDDER BLOOD
“Six,” answered the mother, thoughtfully, dis-
piritedly.
“A whirlwind repeopling of the earth,” Adrian
went on, a little joyful at his victory.
“But you .are critical and unfair to them,” pro-
tested .Mrs. Birch.
“They are unfair to themselves,” he replied.
Perhaps in the little skirmish Adrian had had
the advantage. At least, he felt that his mother
had been come upon unexpectedly, and his manner
when he leaned over and placed a filial kiss upon
her cheek revealed his penitence.
He had been narrow in judging so narrowly;
if he had gone out and studied other classes of
people as he had his own, would he not have
found them different?
Perhaps; but usually a man’s judgments do not
go any further than his own experience takes him.
His opinions are formed and his conclusions are
reached while he is under the influence of the
things he sees about him, of the things with which
he 'is most often in con-tact.
Of course, at great intervals there appears a
phil-osopher,—thank heaven,—a student of the
world, a student whose mind goes far beyond that
which immediately encircles him and such a stu-
dent makes keen generalizations.
Stanton Birch, who had given little or no atten-
tion to what had been said by .his wife and their
son, now turned around, taking his glasses from


III
Adrian arose early the next morning, for more
than one reason.
In driving his big gray racer the preceding
afternoon at a gait that was certainly greater
than that allowed by the Jersey speed laws he
had met with an accident which retarded the speed
of the car, and had greatly upset its smoothness
of motion. Being an amateur mechanic, to tighten
a bolt here and loosen one there had a fascination
for him.
At six o’clock he had put on his oil-cloth suit,
and, with a big Stillson wrench in hand, lay flat
on his back under the car in his garage. Help-
ing him was one of the gardeners, a sort of handy
fellow with tools,—wh'o had been out in the
garden robbing the vines of the last of their
tomatoes and lima beans.
After many drops of perspiration had rolled
from his strong young forehead and not a few
drops of the vicious, noxious machine oil had
fallen into his mouth and eyes, Adrian crawled
out from under the big machine, being satisfied
with his work.
Breakfast was an hour earlier that morning
than usual, and his father and his mother ate with
him. Plainly they were sorry that Adrian was
30


REDDER BLOOD 3 I
going. He had gone three times before, but their
reluctance this time seemed even greater than
when he had gone down to become a “Freshie.”
He saw that they were depressed and he .tried to
dispel their gloom with jokes. And, had it not
been that she expected the Van Demans that
afternoon, Adrian’s mother would have yielded
to his persuasions to take the trip down with him.
As for the servants, who had nearly all been
on the Birc‘hs’ pay-roll before he had come int‘o
the world, they were both glad .and sorry,—sorry,
because “young .Mr. Birch was so gay,” they al-
ways felt so “at home” with him, he always had
a smile and a pleasant word for them all; and
glad, because every time he left for college each
pf them got a crisp new ten-dollar bank-note from
m.
His parents stood on the large veranda, and
the host of servants, like a young troop of badly
disciplined but ready soldiers, straggled over the
velvety green lawn waving their handkerchiefs
and hats, and calling “Good-bye” to him as he
whisked the big car by them.
Mr. Birch and Mrs. Birch were glad to see
that their son was so well liked and when they
went into the house a look of gladness mingled
with the tears that stood ready to drop from Mrs.
Birch’s eyes. They thought that with them all
was peace, all was happiness.
But one can never foresee how long domestic


REDDER BLOOD 33
full of tears because her shoes had cramped her
feet.
And suppose this valuable house-man, encour-'
aged by his love, should some morning, when you
needed him most, run off with his fiancée, leaving
a note behind announcing in broken English that
he had gone to get married, and did not know
when he would come back. Naturally, your house-
hold would be upset for a while.
When Mrs. Birch returned from her morning
ride she found her household in a very distracted
condition.
Just what had happened she did not know, and,
although the thought of what André had so often
told them flashed across her mind, she dismissed
it. She even allowed herself to think that his
madness about Bridget was insincere, and that
even if he were to marry her it would make no
difference, for he would still remain with them.
“What’s the matter?” she asked of Anne, one
of the maids.
The maid did not reply, but picked up a silver
tray on which was a letter addressed to “Mon-
sieur and Madame Birch.” She tore it open
hastily.
“Anne,” she breathed in a voice a little louder
than a whisper, “I am so sorry.”
She sank down into a chair in.a sort of apathy.
What she had not really feared had now become
really fearful.


34 REDDER BLOOD
“He was such a good workman, wasn’t he,
Anne ?” she went on.
“He was a brute,” the maid burst out, taking
up her white apron to hide her face and the
tears that were coming. .She could not stand the
sweeping plaudits of her mistress when she her-
self had been disappointed. She had hoped that
André would marry her, and his sudden elope-
ment with that “Big Irish thing” had caused her
no end of envy and hate. “Even though he don’t
love me,” she would say. .She had thought that
his pleasantnesses to her meant something and
that their years of association would eventuate in
a union. “Why not?” They understood each
other and could at least get along.
“Why, Anne,” returned Mrs. Birch, “I’m sur-
prised at your saying such a thing. I thought
everybody was so fond of André.” The maid did
not respond immediately.
“Perhaps,” continued Mrs. Birch, “that’s the
reason you abuse him—because you are fond of
him. . . . Well, Anne, cheer up,” patting the
still sobbing girl on the shoulder, “you have a
chance yet; thirty-two isn’t so bad.”
The maid understood that what Mrs. Birch
had said was intended as a good-natured joke,
rather than as a reminder that she was getting old.
Mrs. Birch went into the sunlit conservatory
where the air was heavy with sweetness, and
where flowers of various colors bloomed in riot-
ous confusion. When she entered, Meg, a hand-


REDDER BLOOD 35
In’
some red-beaked African Grey parrot flew toward
her.
“Good morning,” said the bird, in an unmusical
contralto.
“Good morning,” returned Mrs. Birch.
The little canaries began their song, too, and
flitted from one to the other of the bars in their
cages.
“Shut up, you cats!” screamed the infuriated
Meg.
“Oh, Meg, Meg, girlie,” said .Mrs. Birch,
"that’s awfully unkind and impolite of you to talk
like that.”
The bird paid no attention to the reprimand.
“I saw André run across the lawn this morning,”
it said.
“Yes, .Meg, André is not going to be with us
any more.”
Mrs. Birch was watering the flowers.
“Why?” queried the bird.
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.”
“Why?” again it asked.
“He’s going to get married.”
“Oh, .he’s crazy!” cried the bird.
The door-bell rang, and the maid announced
Mrs. Van Deman. So overjoyed was Mrs. Birch
that she rushed out and scarcely missed upsetting
a beautiful, tender plant in a handsome Japanese
pot that sat near the door, and the two women
embraced and kissed each other lovingly.
It would have been extremely diflicult for any-


36 REDDER BLOOD
one to tell which was the younger of the two
women. Elsie was indeed a pretty girl, with a
wealth of exquisite blonde hair, a lock of which
always strayed loose and fell over her pretty fore-
head, keeping her finely shaped hand continually
putting it back where it should be, while her pretty
blue eyes had the tenderness of youth in them.
But in Zelda Birch’s face, though she was forty-
two and Elsie only twenty-four, there was a youth
that had been born to live always, a never-fading
beauty.
“Why, Elsie,” said Zelda, “you are as charm-
ing and lovely as when I held you in my arms as
a child! What did you do, girl? Spend every
moment of your absence in the youth-renewing,
health-giving waters of Carlsbad and Wies-
baden?”
“It seems, Zelda, as if you’d found the spring
of youth for which Ponce de Leon looked here in
America. Age does but one thing for you,—it
makes you more youthful and beautiful,” she an-
swered, a smile on her lips.
“And Charlie? What did you do with him?
Why didn’t you bring him with you ?”
“He’s playing off a match game of tennis with
Artie Darnton that he promised to play five years
ago,—before we went abroad. He said he’d join
me 'here .about 12 :30.”
“But, Elsie, my girl, what have you been doing?
Where are—~——”
“I knew that was coming; I expected it to be


REDDER BLOOD 37
I’
the first thing you’d ask me,” interrupted Elsie,
Who had divined what was in Zelda’s mind.
“Well, why?”
Elsie colored just -a little. “I have not that in
me.”
“Haven’t it in you ?” Zelda said, with profound
astonishment. “Be reasonable, girl. Why try
to make yourself a new type of womanhood? I
tell you that the intense desire to be a mother is
as strong in every married woman t’o-day as it
was in the woman who frantically cried to her
husband, ‘Give me children or I die.’ Why should
it not be in us? Do we not start every girl off in
babyhood with that end in view? We give to
every little girl a doll at Christmas; we like to see
her hold it; we let her make its little clothes, tell
it little stories, sing it little songs, rock it to sleep,
prattle the little maternal things to it that she
thinks it understands. We make every girl a
mother before she knows she’s a child.”
“Then perhaps I was afraid,” Elsie said.
“Of what?”
“Charlie.”
“What do you mean, child? Doen’t he love
you?”
“Sincerely; but I don’t think he loves me in that
way‘), .
“You little idiot! Don’t you know that you are
letting slip the only thing that makes a union
happy?”
“One of the things that makes a union bear-


38 REDDER BLOOD
able, you mean, Zelda. You see, you don’t make
allowance for the difference in natures. Fortune
favored you,—she gave you a husband who loved
books, his home. Charlie loves merriment, play,
and—-”
“Oh .bosh!” interrupted Zelda. “Every man
naturally loves his own home. He can get as
much exercise by playing with his own child upon
his knee as he can by saying ‘I’m going to take
a walk for exercise,’ and then goes-instead to
another house simply because it is kept in better
order than the one that his own careless, uncheer-
ing wife keeps.”
“But Charlie is so young and free, and I
wouldn’t want to keep him at home. I’m afraid
he’d love children like most men love women,—
they’re mad about our smiles, but a tear, a frown,
chases them away.”
“Don’t talk of the dislikes of the men,” Zelda
said a little impatiently. “Let the women find
their like: and cater to them, and thus make them
at once master and slave.”
“There you are, Zelda,—as zealous and as seri-
ous as ever,” said the younger woman.
“What about yourself?” '
“Myself?” she answered, with a little care-free
smile. “I am still a shining bubble floating on
life’s tide, tending nowhere, purposeless, free,
laughing, hoping only that it may ever buoy me
up and that I may never run into any gurgling


REDDER BLOOD 39
whirlpool to swallow me up. You know, Zelda,
I think that my kind of people are put into the
world as a reminder and a stimulus to your kind
of people to keep them from forgetting that there
is something in the world for them to do.”
“What makes you have such a fancy about
yourself?”
“It isn’t fancy; my every act makes my short-
comings more clear and real.”
A moment of silence passed between them,—a
silence that was broken by the entrance of their
husbands.
“Look! 1See whom I picked up on the courts
this morning, Zelda,” said Mr. Birch.
“Oh, Charlie, I’m so glad to see you, my boy,”
was Zelda’s greeting, and Charlie warmly pressed
her hand. .
“How do you do, Father Birch?” said Elsie,—
this was what she had always called Mr. Birch.
“How splendidly you look,” she continued, “and
as handsome as ever. Why tell people you’re
fifty-six when your looks tell them that you are
only forty?”
“The same lit‘tle flattering girl,” said Mr.
Birch, “trying to make me believe what isn’t true.”
“ ’Tis true,” she protested.
“My teeth, my dear, are beginning to wear, and
a surer proof there never was than that to tell
one that he’s getting old.”
“How was the match, Charlie?” asked Zelda.


4o REDDER BLOOD
“Fine; I won as easily as a big boy thrashing
his little brother.”
“Honest?” she asked.
“As I ever was,” he answered.
“You were not always honest with me.”
“Then, accuser, recall to me my robbery.”
“ ’Twas a very serious one,—and one that
hurt.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Are you sure you can exonerate yourself?”
“I shall do my best.”
“At what price?”
“That of my honor and my life, if need be.”
“Oh, Charlie; I’m not tired of you yet,” said
Elsie jest-ingly. '
“But, dearie, my honesty has been assailed,”
he returned.
“Well,” said Zelda, “after all, the joke is on
me.”
“What’s the joke?” he asked.
“You robbed me of Elsie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know that I had always planned to
have Elsie for my daughter-in-law.”
They all laughed.
“And to think,” said Stanton, “that Zelda was
going to give me another child without even letting
me know of it.”
“But I’m satisfied with the steal,” said Zelda.
“And now we’ll have some luncheon.”


IV
“I have engaged a new chef,” said Stanton one
morning after breakfast about three weeks after
André’s departure. He had just returned from
a western trip, having been to Texas to look over
his cattle ranch and to Montana to arrange to
sell some of the stock that he owned in the copper
mines. .
On his way home he had stopped in Buffalo
to see an old clubmate, Billy Dodd, who was just
about to go on a yachting trip on the Mediter-
ranean and down the Nile. With him, of course,
were going many of his servants, but his chef
refused to take the journey. Therefore Stanton
engaged the man and took him home with him.
“I am so glad, Stanton,” said Zelda. “Things
have been in a miserably bad condition. Will he
suit us, do you think?”
“Billy says that he can’t be beaten, Zelda; sup-
pose you show him what to do.”
Then, with his golf bag, he rode over to the
Balastol club to put in a morning at the sport
that was now rapidly coming to an end because
of the cold weather.
Zelda stood for a moment in the embrasure
41


42 . REDDER BLOOD
of a bay window in the morning room watching
the leaves that were being blown from the trees
and formed into little whirls by the wind. The
strength of the breeze through the half-opened
window made diminutive hills and valleys in her
dress.
She pressed the tapering manicured forefinger
of her right hand against her lower lip while the
other .hand pulled nervously at a little grey but-
ton on her waist.
She was mentally greatly depressed; in her
heart there was a heaviness that was uncommon
to her. Her trepidation, so far as she could see,
was without meaning, yet, for that very reason,
she was all the more disturbed.
“Why?” she asked herself. “Why this fear?”
Perhaps fate, fortune, or chance sometimes
tells us of the approaching shoals, windstorms,
and icebergs while we are wandering on life’s
ocean, and we human ships do not more often
escape these dangers because we are \so utterly
heedless of their benevolent admonitions.
“Ps.haw; nothing can disturb my happiness,”
she persuaded herself.
She never had but one thought that worried
her, and while it was, and had been for twenty-
five years, a daily visitor, she believed that it was
now merely a habit, and she even ventured to say
to herself with confidence that the possibility of
such a thought’s becoming a reality was im-
possible.


REDDER BLOOD 45
uppermost in her mind ran away from her. She
stood in utter bewilderment for a second, and her
only escape was, “Oh, I shall speak of that later;
remember, luncheon at one.”
She rushed from the room, and when she
reached the dining-room she reeled and would
have fallen, but a chair saved her. One glance
at that man had been enough to send her into a
world of distraction.
Before her rose images that had for twenty-
five years been napping or dissembling sleep in
her breast, ready to spring up fully awake at any
time,—images of fear, disgrace, exposure, death.
If she had been in a room where there were
thousands of people and had not seen this man,
she would have been conscious of his proximity
to her! she would have felt him; his cold, cynical,
searching eyes would have sought her out.
Each day of her life she had hoped, prayed,
against this moment, yet this terrible thing had
come to her,.—this terrible thing from which there
was no escape.
“Oh, God!” she sobbed, hysterically, “have I
merited this in your sight?”
Dismay and tribulation had almost over-
whelmed her, but fortune had been moved enough
by her sorrows to keep away all the servants who
might have come that way during her moments of
indescribable grief.
After all, she might be mistaken. This might
not be the man that she feared. There was a re-


46 REDDER BLOOD
semblance between this man and the one she had
known in her girlhood, but his manner 'had been
straightforward, not suggestive of any former ac-
qua-intance.
Yet she was not happy. Over her hung a cloud
of the blackest sort,—menacing, threatening, de-
structive. If she had not seen this man before,
she had certainly met one exactly like him. She
was tormented by that haunting, ghost-like mem-
ory that she could not shake off.
Alexander, the world’s conquering conqueror,
never enjoyed a sweeter moment of revenge and
satisfaction than did this Leon. A truer “master
of all I survey” never lived. The hour for which
he had longed had come, as he always believed
it would.
“I shall make myself the greatest man in all the
world,” was the determination with which he had
started life. “I must prove worthy of Zelda, and
if I fail !—Oh, I shan’t fail!”
For this woman he had made and unmade him-
self. With her, God only knows to what peaks
of glory he might have reached; without her,
grief, despondency, had seized him, and last and
worst of all, he had started in search of a goal
where were to be found relief of mind, repose of
body, but the road to it had been clouded with
opiates, on fire with rum and other indescribable
forms of dissipation.
If, however, he could have found her in his
travels, all would have been happiness. Would


48 REDDER BLOOD
nize. “Zelda, my dearest, I knew that I would
find you. I knew that all the years of my heart’s
yearning would not be fruitless.”
“What do you propose to do—with me?” she
questioned in a tone of one almost dead.
“To take you with me,” he said passionately,
firmly, holding her hand while she tried to wrench
.it from him, “to live every moment of my life
in your presence, worshiping you, adoring you,
loving you, my own, forever.”
“But I am married,” she begged.
“What does that matter to me?” he retorted
hotly. “Did David give up Bethsheba because
she was the wife of Uriah, or did the wonderfully
beautiful Paris give up the still more beautiful
Helen because Hymen had united her and Mene-
laus!”
“You say you love me.”
“As God loved the youthful earth when he re-
peopled it.”
“Then won’t you for your love’s sake give me
up ?,,
“Bah!” he scowled wrathfully, “talk sensibly!
My kind of love is not the liberal, self-denying
kind; it’s the sort that seizes, robs, pillages, wants
the whole, everything, for itself. There have been
heroes in war, heroes in religion, but the world
has never known a hero in love. Men who win
trophies of women never sacrifice themselves that
others may enjoy their prized booty. They want
them forever,—to feed their aged eyes on when


REDDER BLOOD 49
they’re old; to quicken the retarding beat of their
hearts when they are declining. The man that gave
up the woman he loved of his own volition never
lived, and never will live. Such men are but the
phantastic figures created by the brains of novelists
after a night of revelry or when their minds are
saturated with dream-bringing dope.”
“But Leon, Leon! be merciful,” she begged.
“Can’t you see what this would mean to me; think,
think! Oh, please try to forget. Don’t tell,
Leon; don’t tell,” she pleaded frantically. “Don’t
you see my dishonor, disgrace, shame; the happi-
ness of my whole life, ‘my hopes, the things I had
set my heart on,—all would be shattered in one
instant. Forget, Leon, forget. Don’t, don’t ask
it.” She sank to the floor in a heap, too distressed
to say more.
“Dishonor,—sha‘me? Your happiness fled?”
he reiterated scornfully, a frown on his domineer-
ing brow, his eyes again aglow with a look of re-
venge. “For what do you think I’ve allowed my
soul to burn as if on the fiery brands of hell turned
over by the piercing tridents of the devilish imps;
for what do you think I’ve fought battles, won
conquests, lost all the sweetness of life, to become
this morbid, wretched, dissipated vagabond that
I now am, if it was not in the hope that some day
I might .find you, have you for my wife, have you
always,—an atonement for my wrongs, a com-
pensation for my sufferings? Come I I leave here
in three days; you shall go with me.”


5o REDDER BLOOD
“Listen, please, listen.” She struggled to her
knees, her whole frame shaking. “Leon, if you
but spare me, I will give you anything you wish,—
I will build you country homes, city .homes, yachts,
give you every comfort, every luxury in life shall
be yours, only you must, must spare me. Money
7,

“Ha! Ha!” he 'broke in with a mocking
laugh. “You bewitching little feminine Me-
phistophilesl You would have me sell my heart,
my very soul, to you. No, no, I won’t do it, not
even to such an adorable little angel as you are.
Money! Money!” he went on contemptuously.
“What shall I do with it? All desire to live de-
cently except with you have gone from me now.
You propose to pay me a salary; I do not want it.
Food free, sleep free; and Mr. Birch’s clothes
would fit me perfectly, if I wanted them. He
doesn’t mind, you know, he’s so rich, has so many
wouldn’t miss them, would he?” Then be con-
tinued in a haughty, triumphant manner, “More-
over, I ”
His keen ear heard the mufiled tread of Mr.
Birch coming toward the kitchen over the soft
rug in the hall. In fact, he had been listening all
the while.
He quickly picked Mrs. Birch up and set her
in a chair near the door. Then he snatched a carv-
ing-knife, cut his finger so as to get a good flow of
blood, and was at the sink running cold water on
it when Stanton entered.


REDDER BLOOD 51
“Good morning, Leon,” he said. Then he
turned and saw his wife on the chair.
Excited, he excl-aimed: “Goodness, Zelda!
what is the matter? Speak! dearest, speak!”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Birch,” said the chef,
with a courtesy, “the sight of the blood from my
hand caused her to faint; I carelessly hacked one
of them nearly off and she saw it. She will re-
cover in a moment.”
Stanton was bathing her head with the water
that had been brought and he had ordered a maid
to bring some whiskey in a hurry.
She soon revived, and as she opened her eyes
slowly she saw her husband standing over her.
“It is you, is it, Stanton?”
“Yes, darling.” His strong arms lifted her to
his breast. “I am so sorry. Come; lie down
awhile.”
“I fainted at the sight of the blood,” she said
as she sat up on the couch, her back leaning on
her husband’s arm. She was not as truthful as
she should have been, for she had never seen the
blood. But in her semi-conscious condition she
had heard Leon speak of it.
“Yes,” her husband answered, consolingly, his
soft hand still rubbing her forehead. “The blood
shook you all up; shall I send for a doctor?”
“Oh, no, Stanton!” she protested. “I shall be
all right in a moment, I’m sure.”
“Won’t you let me call in the doctor?” he again
said, appealingly.


52 REDDER BLOOD
“Certainly not; I’m perfectly myself again; to
show you that I’m not the least nervous I’m going
to play you something on the piano.”
At the piano one would have thought her some
Russian virtuoso about to give her farewell con-
cert as her little fingers ran over the keys.
“Won’t you sing something, Stanton?” she
asked after she had played one of Chadwick’s
brisk allegrettos. Adorable Chadwick! How
splendid he is at times, but even in his gayest,
brightest moments he cannot help being sad. For
every laugh in him there seems to follow a tear.
“Yes; what shall it be? ‘That Mysterious Rag’
or ‘Everybody’s Doin’ It’ first?” he asked jest-
ingly.
Zelda had heard these songs from .the lips of
the little urchins in the tenderloin district where
she had the “Home” in Newton.
“What do I know about such songs?” she
asked.
“As much as I do, my dear lady,” he replied,
apologetically. “I heard your own maid singing
them.”
He went to the cabinet and taking therefrom a
sheet of music that Adrian had bought,—a love
song in one of the season’s popular operettas,
which he had heard somewhere along Broadway,
—placed it before her. .
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He had not. noticed her disqu.ietude, and he
began to sing:


REDDER BLOOD 53
“You know I love the light that shines
From distant worlds above,
The .birds that sing in joyful spring
.Are also mine to love.
The flowers that bloom, whose sweet perfume
Makes fragrant all the .air,
All this is but a shadow of
The love to you I bear.
Chorus
“My love, my life, my all in all,
Thou art my soul’s .guiding star,
My greatest gladness, my hope in .sadness,
Thou lead’st me when near or far;
Bid what thou wilt, I’ll gladly do.
What care I what befall?
To show how great is .my love for you,
Thou art my love, my life,. my all in all.
“If death should take you from this earth
To go to worlds unknown,
Why should I live? My life I’d give
In search till you I’d found.
And when we met we’d ne’er forget
That no more should we part.
My love is like a love divine
For you, my dearest heart.”
“Wonderful, Stanton; I declare I should far
rather hear you sing that than to sit at the Metro-
politan under the voice of some heralded baritone
from across the water. You are just splendid.”
Spot had come in and jumped up on the divan,
and was now rapidly beating his stubby tail upon
the top of it, which was his way of showing his
appreciation, and Meg, the parrot, shrieked from
the conservatory: “Keep it up, Pop. Bravo!
Bravo!”
At luncheon she appeared radiant, adorable.
They had never seemed happier together.


54 REDDER BLOOD
In the kitchen Leon was boiling with anger,
jealousy, revenge. His blood did not run but it
leaped in his veins. Here was this man singing
love songs to the only woman he had ever loved,
—wished to love,—cared to love.
A quarter of a century before he had held her
in his arms as Stanton now did, and had been
made happy by the promises she had-made to
love him always. Now she was the wife of
another, and he,—a knave, a menial, a servant in
her house.
God! to what desperation the thought of such
a thing drove him. Then he calmed himself.
She must be his or be wrecked by him. If he
had passed these last twenty-five years in search
of her and had at last found her, certainly he
could endure anything a few days more in order
to get her for his own.
“You go to the ‘Home’ this afternoon, do you
not?” Stanton asked when they had finished
luncheon.
“Yes; and you?” she replied and asked as she
dipped her fingers into the little silver finger-bowl.
“A society of young men have asked me to
speak to them soon, so I shall probably pass the
afternoon in the library preparing something to
say. . . . You have done wonderful work at the
home, Zelda.”
“I could have done nothing without your help.”
“You are wrong. I’m not responsible for your
success. I am proud of you.”
g


56 REDDER BLOOD
. _.=,.-t:.-? 1-?‘ I
her into a dark cellar, in which there had never
been a ray of light since the builder put the ceil-
ing over the room, he questioned her, and seeing
her unbending determination he said to her:
“Well, youse kin come as offen as youse likes;
see? But what youse says won’t do God,—who-
ever he is,—nor nobody else no good; see? Dese
kiddies don’t mind if youse buys dem a pair of
shoes once in a while and the ru-mmies and touts
and cadets will stand for a cup of coffee or a drink
from you now and den, and we’ll all be glad to
git in a T’anksgivin’ and Christmas dinner outer
you; see? But dey won’t pay any mind to what
you say. Anyway, youse come whenever youse
likes; see? And I’ll break any damn guy’s neck
what tries to put one over on you; see? ’Cause
youse is a game gal, and I likes a gal what ain’t
scared of de rummies; see? So now youse kin go.
Let her out, boys!”
And they all snatched ofl their hats and eyed
her as if she had been some white-winged goddess
from another land when she passed them. But
to assure her of the truth of his promise the leader
went with her to the boundary line of the district
wherein he was king, but he dared not go farther,
for there were innumerable rewards for his head,
if caught, but he knew that he was safe so long
as he was in his own precincts.
But in his prophesies he had erred. In ten
years Zelda,—by her charity to the little children,
her benevolence to the youths, and ‘her kindness


REDDER BLOOD 57
to the grown people,—had changed this dirty, con-
fused, chaotic, wicked district into a clean, orderly,
decent one. She was called “The Lady of God”
with the greatest respect by the men and the “Lady
Bountiful” by the children.
Skinny Hagan, Nigger Jones, Izzy Green-
baum, Dutch Smultz, Woop, Damfino, all called
ofl their corner crap games, pitching two-bit notes,
dealing three-card monte, and as soon as they saw
her automobile approaching they all stood, hat in
hand, and bowed courteously as she passed; and
they did not dare to resume their gam'bling until
she was well out of sight. And the wife of the
“Scotch Fitzmaurice,” one of the liquor dealers in
the ward, had now become the greatest temper-
ance lecturer in the city. In Mrs. Birch’s mis-
sionary “Home” were the children of poor and
unfortunate Americans, Italians, Jews, Germans,
Negroes, Irish,—and they all regarded one an-
other as .human and humane, which was due to the
work that she had done among them.
In going from the Assembly room that after-
noon Mrs. Birch passed out into a long, well-
lighted, well-ventilated corridor, then through a
pair of opaque glass doors that stood at the head
of the dark stairs that descended to the basement.
Between the top step, as one ascended from the
basement, and these glass doors, which made in-
distinct anyone behind them, was a space about
four feet square. Mrs. Birch had pushed the


58 REDDER BLOOD
door open and had gone two or three steps when
a voice said, “You are in a hurry.”
-Startled, she turned and looked quickly around.
There stood Leon to her left behind the door, his
cold, dissipated eyes fastened upon her and his
ever-moving smile on his lips.
“You here?” she asked, alarmed.
“My dear,” he answered, “I love to see those
pretty little lips at work; they are indeed the most
beautiful piece of human machinery God ever fash-
ioned, but why waste that fragrant breath of yours
on unnecessary questions? Certainly you would not
ask if the stars were in the heavens, if you looked
up and saw them. Do you not see me here before
your lovely eyes?”
“What do you wish now?” she asked bluntly.
She had never taken her hand off the door, and
it still stood half open.
“You are cold to me,” was his response, in a
pleading tone. “Why not close the door that
we might be alone?”
“I do not care to be alone with you.”
“Heavens be merciful!” He threw up his palms
like a worshiper. “To think that my most ador-
able lady would deny me my fondest wish when
we have been so long apart!”
“How did you know I was here?”
“To what end will the world come?” he said
mockingly, his feelings being piqued at her query.
“Do you not yet know that my love for you tells
me everything; that between you and me there is a


REDDER BLOOD 6I
journey to the sons of Haran to meet his beloved
Rachel had his covenant with God been less than
his Master’s promising to furnish him with gold,
food, and raiment. I tell you they give no more
sincerely than did the rich young lord whom Jesus
told, ‘Sell all thou hast and follow me.’ The
woman who throws her babe in the whirling
Ganges has a far purer motive than have you
philanthropists.” .
He paused a moment, then he continued, sneer-
ing: “But I won’t be hard on you, my love, al-
though I know your imperviousness to blandish-
ments. You’ll accept my profound congratula-
tions for your matchless work here; will you tell
me how you did it? You were always so good,
such a genius. Did you, when you first started, turn
water into wine to frighten them, to gain their
confidence; and do you send out every day a boy
to purchase five loaves and three fishes to be
changed by your magic into enough to feed a
large crowd and then have twelve baskets left
over?”
He stopped for a second. “But, come,” he re-
sumed, “you shall be ready in three days, won’t
you, dearest?”
Her feeling was one of anger rather than of
fear, yet she realized her danger. She silently
prayed for some intervention, and her prayers
were answered. The heavy tread of the night
watchman was heard coming down the hall.
Leon seized her and tried to force her into


62 REDDER _.BLOOD
a closet, but she broke loose and declared she
would scream for help.
“Give me fifty dollars, them—quickly. I want
to treat the rummies.”
She quickly drew the note from her gold bag
and handed it to him.
Then she turned hurriedly as he hid himself
in the closet and walked out into the hall, meet-
ing the watchman.
“Good evening, Horace.”
He noticed her curtness, and was surprised at
her unusual manner.


V
Pemberton had won. The newspapers had
large headlines, reading “PEMBERTON
WINS.” For a long time it had been the other
way, but to-day the Pemberton half-back had got
loose at a critical moment and run down the field
for a touchdown,—shaking ofl tacklers as he ran.
Never before had there been such rejoicing,
such weeping. That day on Pemberton’s campus
thousands of dollars had exchanged hands.
Splenetics and rheumatics threw away their
crutches; superannuated men, whom time had
robbed of their voices, made their presence felt
by ringing cow-bells. Powers in finance, lawyers,
doctors, .ministers, congressmen, senators, govern-
ors, and even an aspirant for the American Presi-
dency,—all graduates of historic Pemberton,—
had returned to see this great game.
The romping, energy-creating, soul-stirring zig-
zag snake-dance had lost none of its fascination,
and up and down Waldron. Field undergrads, re-
cent “grads,” and alumni danced this unique dance
until they were almost without strength. The
songs of “Old Glory” and “85” thrilled as they
had never before done; the customary bonfire
63


64 REDDER BLOOD
was received gladly as is a new born child by its
expectant parents. -
A hot-headed, patriotic “grad” now paid a dol-
lar for a lemon and blue pennant that might on
the morrow be bought for a dime. Souvenir post-
card dealers were glad, for to them it meant
extra money; post ofiice clerks swore vociferously,
for to them it meant extra work.
In the cities, from the theatre stages, the score
flashed “Pemberton 6—Hall 0.” Around the
bulletin boards in front of the newspaper build-
ings so thickly had humanity collected that to pass
was impossible. Thousands of café suppers were
won and lost; hundreds of Pemberton students sat
in the boxes at the Winter Garden and watched
Gaby Delys in her rhythmic glides, and after the
performance they proposed marriage to her,
which under any other circumstances they would
never have done.
The crowds departed, but ecstatic enthusiasm
was not to lapse into quietude in Pemberton for
many days after this historic happening.
And who had been the hero of this victory?
Adrian,—“Ad,”—"Addie.” It was his last year,
and his brilliant performance placed him among
the “Pemberton Immortals.” At his asking that
night, the world would have been given to him,
had it been in the power of the students and gradu-
ates to give.
This tall, muscular, well-developed boy of
twenty-two, with an abundance of dark brown hair


REDDER BLOOD 65
growing full on a slightly receding forehead, had
been immediately after the game seized by a con-
tingent of the student body who styled them-
selves “Worshipers of Dionysus and Sons of Epi-
curus,” to be taken by them to New York in order
that they might‘ show him what real life was
along Broadway,—in the cafés, cabarets, and
what-nots.
They took him on their shoulders to his room,
and made him promise that he would pass a night
with them in New York during the Christmas holi-
days.
So greatly did he wish to be alone that he was
still debating whether or not he would attend the
“Senior Prom.” But there was no rest for him in
his room. After the departure of the “Wor-
shipers of Dionysus and Sons of Epicurus,” whose
motto was “Everything goes with us,” another
fraternity,—perhaps of a somewhat more respec-
table type,—came calling at his door: “Adrian!
Adrian!” They knew he was in his room, but
when he refused to answer, a skeleton key was
brought out, and they unlocked the door. Then
they pounced in on him, dragged him from be-
tween his sheets, and, becoming self-appointed
valets, soon had him in his dress suit and pumps,
ready to attend the annual “Prom” in the spacious
Gymnasium.
Perhaps there is no place in elegant, luxurious,
ostentatious America where so much of its creme
de la creme at one time gathers as at a Hall-Pem-


66 REDDER BLOOD
berton football game and the “Prom” which fol-
lows on that night.
Newport, Narragansett, Bar Harbor, the
Berkshires, Atlantic City,—no one of these can
gather together all the élite in summer, for they
vie with one another, as do Palm Beach, Nassau,
California, and the West Indies in the winter, but
on the day of this game nothing like it happens
in the world.
Mothers do all they can to adorn their daugh-
ters for this occasion, and they pay unbelievable
sums to have their pictures put in the popular
dailies; an emaciated divorcée, whose name is bet-
ter known in Reno than elsewhere, fancies that
among these inexperienced youths she may find
her second husband; an old maid tries to make
“Pinaud’s” costly cosmetics take away the paren-
theses around her lips, darkens the few red brows
that are left, imports a gown from Worth, and
places her poor deluded brain under a wig by
Hepner, hoping that she may “come back” to
something that she never was; in marked contrast
are the sweet, lovely, unsophisticated girls, whose
naiveté and youthful innocence make them too
good to be associated with some of the wild stu-
dents with whom chance might thrown .them at
this “Prom.”
Here never sleeping Cupid sports; here he
breaks and makes hearts; here he wins stakes that
startle even himself; he plays a thousand games,
but in every one he is master, holding every trump
in every deck, nor does he resort to sleight of


68 REDDER BLOOD
You’re a new kind of flower, and he,—he is dan-
gerous.
They say ‘he is a South American and—‘rich.
What a lie! But he is not to blame for that. The
mystery with which he has always surrounded him-
self has caused others to originate that story, and
romance is close kin to mystery. He, in truth, was
born not ten miles from where he now stands;
and rich? Oh, no! Listen; I’ll tell you a secret:
Observe his broad shoulders, his great strength,
his virility. Well; there are three very rich
women of middle age who admire that young
man. One is across the hall now watching the
little girl. Her face is hot; she is furious because
he is talking to this pretty debutante, but she can-
not create a scene. When she sees him alone she
will cry and say, “You don’t care for me any
more.” But he will lie to her and say that he
does,—he has no heart,—and they will make up
again. The other two women are at home. Oh!
run from ‘him, little Innocence.
In the summer time he makes many trips across
the ocean beating the “sharps” at their own games.
Have you really fallen in love with him? If
so, one is sorry,—that is, if one knows you both.
When he goes abroad this summer he will not
return. Can you forget him as easily as he can
you? Perhaps.
Who is the stunning woman in the crimson
gown? Red; red is always a danger signal. What
a shame that that inexperienced youth of eighteen


70 REDDER BLOOD
Danube,” and without knowing it they all thank
Herr Strauss for gladdening so many hearts.
Then “Home, Sweet Home” will follow and
“Good night,”—“Good night,”—“Good night.”


VI
“Believe me,” drawled Roland Bullock about
six o’clock the Sunday evening after the game as
he burst into Adrian’s room, “she is some girl.”
Adrian, who was entertaining himself with one
of O. Henry’s latest productions, was half re-
clining in an easy chair, with a silk pillow at his
back and his legs stretched out obliquely, rest-
ing his feet on a hassock. He neither took his
eyes from the book nor replied to the intruder.
A crowd had just returned from the station,
having gone there to say good-bye to their sweet-
hearts of a day’s acquaintance,——or of a year’s
devotion. And of course the parting had cast a
gloom over the university. The past twenty-four
hours had brought to some of them pleasures that
they would never know again.
They sauntered back from the station lauding,
adoring, worshipping some recently-met girl, and
speaking disrespectfully of some others; but Bul-
lock, who wished to play a game of solitaire with
his thoughts, had jogged on ahead to be alone in
order to think only of one girl,—to be by himself
with the memory of the most beautiful, the sweet-
est, the pleasantest girl in the world,—a memory
from which he wished never to part.
71


REDDER BLOOD 73
the newcomers, noting his nervousness, said fa-
cetiously: “Well, Roland, your actions are per-
fectly justifiable. I guess we’ll all be somnambu-
lists for the night.”
“You know one thing,” said one of them, as
they sat down around the room, pulling up their
trousers, pushing .back their hats, rolling and
lighting their Pall Malls, Egyptian Dainties, or
Bull Durhams.
“Yes, and only one thing,” put in a second;
“and that is that Miss Croydon .is the prettiest
girl I ever saw.”
“Some pippin; yes,” chirped a third.
Then Zack Tamer spoke,—~Zack, the former
Bowery bartender, who was indebted for his edu-
cation to “Shark” Wilkins, who was known as
the “slickest guy on the Bowery” and whose atten-
tion had been drawn to Zack’s pellucid mind on
a summer’s day when that youth had mixed for
him a rickey with a California orange instead of
a lime. For Zack’s vocabulary neither the East
Side classics of that masterful writer of under-
world life, “Chuck Connors,” nor the faultlessly
compiled Encyclopedia Britannica would be re-
sponsible, for some of his words had their ante-
penult in Arabic, penult in Hebrew, and the last
syllable might be either Icelandic or an expressive
motion of the hand to bring out its meaning. Yet
he affected an air of refinement,—his hair was
pompadoured, he was dressed in a black-and-
white pin-striped suit, with a fraternity medal sus-


74. REDDER BLOOD
pended from a gold watch-chain that stretched
from one to the other of his upper vest pockets,
and at one end of the chain was an Ingersoll
watch. But he had never altogether lost the Bow-
ery coarseness of either his manner or his speech.
“I tell you, fellers,” broke in Zack, “she’s got
any filly that has ever run on these fast Pember-
ton tracks beat a thousand ways. She could give
‘em all a half mile handicap in a mile race and
leave ’em at the last quarter.”
“I protest against your speaking of such an
adorable girl as a filly,” shouted Anton Scutter.
“Remember, gentlemen,” returned Zack, “that
my language was only figurative.”
“Then make it more sublime,” retorted Scutter.
“And you know, fellows, she’s heiress to a mil-
lion, too,” put in Bob Atkinson.
“ hou Hunter of Fortune !” jeered Zack. “Al-
ready in your brain little devils of sloth are con-
spiring to do the first piece of work of their ex-
istence. They are intent upon winning this girl
for you, believing that if they could get her, they
would retire to their downy laissez faire couches
to rest forever in beatific tranquillity.”
“You don’t suppose I’d want to marry a pau-
perized dairy-maid, do you? My father quits
me cold as soon as he buys my railroad ticket home
in June.”
“Certainly,” said Bullock; “love in a cottage
is the only kind; what would life be without its
struggles, sufferings, disappointments?”


REDDER BLOOD 75
“You are absurd,” said Atkinson. “Poverty
and love do not go together. Do you suppose
Xantippe would have been a quarrelsome, ill-
tempered, hen-pecking wife and Socrates a pa-
tient, good-humored, hen-pecked husband if old
Soc. had been a prosperous Athenian merchant
instead of a lean, hungry, ill-fed philosopher,
lecturer on morals, and ethicist?” .
“Bravo! Bully for you, Bob!” shouted Zack.
“I thought that you’d lost all of ancients that you
ever knew and was sure that you knew no more
of Socrates’ alfaires du coeur than I do of prac-
tical church government. But I was mistaken.”
“As far as I can see, fellows, we might dis-
pense with circumlocution and come back to the
real subject,” said Adrian.
“Ha! Ha 1” they all laughed. “Then you are
interested just a little, are you ?”
“Only to the extent of hearing your wonderfully
beautiful eulogies about the young lady. Beside
her Venus must have looked like a stone woman, if
one may judge from your expressions concerning
her beauty.”
“But we had consigned you to the class of
misogynists, had believed you as unimpressionable
where girls are concerned as is adamant beaten
upon by a baby with its toy hammer,” said Zack.
“Say, what’s this?” asked Atkinson, motioning
his head at Adrian. “Will he be the mad lover
who’ll wildly rush forth in pursuit of a resisting
maiden?”


76 REDDER BLOOD
“What! she resist Adrian, you say? She’d give
every penny she owns this very second for a smile
from him,” put in Scutter.
“And where did you get so much inside dope?”
asked Zack, with a distinctly Bowery pronuncia-
tion.
“She told a lady friend of mine as much,” re-
plied Scutter. “All girls have chums you know,
even when they are in love.”
“Um—philosopher,” sneered Atkinson.
“But I thought I’m not shaped for sportive
tricks, not made to court an amorous looking-
glass,” sighed Tom Blackwell, a long, thin, gawky
Westerner, as he picked up a hand-mirror from
the dresser and looked at his almost inhuman face,
with its prolonged chin that began behind a pair
of large ears and ended on his chest. Between
his eyes and his upper lip there were as many
reddish brown freckles as his father owned dol-
lars in the Western railroads.
His frank confession and his lack of sensitive-
ness because of his homeliness brought forth a
roar of laughter.
“The bard was inexpressibly generous to you,
Tom, for having written those lines,” put in At-
kinson. “They fit you, every word of them, even
to the letter.”
“Well, I’d like to have your chances, Adrian,”
said Blackwell.
“ hy my chances? I am not at all sure of
them. Remember the fool that rushed where the


78 REDDER BLOOD
city churches pealed forth, and silence for a mo-
ment filled the room.
“Dr. Carey speaks on ‘Phillips Brooks’ to-night,
fellows,” said Addie slowly, “and I think I shall
go to hear him.”
They separated; some went to hear the lecture,
some went to their rooms, and others thought that
midnight might as well find them in town as in the
“dorms.”


VII
DEAR ADRIAN2 Because of the wonderful part you played in
the football game Saturday, you no doubt have received a
thousand congratulatory letters and telegrams, most of which
speedily found their way to your waste-basket unread. But I
beseech you to treat this letter more kindly.
You are very likely going to call me a bold adventuress!
What matters that to me? I have enclosed my sensibilities
in walls of adamant, so that I may not be hurt by anything
that you may say to me.
No doubt the centuries that your ancestors believed that
this is a “man’s world" still have their influence upon you.
But the eyes of wisdom of your father Adam, and of my
mother Eve, were at one and the same time opened; to-
gether they ate the wonderful fruit that the beguiling ser-
pent had led my mother Eve to steal, but your father Adam
took none of the blame; he relegated her to domesticism,
put on her the “must nots,” and claimed everything for him-
self. My pleading for suffrage is neither bellicose nor
passionate; at least, I shall never smash windows. I admire
femininity, but may not the antelope once in a century leap
upon the lion unawares, gore him to his heart-strings, and
get away unscathed?
May not I—although of a gentler sex, you say—be daring
ergougl; to advance a little to you without your thinking ill
0 me.
Yes; your game was wonderful, but in it all I could see
nothing but you, you. In our dance, in our brief conversa—
tion, it was all the great soul of Adrian, not the outward
Adrian at all, that I was conscious of.
am forward, familiar, unconventional. Yes; yes. I
know; yet I am not apologetic. How much too long people
have already allowed the shadowy, filmy barrier of conven-
tion to stand between them and their own good!
The congenial souls of the earth yearn to understand, to
know, to love one another better. Then, let us learn to know
each other; let us lay to the ground the conventional walls
79


80 REDDER BLOOD
that lie between us, walls built of the rock of mistaken
modesty. .
I have said some things I wished to say, but not all.
Let me know what you think of me! _
Remember, I’m the antelope and you the lion.
Yours,
WANDA CRoYnoN.
Adrian found the letter awaiting him on his
return from class-room one morning. He hastily
replied:
DEAR MISS CROYDON: Your congratulations are highly ap-
preciated. But you hint at sentiment.
I am a prosaic creature, not the sort of person you would
care for. _ _
To be your friend I should count a very great privilege;
but love—why, it is not in me.
Sincerely yours,
ADRIAN BIRCH.
She wrote back:
DEAR ADRIAN: I did not mean to hint at, I did not mean
to suggest, sentiment. What I want you to understand 15
that you have awakened in me what no one else in all the
world could have done. _
No; until I saw you I never wanted a lover; not even in
thought, but now I_have one, and it is you. Adrian dear,
your brain. Does Plato’s theory, after all these centuries,
still have followers? I was sure—poor ignorant little I—
that men had buried it face downward and written upon its
tomb this epitaph: “Gone forever.” Certainly he could never
have intended it to be interpreted as it has been interpreted.
You propose a friendship between two persons of opposite
sex? Preposterous Adrian! It can no more be than a.
fair-haired boy can kiss his elbow and straightway be trans-
formed into a beautiful blonde girl—you remember that
nursery story?
And even if we would have it so, how could it be, Adrian?
God did not start us off that way. The emotion that he


REDDER BLOOD 81
planted in the first two people was later to be the awakening
of love between the opposite sexes, an emotion stronger
than any friendship can ever be and the only kind that can
exist between a man and a. woman.
_ Ifiook into your soul, Adrian, and confess to me that I am
rig t.
WANDA.
When Adrian dropped the reply to her first
letter in the letter-box he resolved to drop from
his mind the memory of her, but her second letter
shocked him, greatly disturbed his thoughts.
She was skeptical regarding his knowledge of
Plato, she had made a weak attempt to interpret
Biblical love, and, most appalling of all, she sup-
posed him interested in her.
Beneath the violet of her dark eyes was en-
tombed a soul not of the pureness that he had
supposed, but steeped in vulgarity. The words
from her pretty lips were children of a brain that
was carnal, sensual.
She was a shatterer of conventions, a wrecker
of a decorum that was a thousand years old; she
had a religious face, a devilish heart,—she was a
truthful dissembler, a perfidious angel.
In her was not one jot of the modesty that he
had believed hers. She was even unworthy of
the feminine fineness of her handwriting. Her
girlish talks and actions were for the “Prom,”
and that being over, she now revealed her real
self. He was angered because he had allowed
himself to think so well of her.
But wait, Adrian. You misjudge her. You




VIII
Zelda rode home greatly perturbed. After a
strenuous day she was completely fatigued, body
and mind.
Leon’s persistent insistence that she go away
with him was like biting, stinging acid poured on
her wounded heart. ‘
Judged by the standard of human goodness,
Zelda was a good woman. She tried, in the midst
of her.trouble, to look optimistically upon life; she
tried to believe that adversities and disappoint-
ments are but temporary evils sent to develop
one’s character.
.She wanted to run the race set before her, to
endure to the end, to travel the narrow path, to
get up when she stumbled,—she wanted to keep
the faith.
Centuries ago some philosopher said that
nothing was unchanging, at rest. The earth, the
seas, the trees, life,—everything,—is in incessant
motion. Each life changes, and the mind, the
beliefs, the thoughts that make it up, change with
It. .
If some person in whom we had unbounded
confidence should commit an act that would shake
that confidence, we would lose it with regret, ad-
84


REDD-ER BLOOD 8 5
mitting that “To err is human.” But if we were
to tell an ascetic that our faith in Christianity was
wavering, to him it would be a shock almost un-
bearable; yet sometimes it seems in the midst of
tribulations that one’s faith must waver, must
sicken almost unto death. Everything changes',
but the difference between faith in God and faith
in humanity is that, though faith in God may at
times seem to be breathing its last, the Healer
of Healers gives new breath, new inspiration, and
our faith revives.
The thoughts of the past combined with the
forebodings of the future sickened Zelda. She
questioned the justice of a Supreme Being, the
rewards of a life of usefulness. Was there any
difference between the fruit of an evil tree and
that of a good tree? If one did not taste the
fruit, each looked equally pleasing. Could she
be mistaking appearance for realities? Had her
life been a failure? .
She thought of the following story that she had
recently read:
A careless sower aimlessly scatters grains of
corn upon uncultivated soil. He goes off and
leaves them to care for themselves. “Let nature
take care of them,” he argues. “Why should
she not; they are her children?” The seeds are
hearty and try to live, and Nature, looking com-
passionately on them, gives them rebirth, sprouts
them, nurtures them; they spring up, grow, ma-


86 REDDER BLOOD
‘ gyzpqw - q: .
._,e.e
._ --.
ture, and yield ears, the grains of which are
large, regular, full, and juicy. He invites his
neighbor to come over to see him reap, to see him
pull the ears from their stalks. His neighbor is
a judge of produce. “Wonderful!” ejaculates
the neighbor when the husk is torn away reveal-
ing grains full-sized, beautiful in whiteness. “I
should win a prize, if I could farm like you,” he
continues sincerely, after his host has told him
what results he had received from so little care.
Another sower plants corn in fertile soil. When
weeds would choke the shoots he chops down the
intended murderers. When it does not rain he
turns cooling water on them to cool their little
parching tongues; they grow, they mature, the
stalks are thin but strong and sinewy, their tassels
meekly bending a little.
The two sowers live on adjacent lots, and their
harvests are ready at the same time for reaping.
He too invites the neighbor to see his pulling.
With assurance, he pulls back the husk; the
neighbor sees a small grain, regular, full, but not
with the bursting fulness of the corn of the care-
less sower. The grains are yellow, not white,
but he again exclaims, “Wonderful!” His ex-
clamation now, however, is not sincere, and he
feels ashamed of his hypocrisy.
Would the observer passing by the show win--
dow ever know that one ear of the corn exhibited
there had been given more attention than the
other?


88 REDDER BLOOD
Nature, striving always to perfect everything she
produces, had cooperated with Reason in its nur-
ture.
Zelda looked out through the windows of the
automobile.
The grass was dead, the shrubs lifeless. At a
distance she could see a tree, naked, stripped of
its foliage.
On one of its branches ‘there still clung a leaf,
which was being blown hither and thither by
the wind. Beneath this branch she could see a
blue-headed Woodpecker thrusting its bill into
the tree’s body as if moved by a machine. But
among all this wintry death Zelda could see some
life, the round, strong evergreens,—firs and
cedars.
The wind swept over the mountain at a merci-
less, terrific gait into the face of her driver. Above
her head, when she looked heavenward in the
November sky, clouds were collecting and disin-
tegrating. A storm seemed imminent, the sky was
black, not a star in sight yet; this threatening
heaven fascinated Zelda.
Presently she caught sight of a star that shone
but dimly. And just as she saw it the envious,
jealous clouds must have seen it, too, for the
clouds rushed to it and so obscured it that it faded
into nothingness; but still she watched.
Suddenly the moving clouds came together and
formed a cross as perfect as the one on which


REDDER BLOOD 89
the Saviour gave his precious life, an atonement
for the world’s sin.
From the point of intersection of this cross
shone the once bedimmed star, now with unbe-
lievable brilliancy. It seemed to light up heaven
and earth; it seemed to Zelda a covenant, a light
from God’s own hand, a light similar to that
which emanated from the dying Jesus’ head.
So, she thought, is every life,—a star life. At
twilight it is born bright, then the night clouds
come and hide it, but at dawn it shines brilliantly,
because it is stronger, stead-ier, after the night’s
darkness.
Leon’s threats were clouds, nights, come to
darken her path, to make her lose her way. From
these thoughts she was aroused when the chauf-
feur stopped the car and opened the door.
At dinner Stanton said but very little to her,
and for this she was truly glad. His natural re-
serve and his unobservant manner when he was
engrossed in thought were to her a great boon
at this time, for it relieved her from answering
the questions that he certainly would have asked
her concerning her disturbed look,—a look that
she had tried to conceal. .She had passed an extra
quarter of an hour before her dresser trying to
cover up the dark lines,-children from the
wombs of worry and anxiety and fear,—under her
eyes, and she had rested, hoping to bring some
color into her sallow cheeks.
The whole afternoon her husband had been in


90 ' REDDER BLOOD
the library studying the systems of taxation, pre-
paring for the speech that he was to make that
night.
“Our present system is wrong,” he thought.
“The man of moderate means who improves his
property, beautifies his home, surrounds himself
with good pure air in an elevated location, should
not bear the greater part of the taxes. A gross
injustice is committed. . . . The burden-bearers
should be the rich real estate owners and dealers.
They push their tenants into low, marshy places,
—birth-places of malaria and typhoid,—into
houses with leaking roofs, paneless windows, wa-
ter-covered cellars where tuberculosis is king. In
these squalid rooms idiots are born, weaklings,
anarchists, evil-minded creatures, without moral
codes, away from Christian and uplifting environ-
ment. These hot-beds of disease endanger the
health and peace of the community; for them the
State must have sanitariums for tubercular pa-
tients, madhouses, schools for the weak-minded,
homes for weaklings. Why not make the very
wealthy improve their property, thereby increas-
ing the chances of life for the rich, as well as the
poor, by providing better, healthier surround-
ings ?”
Zelda, as she was to be alone that evening,
would have time to compose herself, to rest her
jaded mind.
“But,” thought she, as she kissed Stanton good-
bye, “suppose Leon should be here?” at which


REDDER BLOOD 91
fearful thought rapid waves of heat followed by
still faster waves of cold ran through her body.
Her spine felt as if it had been taken from be-
tween two cakes of ice. Her knees shook like a
wind-blown leaf.
She made one step, but her feet did not seem
inclined to move. Grasping the big brass knob
of the door, she steadied herself against it, and
suddenly,-—~happy thought,—she remembered
that Leon, too, had gone out for the night.
Out into the night’s blackness she stood gazing,
—seeing nothing—thinking, thinking, thinking.
In her Warm bed-room laden with the odor of
fresh cut flowers she prayed. The deep crimson
light cast its bedimmed reflection over the orna-
mented walls, over the embroidered curtains and
woven rugs. She was surrounded by all the lux-
ury, the taste, the voluptuousness of the sensuous
Orient.
In her kneeling posture her gown of silk, which
clung to her, revealed every line of her perfect
f01'm,—-—her curving shoulders, the almost mas-
culinely strong muscles of her back, her small
waist, her slightly curving hips from which she
tapered down to her little feet, which, heels up-
ward in juliettes of baby blue tint, stuck out from
beneath her gown. In her ivory white arms
folded before her she buried her face.
The crimson light, throwing itself upon the two
big, black plaits of silken hair that hung over her


92 REDDER BLOOD
shoulders, gave the effect of a sinking, blood-eyed
sun pouring its last rays upon the wings of a crow.
Upon this bowed-down suppliant Leon gazed!
He could hear her beseeching God’s mercy for
the world’s redemption, asking Him to feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, warm the chilled. He
heard her resigning herself solely to Him, im-
ploring Him to make her more compassionate,
less selfish, and, last of all, he heard her say in
tones of pleading humility, “Oh, Lord, show
Leon thy goodness, greatness, thy mercy and
love.” Down beside her he started to throw him-
self and penitently exclaim: “Yes, Lord, I am
Thine. Show me Thy ways, Thy goodness, Thy
mercy, and I will follow.”
But straightway some imp within him said:
“Thou fool! thou prayest to the wind and it blow-
eth harder in thy face, to the sun and it burneth
deeper into thy skin, the waters and they engulf
thee in more rapidly gurgling pools. What have
His goodness, His mercy, His love, done for thee?
When thou stoodest on the apex of the mountain
of success He swept it from under thy feet;
when thou wert sober He made thee a drunkard,
a vagabond; when in love He stole thy loved one
from thee. Now, fool, revenge thyself with all
the mad mercilessness of an avenger.”
Zelda arose. Like bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked
Aurora issuing from her nightly prison, she
seemed undaunted yet shy, austere yet gentle, com-
manding yet forgiving, human yet angelic.


REDDER BLOOD 93
As she turned back the covering to get into the
bed she felt herself within the grasp of two flabby
arms. Sidewise Leon had seized her and was
raining hot kisses on her cheeks, neck, arms, fore-
head. He rendered her speechless. The fright
made the blood rush to her face, the vein in her
round neck showing itself above her nightdress
stood out.
She was almost senseless and he began drawing
her close to him so that they felt the beat of each
other’s heart. His breath blew into her face.
Before she could regain her strength he began
in a drunken manner: “Zelda, I tell you, you are
my breath, my blood, my heart, my life. With-
out you I can no more live than can a striving
weed in a mountain glen where it never catches
one ray of the warming sun. I wither, I suffer
in the desire to preserve my own existence, I die in
the struggle.
“No, no! Zelda, do not reproach me; hate
me. I know I am a dissipated vagabond; do not
think that I am ignorant of the fact. My brain,
though diseased, is a reflecting glass revealing to
me my whole sordid, mean, debased, drunken,
licentious soul. But, God! Zelda, can’t a fellow
have a chance?
“In the noxious, filthy, pestilential marshes of
Brazil grows a .flower of the rarest sort. Per-
haps men would never think of going to this pes-
tiferous, insalubrious bog to get it, were it not
for its purity, its sweetness, its beauty. But over


94 REDDER BLOOD
the bad soil that gives it birth it throws out its
sweet odor, it stands up majestically command-
ing all who go near: ‘Behold! I am a thing of
wondrous beauty living in the swamps because
they are kind to me, and I will grow nowhere
else. Forget my muddy, unclean mother and the
great struggle you have had in reaching me, for
I am worth it all.’
“So, then, let your lily-pure self be a rare
flower, a prize worth a struggle, growing nowhere
else but out of my black, muddy, grimy life, but
diffusing your sweetness throughout the world.
“I was not always a marsh; life for me too
once held joys sublime, enchanting, like those they
tell us are to be found in heaven. Then you were
my all. I wanted you until I thought Zelda,
thought and thought Zelda, until I lived Zelda and
nothing else.
“When I had made fortunes; when men feared
me and respected my brain; when I was honored;
when fathers pointed me out to their sons and
said, ‘There’s a great young man’; when re-
porters sought me like hungry pups following a
bone that I might say one word for them to print;
when I was a success,—then somebody told them
that I was a—-—”
“Good God! Don’t say it!” shrieked Zelda
frantically; but he went on:
“That I could have stood; the world was large,
and I knew it. I knew that I knew more of the
paths that lead to success than do most men, and


REDDER BLOOD 95
I could go somewhere else, change my name, if
need be.
“I say I .could have stood that stigma, could
have found myself again, but God! your God!
Zelda, when they told me you were five years
married, that you had a son and he did .not bear
my name, the world ended for me!
. “What had been paradise was now poisoned by
the venomous serpent, the floods came and wiped
away all life, men’s tongues confused me, their
voices irritated me, the earth rushed back into
the void whence it came, and God withdrew him-
self from it.
“All that had been sweet now became bitter,
happiness became wretchedness, from being heal-
thy-minded I became morbid. Then I thought
that perhaps your husband might die, that I might
come again int-o your heart.
“I always saw your eyes gleaming like the light
that shines in heaven above, making bright the
way to each traveler. With all the fervor of our
childhood I still adored you, worshiped you, as
when you dominated me, as when as children we
slept in each other’s arms, as when we declared
our love for each other in old Mark’s rat-infested
garret. Say that you love me, Zelda.”
Sobbing deeply and too weak to make an at-
tempt to release herself from his grip, .she said
almost inaudibly, “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” he retorted angrily, “You did.”
“In childhood I thought I did.”


96 REDDER BLOOD


“Thought you did in childhood? Then why
not now?”
“Forgive me, Leon; I was ignorant, a child,
I did not know. I knew nothing, you knew noth-
ing, except childish love. We did not know each
other. .But now it is different. Do you suppose
I could love you now?”
“Oh, rot!” answered Leon, irritated by her re-
fusal. “You dissimulator! You didn’t know?
Why, it is the first lesson a woman leams,—to
wring a man’s heart, to steal his soul, to make his
life miserable. Her bewitching smiles, the love-
light in her eyes, the allurement of her voice,—
these she is born with or soon learns as she looks
with vanity into a looking-glass. I want you and
I am going to have you, no matter what it costs.”
She had now regained herself and her well pre-
served strength stood her in good stead, for she
wrenched herself free, and threw him back
against the wall with a crash, so that he tilted the
dresser as he stumbled.
“There!” she said. “You’re a coward.”
“You are mistaken,” he replied. “Love is a
warrior; he fights to win.”
“If Mr. Birch should catch you here, he’d kill
you.” .
“If the loneliness of a p'ining heart, or the joy
it gets from having found the one for whom it
longs, does not kill neither can the fire of lead
nor the ice of steel.”
Anne, the maid, stood in the door and looked


REDDER BLOOD 97
__~‘_.___ .‘ . . A
at them, amazed. She had heard him declare his
love to her, had seen him kiss her, had seen her
in his arms, had seen her crash him against the
wall, and now she stood, white as a statue, speech-
less, wondering what it could all mean.
If Zelda had known that she had been seen,
she would not have lived another minute. The
thought of having been seen by one servant while
another made passionate love to her would have
caused her to die by her own hands.
“You’re going away with me,” said Leon, com-
ing upon her again, but carefully, for he was a
coward. He was conscious that he was no match
for her, knowing that his persistent indulgence
had robbed him of his strength; but he had a
weapon to use upon her that was far more power-
ful than force,—hi_s knowledge of her past life,
his knowledge of what she was.
“I’m not going to spoil the years I’ve spent in
making my life happy by letting you with your
threats come between me and my husband,” she
said, feeling confidence in herself.
“You won’t,” he sneered; “then I’ll spoil them
for you. What will they say when I tell them
you’ve lain in my arms all night; that you prom-
ised to marry me; that you solicited my presence
in your room when your husband was away.”
“Stop! Stop!! Liar, hypocrite. Those are
all lies and men will not believe them,” cried
Zelda, almost crazed.
“I know they’re lies,” went on Leon, “but men


102 REDDER BLOOD
fifty thousand dollars. .She handed it across the
table to him, saying:
“Leon, here is a check for $50,000, which I
shall place in a down-town bank to-day and for
which you may call whenever you wish. To it
I shall place ten thousand yearly to your credit.
Isn’t that enough to pay off the old debt between
us? Won’t you let me live my life for that
amount?”
Coming around to her, with a pleased look in
his face, he drew the other chair up beside her,
placed his knees in it, took her hand in his, looked
into her deep eyes, and said coldly, “Almost thou
persuadeth me.” Then he turned away, with a
diabolical laugh.
She controlled herself, still hoping to win him
over.
“But, Zelda, dearest,” he said. “With fifty
thousand we could fly America, go to the Isles of
the Sea, and live like lords; with it you could make
me a man; I should soon be making our own
money, we would change our names, I should be
useful in affairs of government, and before we
knew it they would have me the popular candidate
for a responsible ofiicial position in one of the
South Sea Islands. When shall we start?”
“I cannot go with you. Here you may be in-
dependent, you may have valets, enjoy art, have
luxuries, live happily as you once did when you
were yourself,—when you had money,—may en-
tertain your friends,—may——”


REDDER BLOOD 103
“Money? money?” he broke in. “With it and
without you my sun would turn to darkness. What
shall I do with money? ‘Tis you, Zelda, all of
you I want.” He came and caught her in his
arms. “You want me to live happily, independent
as I once was; I tell you not one minute’s happi-
ne.ss had I seen from the time I left you years
ago until my eyes rested on you again. Inde-
pendence would be nothing without you. To have
fine homes, luxuries, wealth, and to be loveless,
with no child’s voice yelling through the halls, with
no mother‘s tender words calling the sweet infant
to her,—what happiness could there be in that?”
. “But, Leon; have you no humane feelings left?
Are your sympathies dead; have you no sense of
right? My husband is good to me; he is all in
all to me. He loves me; he is true to me,-——are
you going to shame me before him, must I be a
scandal before the world, a hypocrite before my
husband? Won’t you have compassion? Believe
me, I want to be truthful to my husband, to you,
to the world. Do you ”
“Huh,” he sneered. “You speak of truth.
Truth, changeable creature of man’s idiotic brain!
Where can we find you, among what peoples, in
what lands? To what two men do you mean
the same, to what two families, to what two coun-
tries, to what two nations, to what two races?
Because of a truth in New York one would be
made governor, for that same truth in Jersey City
he would be electrocuted at Trenton. A lie in


104. REDDER BLOOD
Boston is the truth in Capetown; the truth in Lon-
don is a lie in Pekin. There is no such thing as
general truth; every truth is individual; I shall
make my lies what I will and call them truths,
and you are going to do so because I ask it.”
“Leon! are you made of stone? Don’t you see
my plight? The leaves of my life are white,
every page is open for the world’s eyes, except
one,—and that is as black as the hinges of night,
made so by fear, hypocrisy, the want of equal
chance, the wish for equal human liberty. Made
so. But you are the only person that can inter-
pret that strange, dark page. Leave it unread,
Leon! Don’t let people know; I have befriended
you, don’t be an ingrate.”
“Silence!” he broke in. “Listen. The fall
comes, the swine are turned loose in the woods,
through them they roam hunting their food. To an
oak they come; the earth beneath it is tiled with
acorns,—they eat, their heads always down, al-
ways grunting; never looking up to see whence the
bounty falls; never ceasing to grunt as the only
appreciation of their Giver’s kindness.
“Thus is the whole human race,—hogs, in-
grates, wanting to seize everything, to give back
nothing. And if under the tree of God’s bounty
we find ourselves, do any of us thank Him, praise
Him without a grunt? No. And I,-——I could be
nothing other than an ingrate when for twenty-
five years I have been like Tantalus reaching for
that which I wanted, had it at my fingers’ tip, yet


108 REDDER BLOOD
had been ridiculed, and her check had been
snatched, torn into bits, and flung into the streets.
All this mattered not to him; he wanted her or
—nothing.
To have her child, her husband, the world,
know that she was a hypocrite, to have them know
what she was,—all this was distracting, but to
give herself up to this man who, though once
brilliant, had now by his sensuality, dissipation,
and shamelessness sunk so deep in degradation
would have been worse than death.
'Calmly and deliberately she arose from the
chair and began to put on her coat.
He turned from the window and faced her.
She said in a very determined manner:
“I shall no longer be intimidated by your
threats, I shall no longer be humiliated by your
unrelenting tongue which snaps at everything good
in the world! I have appealed to that which was
good in you; have appealed to the friendship that
you had for me in childhood, have tried to soften
your heart, have offered you every penny I have
in the world,—if you would only leave me in peace.
All you have refused. Now do what you like,
come what may, I’m going to face it all. Your
terrorizing me is at an end. Tell them everything;
let them know; I do not fear their curses as much
as I hate your presence,” and she reached for the
door to open it but—it was locked.
“A fine piece of emotionalism,” said Leon


REDDER BLOOD 1 13
the main floor to the basement where he had only
a short while before met her Leon rose up again,
apparently from nowhere.
“We meet again,” he said tauntingly.
“I thought,” she replied, “that the severe treat-
ment given you in New York had been enough for
you.”
“Dull scissorsdo not cut,” he said, “they only
snag. That brute only sharpened my anger, only
made me crave more for my heart’s satisfaction;
only made you, my earthly goal and heavenly end,
loom up brighter and nearer to me.”
“Get out of the way that I may pass,” she de-
manded.
“I’ll open my arms that you may pass into them,
Zelda,” he mocked.
“If you touch me, I shall scream for the en—
gineer.”
“As you please,” he retorted; “but remember
that when you scream this time it will be my men
who will answer, not yours. Your engineer is not
in this building, nor is your watchman. Both are
being securely held on the outside. With your own
money I have bribed them. Now, ha! ha!” he
laughed, “will you yell?”
She realized her danger.
“Why did you come here again to-day?” she
asked. '
“Why did you leave me in New York? We
might have made our plans there and might now
be out of the reach of all possible meddlers. I


XI
“Oh, thank you! thank you!” she mumbled
feebly as she was helped up the steps. “Did they
kill him,—I mean did they hurt him badly? Will
he come back, do you think?” she ran on inco-
herently, and then said apologetically, “I don’t
know what I’m saying, but you’ll pardon me, won’t
you? You see the fright quite upset me!”
“Oh, that’s all right, madam, I‘understand, I
understand,” he said consolingly. “I knows dat
little t’ings like dat will make you noivous, but it’s
all right; it’s all right. You see we couldn’t figure
out dat guy’s game. When he’d come in Fitz’s
joint and buy everybody a drink and den make his
git-away we knowed right away that something
was wrong somewhere; see? So I frames up and
puts me gang on him to watch. We thought he
might ’a’ been one of de bulls in plain clothes; see?
So we always had our peepers open to see when
he’d come in; den we seen him go in de ‘Home’
one day and wondered what dis guy was doing;
see? And to-day when we seen him wid a bunch
of strange ‘boobs’ we knows right away dat some-
thin’ was wrong, so I gits on de job and stations
me men on all de corners. We watched de auto
dat stood out in front of de ‘Home,’ and when I
117


1 1 8 REDDER BLOOD
seen him rush you out I blows my whistle; see?
De way dat guy started off wid dat machine I
thought he’d wreck it.”
“But how did you ever stop it?” cut in Zelda.
“Oh, all dem guys what does dat kind 0’ work
is afraid, madam. He was fired up with bad
rum; see? And ’twas cooling off den, and jest
as soon as Dan fired de gun he put on breaks,
jumps out, and tries to run for his life; but Dan
got him.”
“What! you don’t mean you killed him ?” she
inquired, horror-stricken.
“Why, sure; sure,” he returned, with a smile,
as if he thought the taking of life no more than
the taking in of his breath. “What do you t’ink
we ought to do wid dem guys what tries to hurt
good people,—-—put crowns on dere heads and
make ’em kings? Not on your life. We got
‘em all except de leader, and we’ll get him, don’t
worry. Don’t be afraid of dat bunch any more,
’cause it’s all off wid ’em.”
“You won’t take them to prison, will you?
You see, I—well, my husband,——that is, my son
—Oh, what am I saying? I mean that my name
would be dragged in court if they were impris-
oned, and ..I shouldn’t like that,—because my
friends—well, you understand.”
“Oh, dat court business is all right, madam.
Dey’ll never get no nearer de coop den dey are
now. I got a third degree dat would make dat
one dey have in de court-house seem like a birth-


REDDER BLOOD 121
all brightness; you took away nothing, you
brought everything; you asked nothing in return,
you gave everything.
“We learnt how to laugh; we learnt dat we
were not doomed, dat we were not all bad in-
side of us, but dat we could be good, if we
would. We learnt dat being good bad its re-
ward, and, madam, I believe dat some of dem
down dere now believe ’tis a God. Don’t you
t’ank me; let dem t’ank me. Don’t you know
when I t’ink of you I begin to t’ink dat dis world
ain’t so black as we paint it, or as people like
me makes it. I almost wants to turn and go
straight when I t’inks of you, but I can’t; I been
dis way too long. I started dis way. Me father
used to take me to de store when I was a kid so
high and make me steal ’cause he thought I was
little and de storekeeper wouldn’t t’ink I knowed
any better if I got caught; den he’d make me
fight, and den he’d take me in his arms and go
down to de corner saloon and buy me a drink,
and somebody else wouldbuy me a drink, and
he knowed I could not drink it all, so he’d drink
de rest hisself. I wa’n’t de only kid would be
dere either; we’se all gone bad, you see, ’cause
we was started off wrong. Yes, I’d like to go
straight, but I can’t change. Dere’s something
of de old past dat hangs on to me, holds me,
and won’t let go.
“Well, I must be going now. Me and
O’Reilly’s,—you know O’Reilly, de cop,—got a


122 REDDER BLOOD
I
|
|
.
‘I
I
i
.


deal on to-night, and he’ll be sore as blazes if
I don’t be dere at seven when he come on his
beat; see? So long, mad—”
“Won’t you come in and have dinner?” she in-
terrupted.
“Oh, no, madam, dat’s all right and don’t fear;
we’ll git dat head guy all right. So long.”
He ran down the steps and jumped into the
taxicab, and Zelda went into the house, bewild-
ered with frightful reflections and still more
frightful anticipations.
She looked over her mail and found a telegram
from Stanton and a letter from Elsie Van Deman
wishing her a happy Xmas. The message from
Stanton she answered immediately.
She did not dress for dinner,—which had been
prepared by Thomas, the butler, as it was Leon’s
day out,—but went as she was when it was an-
nounced.
She ate alone; perhaps it was better so. She .
sat at the table with her head sidewise resting
on her left palm. The bisque was forced down
and she merely nibbled at the roast and took
no salad nor dessert at all.
Not even the visit from the Brocktons, who
were always the most agreeable company, aroused
her from heavy gloom. She even welcomed their
going,—a thing that she had never before done.
That night in bed she lived over every event
in her life, analyzing it and then synthesizing it
again.


XII
Adrian was alarmed at his thoughts. He had
never imagined that at any time in his early life
he would have any time for thoughts of senti-
ment; yet they came now unsummoned. He
wished' to become a lawyer, and he gave up many
pleasures in order to give his time to his studies.
He wanted later on to become one of the world’s
great, to hear his voice in the Senate of the United
States, to see his picture in the Temple of Fame.
But while he was ambitious he was not avaricious
nor heartless. He wanted to meet men who were
men, to battle with them, and to win; and noth-
ing seemed to him too great a sacrifice, if he
could accomplish this.
He did not play football because he liked it,
but because the college honor was involved, and
he knew that his playing would bring joy to his
fellow students. He tried to keep clear of any-
thing that might stand in the way of his ambition.
He had to acknowledge to himself, however,
that Miss Croydon had made a very great im-
pression upon him. He could not put her out of
his mind.
He now buried his face in his hands and tried
to fix his eyes fast on the cold pages of a scientific
125


I 26 REDDER BLOOD


volume; but at the beginning and end of each line
his mental eye saw her standing,—sweet, lovely,
radiant. She followed each line with him; she
went into his brain and helped it interpret the
meaning. She said always: “Go on, Adrian.
Push forward; I want to help you.”
He closed the book to shut out the vision, but
he could not.
He did not try to bring her to his mind; she
came herself, uninvited, and more and more he
was beginning to find that he was welcoming her.
Yet he would not be truthful to himself; he liked
to think, “I shall be a man of the people; I have
no time for love.” But even so, the smile on her
lips stayed in his eyes; her voice, like music, stayed
in his heart.
In the hurrying crowd that between five.and
seven o’clock comes nightly out of New York
going to different towns in Northern New Jersey
over the Lackawanna, Adrian was rushing.
He had barely stepped off the ferry in Hoboken
when a voice which he immediately recognized
said invitingly, “Why don’t you save your ticket
until the next time?” However much he tried to
make himself believe otherwise, he was glad to
hear that voice.
He turned, and beside him he saw a dark brown
limousine, through the half-open door of which
Wanda looked, with a smile.
“Won’t‘you get in?” she asked. And before


REDDER BLOOD 127
Adrian could frame an excuse he was in the car
speeding off—he did not know whither.
“I am very glad to see you again, Miss Croy-
don,” he said as he seated himself. “Since I
saw you last I have heard enough .floral speeches
about you to fill a volume of a thousand pages.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, the little
smile that Adrian remembered so well playing
on her lips.
“I mean my fellow students, your admirers,
have said the most complimentary things about
you that can be said about a woman. They have
made you a queen, a goddess; with them you are
as lovely as was Diana, and each of them wishes
to bow his knees at your shrine.”
She laughed a rippling little laugh, for his
flattery had pleased her vanity.
“But tell me,” 'he continued, good-humoredly,
“where are you taking me, fair abductress? I
shall scream for help if you do not tell whither I
am being carried.”
“I am taking you home.”
“Then you are not going to Boonsville ?”
“Not to-night.”
“Then where?”
“To Clairmont. I shall spend the night there
with the Brocktons. What are you doing away
from Pemberton to-day?”
“I came to see my father off; he has gone for
an extended Western trip.”
“Are you sure that was your only reason?”
I


REDDER BLOOD 129 .
“Oh, Adrian, won’t you have done with the
boys?” she asked in a pleading tone. “It is of
you I want to hear. Let us talk of ourselves.
. . . Yes, I have been to the concert at Carnegie
Hall to hear Vronski, whom they call, and rightly,
I am sure, the greatest living violinist. With his
how he can do wonders. Under its spell one sees
the flowers growing and enjoys their perfume,
hears the babbling of a limpid stream coursing
down a mountain-side in springtime, feels the bit-
ing wintry blast, hears the thunder-claps, the rain
torrents, the hail, sees the snowflakes falling, and
feels the sun’s warmth. He makes one under-
stand grief, sorrow, gladness, anger, hate, jeal-
ousy, sympathy, mercy, and, greatest of all,—
love. In fact, Addie, if I could play as he does,
I should whisper my love with my bow, knowing
that it could convey my meaning far better than
can my weak words. I should whisper my love
with my bow and then I should subdue your stub-
born heart.”
Adrian had not been prepared for such expres-
sions from her, and he regarded them as forward
and immodest. Yet, when he dared be truthful
with himself he was greatly interested in her,
therefore .he .hesitated before he replied.
If she had smiled perhaps it would have been
different, his discomfiture would not have been so
great, but her matter of fact manner made it im-
possible for him to treat lightly what she had said.
To hear her speak of capturing his heart


I30 REDDER BLOOD
aroused in him a feeling of pleasing unpleasant-
ness, so when he tried to fence with her he stam-
mered, “I—-I’m afraid, Wan—Miss Croydon—”
“Go on, please. Say Wanda as you started and
wished to do,” she interrupted.
“You have misunderstood me. I am not
stubborn and my heart needs neither a master
nor a companion; its only love is its hope of
success. Before me lies the business of life. I’m
trying to realize its seriousness while I am young
so that I may go about it properly. I am not
sure that I am capable of such sentiments as
those that you have spoken to me. I am
sure that no one will prove it to me any time
soon. My only wish now is to make my life
successful. For me everything else is too ephem-
eral to be considered.
“I must leave affairs of the heart to men who
are ”
“Oh, Adrian,” she pleaded, tightly pressing his
strong gloved hand in her own tiny one. The
touch, like an electric current, sent through his
being many mingled emotions. “How self-
centered you have allowed yourself to become!
Do you suppose that God is going to permit you
to be different from all the rest of the human
type? Do you suppose that He is going to begin
with you and create an emotionless race? How
can you so misunderstand yourself? God is not
experimenting; He knows us all, and making ali
lowances for our individual idiosyncrasies, He


REDDER BLOOD 131
knows that we are all alike,—all directed by the
same thing,—love. Warriors bold, gowned
monks, cloaked friars, bearded philosophers, all
suppressors of their natural feelings,—their age
is dead. Do you want to be less human than you
are? . . . You say that you cannot love; that
is because you do not yet know how to be truth-
ful to yourself. You have thought of everything
else except love, and when it wanted your atten-
tion you beat it back.”
She drew closer to him, and continued:
“Listen, Adrian, I’m going to help you find
your real self; I’m going to make you love, love
me alone; I’m going to come up to the front door
of your heart, ring its bell, and you, when you
know yourself better than you do now, are going
to open the door to me, welcome me with glad-
ness, with all the joy with which one lover wel-
comes another. You say you came to New York
to-day to bid your father good-bye. How many
times he has gone before and you thought
nothing of it! You came to New York to-day
to see me, but you won’t admit it.”
“But Wanda, Wanda,” he interrupted. “I
cannot—” She could hear his .heart crying for ut-
terance through his eyes.
“I know you cannot now, Adrian,” she waved
him aside with a motion of her hand. "I did not
ask you to yet. You are yet lost to yourself;
you stand in your own light; you hunt for your
soul, but Glaucus-like, you have hidden it among


REDDER BLOOD 133
their marriage found a soul mate, decides to go
his or her own way. These are all mistakes of
youth,-—blind, impulsive, impatient youth.”
“But the pictures you have drawn are absurd
pictures. Sensible .people marry because they
wish to climb together all mountains, to sail to-
gether all streams, to bridge together all chasms,
to feel together all joys, sorrows, griefs, and dis-
appointments. No, Adrian, you cannot mean
what you say. You must know better; there
is no incompatibility after marriage that did not
exist before. Love is plain, open, kind; it does
not deceive, it does not lie hidden. Each soul
knows its mate from its birth, and each can find
its own in a crowd of millions. Does a mother
have to search all through a great gathering of
children in order to know the joyful, playful
voice of her own? Never! The soul of the
mother calls to that of the child, and the soul
of the child responds to the call,—so it is with
love and marriage. There is no business of life
for a man alone. He must make a business for
himself and also for the woman of his choice.
This kind of business you are going to plan for
me.”
Just how long their limousine had been stand-
ing in front of the Brocktons’ fine home in upper
Clairmont they did not know, but a servant in
livery interrupted their conversation by announc-
ing that Mrs. Brockton was waiting.
Wanda answered in a flurry and they got out.


REDDER BLOOD . 137
“I couldn’t be an intruder,” he apologized.
“But I’m sor—”
“No apology,” she cut him ofl eurtly; “you
were right at my door and never came in to say
‘Hello!’ Now, I want you here in fifteen
minutes,” she said commandingly; “I’ll send the
car right down for you.”
.“But Mother’s not well,” he pleaded, “and I
shouldn’tlike to leave her alone to-night.”
“Then we’ll come down there,” she answered,
knowing how deep was the boy’s devotion for his
mother.
“You may go, Adrian,” put in Zelda, who had
heard his part of the conversation; “I shall be
quite well alone.”
“You eel,” said Mrs. Brock-ton, who heard
what the boy’s mother said, “you are trying to
slip out of my way. But your mother will not
permit such neglect.”
Turning to his mother, he asked, “Are you
sure, Mother, that I may go out for an hour
without your missing me?”
“I miss you if you are out a minute, Adrian,
but go for a little while; I sha’n’t be lonesome.”
“Dear Mother,” he said, with a voice full of
mingled emotions.
“I’m waiting,” came over the telephone.
“I’ll be up shortly,” he returned, and Mrs.
Brockton went back to her seat, with a trium-
. phant look on her face.


XIII
“Do you think so, Adrian?”
“I can’t say; you see I know so little of art.”
“But you 'have an opinion?”
“Yes; in fact, I think Géricault made wonder-
fully better horses in oil than our own American
Remington did in water color.”
“Indeed? What of Bonheur; is she over-
rated.”
“Perhaps not; but Troyon’s animals are far
more animal-like in their movements than hers.
She seemed to forget that animals are beasts.”
“You don’t like my salad, Wanda,” put in Miss
Crews, the housekeeper.
“Oh, yes I do,” she answered gaily. “It’s
great, isn’t it, Adrian?”
“Splendid,” he replied.
“We grew this romaine in our own hot-house
and I superintended the planting,” added Miss
Crews.
“Really, you are a wonderful housekeeper,
Miss Crews,” he said.
“Do you think I look matronly at the head of
a table, Adrian?” asked Wanda.
“You are scarcely old enough to look matronly
yet, but why do you ask me?” he returned.
144


146 REDDER BLOOD
“Look, your glass is empty,” she replied.
“This wine is great, it is as good as some that
my father has,——some he bought when he was in
Paris on his honeymoon.”
“What do you think of the French ?” she asked.
“Do you think that they are as immoral and in-
sincere and parsimonious as we Americans think
they are?”
“Certainly not; they have their own way of
doing things, and in many ways they are the best
people in the world. Of course, some of their
customs seem strange and bad to us because ours
are so different.”
“I wonder if any race is naturally any worse than
all the others.”
“I doubt it,” he answered.
They arose, and Adrian went into the music
room.
“Shall it be the piano of the Victrola?” she
asked.
“The Victrola, please.”
“Of course; I might have known you wanted
to talk to me while it is playing.”
“Interpret my thoughts as you like. You’re
always right, and I shan’t protest.”
They were silent for a moment while the music
was playing—playing softly, sweetly, plaintively.
“Life is so tiresome in this house,” she then
said, half seriously.
“Why?” asked Adrian, “You have good serv-


REDDER BLOOD I47
ants, a splendid housekeeper,—everything that
you could wish.”
“That’s it; I do nothing for myself. I don’t
even lace my own shoes or do my hair. Why, even
my breath seems to be drawn for me by some one
else. I am as helpless as if I were an invalid.
Every moment of my time is filled with—nothing.
I get up in the morning, have breakfast, then there
is a ride, a morning call, or shopping. After noon
I have luncheon, take a nap, go to a concert or a
dance, or read a novel. After dinner I go to the
opera or a dance, then to bed again. It all seems
so purposeless, meaningless, empty.”
“But,” objected Adrian, “you rebel against the
spirit of the age. Don’t you know that every other
girl would want to pass just that sort of an ex-
istence ?”
“No, Adrian, you are wrong. The time has
passed when women liked to live empty lives.”
“Why, then, if it is so empty, don’t you get
something with which to fill it?”
“There is but one thing that can.”
“Get that one thing.”
“I’m trying, but it is hard. Adrian, I know
what you must think of me; I know what people
would think of me because of my actions toward
you; they would call me a bold, forward girl. I’m
not. I differ from all the others only in that I
express fearlessly and unconventionally what every
girl feels and would say to the person who has
awakened her love, if she were not afraid. Let


REDDER BLOOD 149
adorable thing he had ever seen. He struggled
with the swelling emotions in him,—emotions that
would have leaped out, had his will been less
strong.
He said: “I cannot do as you wish, Wanda. I
must sever sentiment wholly from my actions for a
long while yet. To say that I love you would
mean that I should like to marry you now. Mar-
riage for me could not mean anything without
children, and some one has truly said that ‘he that
hath wife and children hath given hostages to
fortune, for they are impediments to great enter-
prises.’
“You see, Wanda, I am on my way now to suc-
cess; I can do big things better alone. I won’t let
you enter this race. I’m going to use all my
strength to keep away from love for a while. But
I do love ”
“Oh, go on, Adrian, go on.” Her face lit up
and she clapped her hands buoyantly. “You’ve
said almost all I wanted you to say. You have
almost made a confession; you almost see your
own soul. It is better to tell your feelings to a
statue or a picture than to let them stay in you
and smother. You could not stop death, were it
at hand. You know that death and love are alike,
—unchangeable. They will not be denied—nor
can they be hidden. Tell me the truth. Why
shouldn’t you? Do you think it shames me to
talk to you as I do? It does not. To say ‘I love
you’ is the truest thing I’ve ever said. It is the


I 50 REDDER BLOOD
only thing that sounds absolutely true to my own
ears.
“I’m going to battle hard, Adrian, and I’m
going to win, not so much on my own account, but
because you want me to, because you want me to
go into your soul and let you look into it through
me; because you need me as a mirror reflecting
your own dear good self to you. You may dis-
courage me, but you cannot stop me.” .
Adrian could stand no more. To attempt to
repel the dynamic force of emotion then seeking
recognition in his heart would have been impos-
sible. To deceive himself further or to whip his
feelings into servitude, when they were demanding
their freedom, was a thing he could no longer do.
In a moment of ecstasy he unconsciously sprang
to his feet, caught her in his arms, and kissed her
warm lips fervently.
“Wanda! Wanda!” he said. “You do me in-
justice; you wrong me, you wound me terribly,
girl, when you say that I discourage you. Oh,
won’t you forgive me, dearest? I did not mean
to do so. .I thought all of myself; in me was all
I, I, I, forgetting the greatest of all truths, that
no life on earth is a single life, that somewhere
in the world is the counterpart of eyery heart. I
knew you were mine; I knew it unmistakably as
soon as I first saw you, but I could see no one else
in myself but myself, no one entering but the
thoughts, the hopes of my future life. I fought
to keep my thoughts so filled, dearest, but you had


REDDER BLOOD I 5 I
__ ___ _u A
a greater weapon,—love. And you battled with
me in my own territory and won! Won. And
oh how glad I am! how glad! . . You say I
think you bold, forward. How could you think
that, Wanda? To me you are the purest thing
in all the world. Had angels been copied after
you, heaven would have been no less perfect.
Wanda, won’t you forgive me ?”
She looked up at him, her cheeks flushing, her
eyes glistening like stars in the youth of the night,
and around her lips played a smile that would have
wooed all the world to happiness.
“Oh, Adrian,” she said ecstatically, “how good
and strong you are! Surely this is heaven. Such
happiness is not known on earth. Hold me tight,
tighter in your big strong arms; press me closer
to your strong warm heart. Can we not go
through life loving each other like this, Adrian?”
“That is what we shall do, dearest,” he an-
swered.
“But it will be so long before we start,” she
said sadly.
“Do you remember what I said to you at the
Howell dance about engagements?”
“How could I forget? I remember every word
you’ve ever spoken to me since we met.”
“What then, little girl, did I say?”
“You said,” she turned her head thoughtfully,
for a moment—“Oh, you said that if you ever
kissed me, we would be engaged, and ”
“I have kissed you to-night.”


152 REDDER BLOOD
“And you said that you did not believe in long
engagements,—that we must be married very soon
after our engagement. What a dear lboy you are!
Now come sit down by me and we shall set a date
for our ” She hummed Mendelssohn’s “Wed-
ding March,” her hand tightly held in his, while
they sat and looked into each other’s eyes.
“Now, when shall it be? I won’t be put off long,
you know.”
“No, dearest, I’m not going to keep you off
long. Do you not know that I’m madder, more
passionately in love with you than you are with
me?”
“Nonsense, Adrian, impossible. When shall
it be?”
“In June, dearest, when they hand me my di-
ploma.”
“Think,” she said with childish .glee, “think!
you will have two commencements at once.”
“Yes; but you will be the biggest diploma I
shall ever get.”
“June. June. Wasn’t heaven kind to give us
such a month with its beautiful warm, kind days?
It is all so wonderful. You know, Adrian, I have
pictured our little home in the country—I could
never stand the city—with honeysuckIes entwining
its front, its yard filled with roses, the fragrance
of which we shall get on the soft winds of the
morning and evening, and in the back a little
garden, dearest, all our own, from which I shall
with my own hands pull vegetables for you. I


I54 REDDER BLOOD
will she be like? I will tell you. She shall have
your kind eyes, and your dark hair, but my lips,
don’t you think? Oh, vain woman that I am!
I don’t care, we are all vain when we get the man
we love. Yes, my lips and nose and cheeks, and
as she grows I shall teach her oh the nicest things.
But when she grows up she is not going to be one
of those women that kill in them what should be
most alive. I hate Hedda Gablers. .She will be
one of those warm, loving, sensible, self-subjecting
Judiths such as Keller—isn’t it, Adrian?—por-
trays in ‘Green Henry.’ And she must ”
“Miss Wanda,” called a voice from the hall,
“it’s your bed time.”
“Thank you, Miss Crews,” Wanda replied.
“You see,” she continued, “I’m twenty, and still
a child. I must have some one to put me to bed.
From this time forth I shall obey no one but
Adrian Birch.
“Will it not be better for you to obey Miss
Crews sometimes? She has known you from your
birth and knows what’s best for you.”
“Yes; but I have some discretion, and do you
forget that I am to be Mrs. Adrian Birch soon?”
“How can I forget it? Are you happy, dear-
est?”
“Beyond words. Your vacation began to-day.
How long have you?”
“Twelve days.”
“How lovely!”

,0“


XIV
The morning after her dreadful experience
Zelda arose at seven. Not one minute’s peace-
ful sleep had she had during the night. That
uncanny, diabolical picture had tormented her
relentlessly.
She wondered if it would not have been better
if Leon and his gang had been successful in taking
her away—she knew not where. The world then
would never have known the truth,~—would never
have known that her whole life had been a lie. No
future torture could possibly be as great as the
pain she now endured.
Death to her was nothing; it is to no one. The
fire in her mind was infinitely hotter than that of
the inferno. She did not even think of trying to
escape.
Her only thought was: “Was it best that I was
rescued from those potential murderers?”
, Had she been killed, all her acquaintances would
have proclaimed her a brave, courageous, char-
itable woman, but now if they knew, if they only
knew what she really was,—what a confusion of
tongues there would be, heaping upon her the
vilest epithets in the English language.
The looking-glass did not lie to her—mirrors
156


158 REDDER BLOOD
to come. She wondered if he thought that she had
forgotten the day. But that was too impossible
even to be considered. Of course he knew that
she could never forget that day.
But she knew that Leon had escaped from her
rescuers—that he was in the kitchen. Her collee
had told her that. No one made coffee like Leon,
not even André.
“Good morning,” said Leon blandly.
“Had you really the boldness to come into my
house again after yesterday?” she asked.
“How can a man change his last day? Oaks
don’t break, they don’t even bend after they are
full grown.”
“Leave me or I’ll call the servants,” she said,
astonished at her own calmness.
“They will not hear; they’re far up-stairs.
Why, Zelda, they could not injure me. I’m in
love, and love is greater than death. I once saw
a duel between love and death. They each had
weapons of equal quality and size. The battle
was hot, but love conquered. So with me. I
cannot stop now; I love you.”
He ran to her and seized her. She struggled to
free herself, but without success.
“Come on, come on; kiss me,” he said. “There
is sweetness in the cruelty of your words, warmth
in the iciness of your eyes, a power in your un-
responsive lips. I would rather die because of
your cruelty than live resting my head on the pillow
of a queen. You cannot stop me.”


REDDER BLOOD I 59
He did not hear the opening of the door. His
passion had crazed him.
"Zelda! Zelda!” called Stanton’s familiar
voice, while he and Adrian took off their coats
in the hall.
But no response was heard. -
Stanton turned to his right and he would not,
could not believe his eyes. An old-fashioned mir-
ror showed him Leon with his arms around Zelda,
who was struggling to get away.
Enraged, he rushed at Leon. He seized him
by the throat and tore him away from Zelda, and
would have struck him with his cane, if she had not
shrieked, “Don’t strike.” Leon wrung himself
away and the lick went wild.
“That woman’s a nigger!” he yelled, pointing
to Zelda.
For those words Stanton would have killed him,
if he had not been for the moment robbed of his
strength. He tried to raise his arm, but it was
limp.
Zelda had fallen on the floor.
Leon’s words were playing games in Stan-ton’s
brain.
“Say that again and die,” 'he said feebly, and
Leon repeated with energy, “That woman’s a
nigger!”
“Tell him he lies, Zelda,—my own dear Zelda.
It’s calumny, he’s defaming you, dear,” he said,
still weak from the shock. “Tell him he lies. I
- know you’re not, but I want to hear 1t from your


REDDER BLOOD I 6 I
were proud of and respected; I am he who tried
to act honorably toward every one, but circum-
stances turned against me.” .
“You act honorably!” thundered Stanton. "You
damned, common hound.”
“Yes,” went on Leon, “I’m a common hound
now, but once I was a thoroughbred, I had blue
blood; I made the world know me. I was a suc-
cess and then some snake in the grass told them
that I was a ‘nigger.’
“Then, of course, that ended all. Power
went, friends went, the world turned against me,
but still I struggled on until I found that Zelda ,
was your wife. Then I changed; everything
changed me. I cared for nothing but a chance
to get even. The world kicked me and called me
dog. I barked back at it; but my strength was
gone and it no longer feared my bites. Then I set
out to find Zelda at all costs and tear her away
from you. I went .back to my old trade,—cooking,
—which had been my support while I struggled
through college. I found her, but she would not
leave you. She is as innocent as a spring flower.
I say no more.” He drank something from a small
bottle. “The pain of a thousand years’ suffering
cuts loose my heart strings.” '
He dropped, and when Adrian looked at him he
was dead.
“Mother, Mother,” begged Adrian, “is this
true? Tell me, Mother. Am I a ~—”
“You she-devil!” shouted Stanton viciously.


REDDER BLOOD 1 6 5‘

“I tell you, dear father, the only thing in all
the world worth while is love. It is the only smile
from God’s own lips that imprints itself ineradi-
cably on man’s heart and returns again to God; it is
the only human thing that is unchangeable, un-
changing, and unchanged. And yet—And yet—”
His voice broke; he dropped his eyes to the
floor, then raised his head and began again.
“See, Father, she loves you. Take her and
forget. In her love for you she is no different now
from what she was before you knew.”
“Take her, you say! Do you suppose I’m going
to be made the laughing-stock of society. She is
not my kind—she’s different,” said Stanton.
“Yes, she is different because society says so,
not because her soul is different. I tell you that
every life that is ushered into this world comes
from one pure undefiled source of love and purity.
We are not conceived in iniquity; anger, envy,
hate, jealousy, are the qualities that men give to
themselves. The soul itself comes into the world
with one predominating attitude,—love for man
and love for God.
“See, Father, those two little children in the
driveway. Look how they play; the black one is
the son of the cook; the white one, the son of a
man of millions. In their voices, in their actions
toward each other, there is no discord. Children
see deeper into the love of human beings than men
do; they do not mistake appearances for realities;
shadows cannot deceive them. See how they play!


XV.
“The last Will and Testament of Col. John
Marston. To whom it may concern.
“Be it hereby known that I, John Marston, of
James City County, Virginia, direct descendant of
a founder and promoter of the London Company,
grandson of one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, do bequeath my entire savings
deposited in the bank at Williamsburg, Virginia,
and my farm of four hundred and fifty (450)
acres in James City ‘County to Zelda, the daughter
of Cathering Edwards and myself.
“I loved her mother more than she could ever
know, but between us there was a gap which pre-
vented my marrying her.
“In her life time I would have helped her, but
her pride scorned it. I would have given anything
to my child Zelda, though born out of wedlock,
but she too refused my aid, which hurt me beyond
words.
“She is married and happy now. May she
ever be!
“She cannot refuse my last request. If she does,
I shall never know it.
“Zelda is my own blood,—all that is left of me.
I hope she will ever be happy and remember me as
one who loved her.”
168


174 . REDDER BLOOD
e-'‘‘-:. . -
him as saying, “This is my heart, I’ll crush it, and
go through life dead, before my end comes.”
But she must know, and he must tell her. But
how?
To tell her that he was a ‘Could he
ever say such a word to her and watch all that had
before been clear to him become transformed into
deadly disgust?
"Ingrate! ingrate! that I am,” he thought.
“Wanda would never think such things. ‘She is
too pure, too loving. She can never change.”
Stop. She can change; she may not. All life
changes, all human beings change. You thought
right at first. Do not make the thousands of years
of experience of human beings a lie because of this
one girl.
Along the street he walked aimlessly, knowing
not whither he was going, and he would not have
cared, if he had known.
Nothing would have made any impression on
him now. He neither heard, nor felt, nor saw
anything about him.
He continued to wander aimlessly.
Two hours later he found himself, almost
stupefied, ringing Wanda’s door-bell.
A servant showed him into the parlor and an-
nounced his presence to Wanda.
She did not stop to wonder why he had returned
so soon after having left her only a few hours
before. She was too glad for that.
Into the room she rushed, buoyant, radiant,


I78 REDDER BLOOD
asked, with despairing emphasis. “You have
spoken in riddles ever since you came. What does
it mean?”
“It means that we are dead to each other.”
His face became white, he moved nervously,
over him ran hot and cold waves. No one could
have seemed or been more miserable. To give up
such a prize would have caused the world to weep.
“Wanda, Wan ” he choked.
.She caught him again and held him tight and
kissed him. “Yes, Addie. Say it, what is it?
What is it?”
“Wanda,—~I am a Negro,” he stammered.
His confession had in it unerring conviction.
To have him repeat it would have been useless.
She thrust him from her as one would drop a
burning metal.
There was fire in her every breath. She was
furious. She had been fooled; she had laid bare
her heart, her soul to this thing.
“You leper!” she burst out. “You cancer in
a man’s form, you imp let loose from limbo! You
deceived me. Acid-like you ate into my pure soul,
knowing all the time what you were, knowing that
you were as black as midnight. Let me wipe away
your kisses, let me tear my flesh from my frame.
I was pure; your black skin has corrupted me, pol-
luted me. Get out of my sight forever.” She fell
exhausted on a chair.
Adrian made no protests. He wished to explain
nothing. He had been honest with himself and


182 REDDER BLOOD
know me. You’ve got to, Adrian. You’re mine,
I say,—mine. If you let these things on earth
keep you from me, you shall have to answer for
them in your last day, for in heaven we are mar-
ried, we’re one. No matter what the world says.”
He .was unbending, not because he did not love
her, but because he distrusted himself.
“We must live apart, dearest; I cannot ruin
your life because mine is ruined.”
“Adrian!” she burst out, inexpressibly dis-
tressed.
“They say, Wanda, that the offspring of a
quagga and a mare will have its mark,—will be
striped. . . . Some people call me a quagga.”
He turned and quickly opened the door and
rushed out.
“Adrian, Adrian! don’t go, don’t leave me!”
she moaned in a frantic sob as the door slammed.


XVII
A year had passed since Stanton left Zelda.
Immediately after the separation Stanton com-
plained of some malady, and said that he would
take a long trip abroad, which he hoped would
make him himself again.
He traveled in Europe and Asia and Egypt;
he visited galleries, cathedrals, museums, seek-
‘ing everywhere a rest for his mind. He attended
the great receptions given by his European and
American friends. He walked on the various
boulevards, went to the operas, the music halls,
hoping to see beautiful women or something that
would divert him.
But did he find satisfaction in any of these
things? He often stopped and asked himself,
“For what am I looking?”
The answer was always the same.
When he went into the various galleries, when
he sat at the operas, he had with him only a part
of himself. The other part,—well, he did not
acknowledge this even to himself.
“Why don’t I go back and get the thing that
I want most in life?” he at length asked him-
self numberless times a day. “Why don’t I get
183


184 REDDER BLOOD
that which will complete me; I am myself, but only
in part; why don’t I become whole again?”
So far as the world knew, he and Zelda were
still the loving couple that they had always been.
“Why, then, do I not go back?” he asked him-
self.
He was not afraid of people; he was not afraid
of Zelda. His love was too deep for that, and
love knows no fear.
He sought his own happiness, and whatever
others thought or said mattered little to. him. He
wanted happiness, whatever the cost.
That he was just in his breaking away from
Zelda as he had done, he could find no reason
to doubt. He had been deceived, grossly de-
ceived.
One night he sat in his room in a fashionable
district in Brussels. He was greatly depressed.
His mind was not in the room. It rested on
nothing in particular but reviewed his whole life. .
He cast his eyes upward and midway on one of
the walls hung a Madonna. How sweet her face;
how adorable she was! Her pure soul, her kind
face lent light, beauty, radiance to the room. He
admired her dark hair, her pretty eyes, her
rounded cheeks, and how she adored the child
in her arms.
He was not sure whether it was Zelda as he
had known her or whether it was she as some
great master had caught her and put her on can-
vas centuries before she had come into his life.


I 86 REDDER BLOOD
“My voice is broken, so is my heart; but to tell
you that "My love is like a love divine’ would
make them both whole again.
“Our boy was right. . Love is the only thing in
the world worth while. It is God’s greatest gift
to men.
“I am crazed, Zelda,——crazed. I am coming
to you. You love me yet, don’t you? I believe
you do. I shall find out.
“Call me what you may. Call me worse names
than I did you. Let others do the same, if they
will. Names do not hurt. I have no feeling
now which is vulnerable to the world. Only you
can hurt or heal. I am coming to you. Do or
say what you will.”
Zelda had kept on with her charity work. She
got great satisfaction out of knowing that she was
helping others. She left Clairmont and went to
live in a small house near a large city in Northern
New Jersey. Her visits in society now were very
infrequent. .She went only enough to keep from
being interrogated whenever she might chance
to meet one of her former associates.
She had often felt far greater desire for Stan-
ton than he had for her, perhaps. But to her
now he was gone forever.
Now and then in the foreign columns of the
papers she would see his name. What pangs of
sorrow they would cost her, if only a few words
were mentioned about him. Yet she was happy


I 88 REDDER BLOOD
He seized her in his arms and said, “Zelda!
Zelda! dearest!!”
“Are we to live again, Stanton?” she asked.