The Cost
David Graham Phillips





1








THE COST









•'I|i» ^%l" SAIl> PAULINE, 'MAY I ASK WHOM it's FOR?'



:, M I." - 1 !" SA'Il .u :.|.nk, • MAY I A.SK. WHOM 11's h ..k?'


THE COST
By
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
Author of
"The Master-Rogue"
"Golden Fleece, Etc."
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS


Copyright 1904
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
May
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I
A Father Invites Disaster
i
II
Olivia to the Rescue
20
III
And Scarborough
31
IV
A Dumont Triumph
40
V
Four Friends
50
VI
"Like His Father"
62
VII
Pauline Awakens
76
VIII
The Decision
88
IX
A Thoroughbred Runs Away
97
X
Mrs. John Dumont
120
XI
Young America
'36
XII
After Eight Years
149
XIII
"My Sister-in-Law, Gladys"
171
XIV.
Straining at the Anchors
179
XV
Graduated Pearls
186
XVI
Choice Among Evils
195
XVII
Two and the Barrier
210
XVIII
On the Farm
223
XIX
Pauline Goes Into Politics
234
XX
A Man in His Might
249
XXI
A Coyote at Bay
258
XXII
Storms in the West
275
XXIII
A Sea Surprise
301
XXIV
Dumont Betrays Dumont
3"
XXV
The Fallen King
329
XXVI
A Desperate Rally
346
XXVII
The Other Man's Might
375
XXVIII
After the Long Winter
40a


A".
v


THE COST



.
"BEAUTIFUL !" SAID PAULINE, "MAY I ASK WHOM it's FOR?"


THE COST
By
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
Author if
"The Mas'rr-Rogue"
"Golden Fletie, ire."
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS



, 00
* A

^UIi . All INI-, 'SI,. , v .vWll,M u'sfoiL?'


THE COST
By
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
Author of
"The Master-Rogue"
"Golden Fleece, Etc."
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS


Copyright 1904
w 1.
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
May
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I
A Father Invites Disaster
I
II
Olivia to the Rescue
20
III
And Scarborough
31
IV
A Dumont Triumph
40
V
Four Friends
50
VI
"Like His Father"
62
VII
Pauline Awakens
76
VIII
The Decision
88
IX
A Thoroughbred Runs Away
97
X
Mrs. John Dumont
120
XI
Young America
'36
XII
After Eight Years
149
XIII
"My Sister-in-Law,Gladys"
171
XIV.
Straining at the Anchors
179
XV
Graduated Pearls
186
XVI
Choice Among Evils
195
XVII
Two and the Barrier
210
XVIII
On the Farm
223
XIX
Pauline Goes Into Politics
234
XX
A Man in His Might
249
XXI
A Coyote at Bay
258
XXII
Storms in the West
275
XXIII
A Sea Surprise
301
XXIV
Dumont Betrays Dumont
3"
XXV
The Fallen King
329
XXVI
A Desperate Rally
346
XXVII
The Other Man's Might
375
XXVIII
After the Long Winter
40a





THE COST





THE COST
A FATHER INVITES DISASTER.
Pauline Gardiner joined us on the day that we,
the Second Reader class, moved from the base-
ment to the top story of the old Central Public
School. Her mother brought her and, leaving,
looked round at us1, meeting for an instant each
pair of curious eyes with friendly appeal.
We knew well the enchanted house where she
lived—stately, retreated far into large grounds
in Jefferson Street; a high brick wall all round,
and on top of the wall broken glass set in cement.
Behind that impassable barrier which so teased
our young audacity were flower-beds and "shrub"
bushes, whose blossoms were wonderfully sweet
if held a while in the closed hand; grape arbors
and shade and fruit trees, haunted by bees; wind-
ing walks strewn fresh each spring with tan-bark
that has such a clean, strong odor, especially just
after a rain, and that is at once firm and soft
1


2 THE COST
beneath the feet. And in the midst stood the only
apricot tree in Saint X. As few of us had tasted
apricots, and as those few pronounced them bet-
ter far than oranges or even bananas, that tree
was the climax of tantalization.
The place had belonged to a childless old couple
who hated children—or did they bar them out
and drive them away because the sight and sound
of them quickened the ache of empty old age into
a pain too keen to bear? The husband died, the
widow went away to her old-maid sister at Madi-
son; and the Gardiners, coming from Cincinnati
to live in the town where Colonel Gardiner was
born and had spent his youth, bought the place.
On our way to and from school in the first weeks
of that term, pausing as always to gaze in through
the iron gates of the drive, we had each day seen
Pauline walking alone among the flowers. And
she would stop and smile at us; but she was ap-
parently too shy to come to the gates; and we,
with the memory of the cross old couple awing us,
dared not attempt to make friends with her.
She was eight years old, tall for her age, slender
but strong, naturally graceful. Her hazel eyes
were always dancing mischievously. She liked
boys' games better than girls'. In her second


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 3
week she induced several of the more daring girls
to go with her to the pond below town and there
engage in a raft-race with the boys. And when
John Duniont, seeing that the girls' raft was
about to win, thrust the one he was piloting into
it and upset it, she was the only girl who did not
scream at the shock of the sudden tumble into
the water or rise in tears from the shallow, muddy
bottom.
She tried going barefooted; she was always get-
ting bruised or cut in attempts—usually success-
ful—at boys' recklessness; yet her voice was sweet
and her manner toward others, gentle. She hid
her face when Miss Stone whipped any one-
more fearful far than the rise and fall of Miss
Stone's ferule was the soaring and sinking of her
broad, bristling eyebrows.
From the outset John Dumont took especial de-
light in teasing her—John Dumont, the roughest
boy in the school. He was seven years older than
she, but was only in the Fourth Reader—a lag-
gard in his studies because his mind was incurious
about books and the like, was absorbed in games,
in playing soldier and robber, in swimming and
sledding, in orchard-looting and fighting. He
.was impudent and domineering, a bully but not


% THE COST
a coward, good-natured when deferred to, the
feared leader of a boisterous, imitative clique.
Until Pauline came he had rarely noticed a girl
—never except to play her some prank more or
less cruel.
After the adventure of the raft he watched
Pauline afar off, revolving plans for approach-
ing her without impairing his barbaric dig-
nity, for subduing her without subduing himself
to her. But he knew only one way of making
friends, the only kind of friends he had or could
conceive—loyal subjects, ruled through their
weaknesses and fears. And as that way was to
give the desired addition to his court a sound
thrashing, he felt it must be modified somewhat
to help him in his present conquest. He tied her
hair to the back of her desk; he snowballed her
and his sister Gladys home from school. He
raided her playhouse and broke her dishes and—
she giving desperate battle—fled with only the
parents of her doll family. With Gladys shriek-
ing for their mother, he shook her out of a tree in
their yard, and it sprained her ankle so severely
that she had to stay away from school for a
month. The net result of a year's arduous efforts
was that she had singled him out for detestation


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 5
—this when her conquest of him was complete
because she had never told on him, had never in
her worst encounters with him shown the white
feather.
But he had acted more wisely than he knew,
for she had at least singled him out from the
crowd of boys. And there was a certain frank
good-nature about him, a fearlessness—and she
could not help admiring his strength and leader-
ship. Presently she discovered his secret—that
his persecutions were not through hatred of her
but through anger at her resistance, anger at his
own weakness in being fascinated by her. This
discovery came while she was shut.in the house
with her sprained ankle. As she sat at her corner
bay-window she saw him hovering in the neigh-
borhood, now in the alley at the side of the house,
now hurrying past, whistling loudly as if bent
upon some gay and remote errand, now skulking
along as if he had stolen something, again seated
on the curbstone at the farthest crossing from
which he could see her window out of the corner
of his eye. She understood—and forthwith for-
gave the past. She was immensely flattered that
this big, audacious creature, sq arrogant with the


6 THE COST
boys, so contemptuous toward the girls, should
be her captive.
When she was in her first year at the High
School and he in his last he walked home with
her every day; and they regarded themselves as
engaged. Her once golden hair had darkened
now to a beautiful brown with red flashing from
its waves; and her skin was a clear olives—pallid
but healthy. And she had shot up into a tall,
slender young woman; her mother yielded to her
pleadings, let her put her hair into a long knot
at the back of her neck and wear skirts almost
to the ground.
When he .came from Ann Arbor for his first
Christmas holidays each found the other grown
into a new person. She thought him a marvel
of wisdom and worldly experience. He thought
her a marvel of ideal womanhood—gay, lively,
not a bit "narrow" in judging him, yet narrow
to primness in her ideas of what she herself could
do, and withal charming physically. He would
not have cared to explain how he came by the ca-
pacity for such sophisticated judgment of a young
woman. They were to be married as soon as he
had his degree; and he was immediately to be


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 7
admitted to partnership in his father's woolen
mills—the largest in the state of Indiana.
He had been home three weeks of the long va-
cation between his sophomore and junior years.
There appeared on the town's big and busy stream
of gossip, stories of his life at Ann Arbor—of
drinking and gambling and wild "tears" in De-
troit. And it was noted that the fast young men
of Saint X—so every one called Saint Christopher
—were going a more rapid gait. Those turbulent
fretters against the dam of dullness and stern re-
pression of even normal and harmless gaiety had
long caused scandal. But never before had they
been so daring, so defiant.
One night after leaving Pauline he went to
play poker in Charley Braddock's rooms. Brad-
dock, only son of the richest banker in Saint X,
had furnished the loft of his father's stable as
bachelor quarters and entertained his friends there
without fear that the noise would break the sleep
and rouse the suspicions of his father. That night,
besides Braddock and Dumont, there were Jim
Cauldwell and his brother Will. As they played
they drank; and Dumont, winning steadily, be-
came offensive in his raillery. There was a quar-
rel, a fight; Will Cauldwell, accidently toppled


8 THE COST
down a steep stairway by Dumont, was picked
up with a broken arm and leg.
By noon the next day the town was boiling
with this outbreak of deviltry in the leading young
men, the sons and prospective successors of the
"bulwarks of religion and morality." The Episco-
palian and Methodist ministers preached against
Dumont, that "importer of Satan's ways into our
peaceful midst," and against Charley Braddock
with his "ante-room to Sheol"—the Reverend
Sweetser had just learned the distinction between
Sheol and Hades. The Presbyterian preacher
wrestled spiritually with Will Cauldwell and so
wrought upon his depression that he gave out a
solemn statement of confession, remorse and re-
form. In painting himself in dark colors he
painted Jack Dumont jet black.
Pauline had known that Dumont was "lively"
—he was far too proud of his wild oats wholly
to conceal them from her. And she had all the
tolerance and fascinated admiration of feminine
youth for the friskiness of masculine freedom.
Thus, though she did not precisely approve what
he and his friends had done, she took no such
serious view of it as did her parents and his. The
most she could do with her father was to per-


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 9
suade him to suspend sentence pending the con-
clusion of an investigation into Jack's doings at
the University of Michigan and in Detroit.
Colonel Gardiner was not so narrow or so severe
as Jack said or as Pauline thought. He loved his
daughter; so he inquired thoroughly. He knew
that his daughter loved Dumont; so he judged
liberally. When he had done he ordered the en-
gagement broken and forbade Dumont the house.
"He is not wild merely; he is—worse than
you can imagine," said the colonel to his wife, in
concluding his account of his discoveries and of
Dumont's evasive and reluctant admissions—an
account so carefully expurgated that it completely
misled her. "Tell Pauline as much as you can
—enough to convince her."
This, when Mrs. Gardiner was not herself con-
vinced. She regarded the colonel as too high-
minded to be a fit judge of human frailty; and his
over-caution in explanation had given her the
feeling that he had a standard for a husband for
their daughter which only another such rare man
as himself could live up to. Further, she had
always been extremely reserved in mother-and-
daughter talk with Pauline, and thus could not
now give her a clear idea of what little she had


10 THE COST
been able to gather from Colonel Gardiner's half-
truths. This typical enacting of a familiar domes-
tic comedy-tragedy had the usual result: the girl
was confirmed in her original opinion and stand.
"Jack's been a little too lively," was her unex-
pressed conclusion from her mother's dilution of
her father's dilution of the ugly truth. "He's
sorry and won't do it again, and—well, I'd hate
a milksop. Father has forgotten that he was
young himself once."
Dumont's father and mother charged against
Ann Arbor that which they might have charged
against their own alternations of tyranny and
license, had they not been humanly lenient in self-
excuse. "No more college!" said his father.
"The place for you, young man, is my office,
where I can keep an eye or two on you."
"That suits me," replied the son, indifferently
—he made small pretense of repentance at home.
"I never wanted to go to college."
"Yes, it was your mother's doing," said old
Dumont. "Now we'll try my way of educating
a boy."
So Jack entered the service of his father's god-
of-the-six-days, and immediately showed aston-
ishing talent and twelve-to-fourteen-hour assid-


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 11
uity. He did not try to talk with Pauline. He
went nowhere but to business; he avoided the
young men.
"It's a bad idea to let your home town know
too much about you," he reflected, and he re-
solved that his future gambols out of bounds
should be in the security of distant and large cities
—and they were. Seven months after he went
to work he amazed and delighted his father by in-
forming him that he had bought five hundred
shares of stock in the mills—he had made the
money, fifty-odd thousand dollars, by a specula-
tion in wool. He was completely reestablished
with his father and with all Saint X—except
Colonel Gardiner.
"That young Jack Dumont's a wonder," said
everybody. "He'll make the biggest kind of a
fortune or the biggest kind of a smash before he
gets through."
He felt that he was fully entitled to the rights
of the regenerate; he went to Colonel Gardiner's
law office boldly to claim them.
At sight of him the colonel's face hardened into
an expression as near to hate as its habit of kind-
liness would concede. "Well, sir!" said he,


12 THE COST
sharply, eying the young man over the tops of his
glasses.
Dumont stiffened his strong, rather stocky
figure and said, his face a study of youthful frank-
ness: "You know what I've come fo^ sir. I
want you to give me a trial."
"No!" Colonel Gardiner shut his lips firmly.
"Good morning, sir!" And he was writing again.
"You are very hard," said Dumont, bitterly.
"You are driving me to ruin."
"How dare you!" The old man rose and went
up to him, eyes blazing scorn. "You deceive
others, but not me—with my daughter's welfare
as my first duty. It is an insult to her that you
presume to lift your eyes to her."
Dumont colored and haughtily raised his head.
He met the colonel's fiery gaze without flinching.
"I was no worse than other young men—"
"It's a slander upon young men for you to say
that they—that any of them with a spark of de-
cency—would do as you have done, as you do!
Leave my office at once, sir!"
"I've not only repented—I've shown that I was
ashamed of—of that," said Dumont. "Yet you
refuse me a chance!"
The colonel was shaking with anger.
A



"VOU KNOW WHAT I'VE COME FOR, SIR, I WANT YUU TO filVE
ME A TRIAL"


v


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 13
"You left here for New York last Thursday
night," he said. "Where and how did you spend
Saturday night and Sunday and Monday?"
Dumont's eyes shifted and sank.
"It's false," he muttered. "It's lies."
"I expected this call from you," continued
Colonel Gardiner, "and I prepared for it so that
I could do what was right. I'd rather see my
daughter in her shroud than in a wedding-dress
for you."
Dumont left without speaking or looking up.
"The old fox!" he said to himself. "Spying
on me—what an idiot I was not to look out for
that. The narrow old fool! He doesn't know
what 'man of the world' means. But I'll marry
her in spite of him. I'll let nobody cheat me out
of what I want, what belongs to me."
A few nights afterward he went to a dance
at Braddock's, hunted out Pauline and seated
himself beside her. In a year he had not been
so near her, though they had seen each other
every few days and he had written her many let-
ters which she had read, had treasured, but had
been held from answering by her sense of honor,
unless her looks whenever their eyes met could
be called answers.


14 THE COST
"You mustn't, Jack," she said, her breath corn-
ing fast, her eyes fever-bright. "Father has for-
bidden me—and it'll only make him the harder."
"You, too, Polly? Well, then, I don't care
what becomes of me."
He looked so desperate that she was fright-
ened.
"It isn't that, Jack—you know it isn't that."
"I've been to see your father. And he told me
he'd never consent—never! I don't deserve that
—and I can't stand it to lose you. No matter
what I've done, God knows I love you,
Polly."
Pauline's face was pale. Her hands, in her lap,
were gripping her little handkerchief.
"You don't say that, too—you don't say
never r
She raised her eyes to his and their look
thrilled through and through him. "Yes, John,
I say 'never'—I'll never give you up."
All the decent instincts in his nature showed in
his handsome face, in which time had not as yet
had the chance clearly to write character. "No
wonder I love you—there never was anybody so
brave and so true as you. But you must help me.


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 15
I must see you and talk to you—once in a while,
anyhow."
Pauline flushed painfully.
"Not till—they—let me—or I'm older, John.
They've always trusted me and left me free. And
I can't deceive them."
He liked this—it was another proof that she
was, through and through, the sort of woman
who was worthy to be his wife.
"Well—we'll wait," he said. "And if they
won't be fair to us, why, we'll have a right to do
the best we can." He gave her a tragic look.
"I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never
can stand it not to get what I've set my heart on.
If I lost you, I'd go straight to ruin."
She might have been a great deal older and
wiser and still not have seen in this a confirma-
tion of her father's judgment of her lover. And
her parents had unconsciously driven her into a
mental state in which, if he had committed a
crime, it would have seemed to her their fault
rather than his. The next day she opened the
subject with her mother—the subject that was
never out of their minds.
"I can't forget him, mother. I can't give him
up." With the splendid confidence of youth, "I


16 THE COST
can save him—he'll do anything for my sake."
With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's
done nothing so very dreadful, I'm sure—I'd be-
lieve him against the whole world."
And in the evening her mother approached her
father. She was in sympathy with Pauline,
though her loyalty to her husband made her care-
ful not to show it. She had small confidence in
a man's judgments of men on their woman-side,
great confidence in the power of women to change
and uplift men.
"Father," said she, when they were alone on
the side porch after supper, "have you noticed
how hard Polly is taking—it?"
His eyes and the sudden deepening of the lines
in his face answered her.
"Don't you think maybe we've been a little—
too—severe?"
"I've tried to think so, but—" He shook his
head. "Maggie, he's hopeless, hopeless."
"I don't know much about those things." This
was a mere form of speech. She thought she
knew all there was to be known; and as she
was an intelligent woman who had lived a long
time and had a normal human curiosity she did
know a great deal. But, after the fashion of


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 17
many of the women of the older generation, she
had left undisturbed his delusion that her good-
ness was the result not of intelligence but of
ignorance. "But I can't help fearing it isn't
right to condemn a young man for ever because
he was led away as a boy."
"I can't discuss it with you, Maggie—it's a
degradation even to speak of him before a good
woman. You must rely upon my judgment.
Polly must put him out of her head."
"But what am I to tell her? You can't make
a woman like our Pauline put a man out of her
life when she loves him unless you give her a
reason that satisfies her. And if you don't give
me a reason that satisfies me how can I give her
a reason that will satisfy her?"
"I'll talk to her," said the colonel, after a long
pause. "She must—she shall give him up,
mother."
"I've tried to persuade her to go to visit
Olivia," continued Mrs. Gardiner. "But she
won't. And she doesn't want me to ask Olivia
here."
"I'll ask Olivia before I speak to her."
Mrs. Gardiner went up to her daughter's room
—it had been her play-room, then her study, and


18 THE COST
was now graduated into her sitting-room. She
was dreaming over a book—Tennyson's poems.
She looked up, eyes full of hope.
"He has some good reason, dear," began her
mother.
"What is it?" demanded Pauline.
"I can't tell you any more than I've told you
already," replied her mother, trying not to show
her feelings in her face.
"Why does he treat me—treat you—like two
naughty little children?" said Pauline, impatiently
tossing the book on the table.
"Pauline!" Her mother's voice was sharp in
reproof. "How can you place any one before
your father!"
Pauline was silent—she had dropped the veil
over herself. "I—I—where did you place father
—when—when—" Her eyes were laughing
again.
"You know he'd never oppose your happiness,
Polly." Mrs. Gardiner was smoothing her
daughter's turbulent red-brown hair. "You'll
only have to wait under a little more trying cir-
cumstances. And if he's right, the truth will
come out. And if he's mistaken and John's all
you think him, then that will come out."


A FATHER INVITES DISASTER 19
Pauline knew her father was not opposing her
through tyranny or pride of opinion or sheer
prejudice; but she felt that this was another case
of age's lack of sympathy with youth, felt it with
all the intensity of infatuated seventeen made
doubly determined by opposition and concealment.
The next evening he and she were walking to-
gether in the garden. He suddenly put his arm
round her and drew her close to him and kissed
her.
"You know I shouldn't if I didn't think it the
only course—don't you, Pauline?" he said in a
broken voice that went straight to her heart.
"Yes, father." Then, after a silence: "But
—we—we've been sweethearts since we were chil-
dren. And—I—father, I must stand by him."
"Won't you trust me, child? Won't you be-
lieve me rather than him?"
Pauline's only answer was a sigh. They loved
each the other; he adored her, she reverenced
him. But between them, thick and high, rose the
barrier of custom and training. Comradeship,
confidence were impossible.


II.
OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE.
With the first glance into Olivia's dark gray
eyes Pauline ceased to resent her as an intruder.
And soon she was feeling that some sort of dawn
was assailing her night.
Olivia was the older by three years. She
seemed—and for her years, was—serious and wise
because, as the eldest of a large family, she was
lieutenant-general to her mother. Further, she
had always had her own way—when it was the
right way and did not conflict with justice to her
brothers and sisters. And often her parents let
her have her own way when it was the wrong
way, nor did they spoil the lesson by mitigating
disagreeable consequences.
"Do as you please," her mother used to say,
when doing as she pleased would involve less of
mischief than of valuable experience, "and per-
haps you'll learn to please to do sensibly." Again,
her father would restrain her mother from inter-
ference—"Oh, let the girl alone. She's got to
teach herself how to behave, and she can't begin


OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE 21
a minute too young." This training had pro-
duced a self-reliant and self-governing Olivia.
She wondered at the change in Pauline—
Pauline, the light-hearted, the effervescent of
laughter and life, now silent and almost somber.
It was two weeks before she, not easily won to
the confiding mood for all her frankness, let
Olivia into her secret. Of course, it was at night;
of course, they were in the same bed. And when
Olivia had heard she came nearer to the truth
about Dumont than had Pauline's mother. But,
while she felt sure there was a way to cure
Pauline, she knew that way was not the one
which had been pursued. "They've only made her
obstinate," she thought, as she, lying with hands
clasped behind her head, watched Pauline,
propped upon an elbow, staring with dreamful de-
termination into the moonlight.
"It'll come out all right," she said; her voice
always suggested that she knew what she was
talking about. "Your father'll give in sooner or
later—if you don't change."
"But he's so bitter against Jack," replied
Pauline. "He won't listen to his side—to our
side—of it."
"Anyhow, what's the use of anticipating


28 THE COST
trouble? You wouldn't get married yet. And if
he's worth while he'll wait."
Pauline had been even gentler than her own
judgment in painting her lover for her cousin's in-
spection. So, she could not explain to her why
there was necessity for haste, could not confess
her conviction that every month he lived away
from her was a month of peril to him.
"We want it settled," she said evasively.
"I haven't seen him around anywhere," went
on Olivia. "Is he here now?"
"He's in Chicago—in charge of his father's
office there. He may stay all winter."
"No, there's no hurry," went on Olivia. "Be-
sides, you ought to meet other men. It isn't a
good idea for a girl to marry the man she's been
brought up with before she's had a chance to
get acquainted with other men." Olivia drew
this maxim from experience—she had been en-
gaged to a school-days lover when she went away
to Battle Field to college; she broke it off when,
going home on vacation, she saw him again from
the point of wider view.
But Pauline scorned this theory; if Olivia had
confessed the broken engagement she would have
thought her shallow and untrustworthy. She was
v


OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE 23
confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity
for self-doubt, that in all the wide world there
was only one man whom she could have loved
or could love.
"Oh, I shan't change," she said in a tone that
warned her cousin against discussion.
"At any rate," replied Olivia, "a little experi-
ence would do you no harm." She suddenly sat
up in bed. "A splendid idea!" she exclaimed.
"Why not come to Battle Field with me?"
"I'd like it," said Pauline, always eager for
self-improvement and roused by Olivia's stories
of her college experiences. "But father'd never
let me go to Battle Field College."
"Battle Field University," corrected Olivia. "It
has classical courses and scientific courses and a
preparatory school—and a military department
for men and a music department for women.
And it's going to have lots and lots of real uni-
versity schools—when it gets the money. And
there's a healthy, middle-aged wagon-maker who's
said to be thinking of leaving it a million or so
—if he should ever die and if they should change
its name to his."
"But it's coeducation, isn't it? Father would


24 THE COST
never consent. It was all mother could do to
persuade him to let me go to public school."
"But maybe he'd let you go with me, where
he wouldn't let you go all alone."
And so it turned out. Colonel Gardiner,
anxious to get his daughter away from Saint X
and into new scenes where Dumont might grow
dim, consented as soon as Olivia explained her
plan.
Instead of entering "senior prep", Pauline was
able to make freshman with only three conditions.
In the first week she was initiated into Olivia's
fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the
woman's literary and debating society, and was
fascinated and absorbed by crowding new events,
associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of
herself her old-time high spirits came flooding
back. She caught herself humming—and checked
herself reproachfully. She caught herself singing
—and lowered it to humming. She caught her-
self whistling—and decided that she might as
well be cheerful while she waited for fate to be-
friend her and Jack. And she found that she
thought about him none the less steadfastly for
thinking hopefully.


OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE 25
Battle Field put no more restraint upon its
young women than it put upon its young men
—and it put no restraint upon the young men.
In theory and practice it was democratic, Ameri-
can, western—an outgrowth of that pioneer life
in which the men and the women had fought
and toiled and enjoyed, side by side, in absolute
equality, with absolute freedom of association.
It recognized that its students had been brought
up in the free, simple, frank way, that all came
from a region where individualism was a re-
ligion, with self-reliance as the cardinal principle
of faith and self-development as the goal.
There were no dormitories at Battle Field
'then. Olivia and Pauline lived in one of the
hundred or more boarding-houses—a big, square,
white "frame," kept by a Mrs. Trent, the widow
of a "hero of two wars."
Her hero had won her with his uniform when
he returned from the Mexican War. His conduct
was so irregular and his income so uncertain that
it had been a relief to her when he departed for
his second war. From it he had brought home
a broken constitution, a maimed body and con-
firmed habits of shiftlessness and drunkenness.
His country took his character and his health and


26 THE COST
paid him in exchange a pension which just about
kept him in whisky and tobacco. So long as he
was alive Mrs. Trent hated him as vigorously as
her Christianity permitted. When he was safely
in his grave she canonized him; she put his picture
and his sword, belt and epaulets in the con-
spicuous place in the parlor; she used his record
for gallantry to get herself social position and a
place of honor at public gatherings.
Her house stood back from the highway in a
grove of elms and walnuts. Its angularity was
relieved by a porch with a flat roof that had a
railing about it and served as a balcony for the
second-story lodgers. There were broad halls
through the middle of the house down-stairs and
up. Olivia and Pauline had the three large rooms
in the second story on the south side. They used
the front room as a study and Pauline's bedroom
was next to it.
Late one afternoon she was seated at the study
window watching a cherry-red sun drop through
the purple haze of the autumn. She became
conscious that some one was on the balcony
before the window of the front room across the
hall. She leaned so that she could see without
being seen. Sharp against the darkening skv was


OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE 27
the profile of a young man. Olivia joined her
and followed her glance. The profile remained
fixed and the two girls watched it, fascinated.
It certainly was a powerful outline, proud and
stern, but with a mouth that was sweet in its
kindliness and gentleness.
"I wonder what he's thinking about," said
Olivia, in an undertone—he was not fifteen feet
from them.. "I suppose, some scheme for con-
quering the world."
Most of Battle field's youth came from the
farms of that western country, the young men
with bodies and brains that were strong but
awkward. Almost all were working their way
through—as were not a few of the women. They
felt .that life was a large, serious business impa-
tiently waiting for them to come and attend to
it in a large, serious way better than it had ever
been attended to before. They studied hard; they
practised oratory and debating. Their talk was
of history and philosophy, religion and politics.
They slept little; they thought—or tried to think
—even more than they talked.
At a glance this man was one of them, a fine
type.
"He's handsome, isn't he?" said Pauline.


28 THE COST
"But—" She did not finish; indeed it was not
clear to her what the rest of her protest was. He
reminded her of Dumont—there was the same
look of superiority, of the "bom to lead." But his
face seemed to have some quality which Dumont's
lacked—or was it only the idealizing effect of
the open sky and the evening light?
When the bell rang for supper he apparently
did not hear it. The two girls went down and
had talked to the others a few minutes and all
had seated themselves before he entered. An inch
or so above six feet, powerful in the chest and
shoulders, he moved with a large grace until he
became self-conscious or approached the, by com-
parison, frail pieces of furniture. He had pene-
trating, candid eyes that looked dark in the gas-
light but were steel-blue. His face now wore the
typical western-American expression—shrewd,
easy-going good humor. Mrs. Trent, intrenched
in state behind a huge, silver-plated coffee-urn
with ivory-trimmed faucet, introduced him—
Mr. Scarborough—to Olivia, to Pauline, to
Sadie Mcintosh, to Pierson and Howe and Thie-
baud (pronounced Cay-bo). Scarborough sat
directly opposite Olivia. But whenever he lifted
his eyes from his plate he looked at Pauline, who


OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE 29
was next to her. When she caught him he blushed
and stirred in his chair so uneasily that it creaked
and crackled; and his normal difficulties with his
large hands and the small knife and fork were
distressingly increased.
Pauline was disappointed in him—his clothes
were ill-fitting and gave him the appearance of
being in danger of bursting from them; his hair
was too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane;
though his hands were well-shaped they had the
recent scars of hard manual labor. Thus, when
Olivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper,
she made no reply. She would have been ashamed
to acknowledge the reasons for her lack of admir-
ation, even had she been conscious of them.
But the next morning at breakfast she revised
her opinion somewhat. He talked, and he had a
remarkable voice—clear, musical, with a quality
which made it seem to penetrate through all the
nerves instead of through the auditory nerve only.
Further, he talked straight to Pauline, without
embarrassment and with a quaint, satiric humor.
She was forgetting for the moment his almost
uncouth hair and dress when, in making a sweep-
ing gesture, he upset a glass of water and sent a
plate of hot bread flying from the waitress' hand.


30 THE COST
"He'd do well in the open air," thought she,
"but he's out of place in a house."
Still, she found him interesting and original.
And he persistently sought her—his persistence
was little short of heroism in view of the never-
wholly-concealed sufferings which the contrast
between her grace and style and his lack of both
caused him.
"He looks like a king who had been kidnapped
as a child and brought up in the wilds," said
Olivia. "I wonder who he is."
"I'll ask him," replied Pauline. And Olivia
was slyly amused by her cousin's unconscious
pride in her power with this large, untamed
person.


III.
AND SCARBOROUGH.
His name was Hampden Scarborough and he
came from a farm about twenty miles east of
Saint X. He was descended from men who had
learned to hate kings in Holland in the sixteenth
century, had learned to despise them in England
in the seventeenth century, had learned to laugh
at them in America in the eighteenth century, had
learned to exalt themselves into kings—the kings
of the new democracy—in the free West in the
nineteenth century.
When any one asked his father, Bladen Scar-
borough, who the family ancestors were, Bladen
usually did not answer at all. It was his habit
thus to treat a question he did not fancy, and,
if the question was repeated, to supplement si-
lence with a piercing look from under his aggres-
sive eyebrows. But sometimes he would answer
it. Once, for example, he looked coldly at the
man who, with a covert sneer, had asked it, said,
"You're impudent, sir. You insinuate I'm not
enough by myself to command your considera-
31


32 THE COST
tion," and struck him a staggering blow across
the mouth. Again—he was in a playful mood
that day and the questioner was a woman—he
replied, "I'm descended from murderers, ma'am
—murderers."
And in a sense it was the truth.
In 1568 the Scarboroughs were seated obscure-
ly in an east county of England. They were
tenant farmers on the estates of the Earl of Ash-
ford and had been strongly infected with "level-
ing" ideas by the refugees then fleeing to England
to escape the fury of continental prince and priest.
John Scarborough was trudging along the high-
way with his sister Kate. On horseback came
Aubrey Walton, youngest son of the Earl of
Ashford. He admired the rosy, pretty face of
Kate Scarborough. He dismounted and, without
so much as a glance at her brother, put his arm
round her. John snatched her free. Young
Walton, all amazement and wrath at the
hind who did not appreciate the favor he was
condescending to bestow upon a humble maiden,
ripped out an insult and drew his sword. John
wrenched it from him and ran it through his
body.
That night, with four gold pieces in his pocket,


AND SCARBOROUGH 33
John Scarborough left England in a smuggler
and was presently fighting Philip of Spain in
the army of the Dutch people.
In 1653 Zachariah Scarborough, great grand-
son of. the preceding, was a soldier in Cromwell's
army. On the night of April twentieth he
was in an ale-house off Fleet Street with three
brother officers. That day Cromwell had driven
out Parliament and had dissolved the Council of
State. Three of the officers were of Cromwell's
party; the fourth, Captain Zachariah Scar-
borough, was a "leveler"—a hater of kings, a
Dutch-bred pioneer of Dutch-bred democracy.
The discussion began hot—and they poured ale
on it.
"He's a tyrant!" shouted Zachariah Scar-
borough, bringing his huge fist down on the
table and upsetting a mug. "He has set up for
king. Down with all kings, say I! His head
must come off!"
At this knives were drawn, and when Zacha-
riah Scarborough staggered into the darkness of
filthy Fleet Street with a cut down his cheek from
temple to jaw-bone, his knife was dripping the
life of a cousin of Ireton's.


34 THE COST
He fled to the Virginia plantations and drifted
thence to North Carolina.
His great-grandson, Gaston Scarborough, was
one of Marion's men in his boyhood—a fierce
spirit made arrogant by isolated freedom, where
every man of character owned his land and could
conceive of no superior between him and Al-
mighty God. One autumn day in 1794 Gaston
was out shooting with his youngest brother, John,
their father's favorite. Gaston's gun was caught
by a creeper, was torn from him; and his hand,
reaching for it, exploded the charge into his
brother's neck. His brother fell backward into
the swamp and disappeared.
Gaston plunged into the wilderness—to Ten-
nessee, to Kentucky, to Indiana.
"And it's my turn," said Hampden Scar-
borough as he ended a brief recital of the an-
cestral murders which Pauline had drawn from
him—they were out for a walk together.
"Your turn?" she inquired.
"Yes—I'm the great-grandson—the only one.
It's always a great-grandson."
"You do look dangerous," said Pauline, and
the smile and the glance she sent with the words


AND SCARBOROUGH 35
might have been misunderstood by a young man
entertaining the ideas which were then filling that
young man's brain.
Again, he told her how he had been sent to
college—she was always leading him to talk of
himself, and her imagination more than supplied
that which his unaffected modesty, sometimes de-
liberately, more often unconsciously, kept out of
his stories.
Ever since he could remember, his strongest
passion had been for books, for reading. Before
he was born the wilderness was subdued and the
cruel toil of his parents' early life was mitigated
by the growth of towns, the spread of civilization.
There was a chance for some leisure, for the
higher gratification of the intense American pas-
sion for education. A small library had sprung
up in one corner of the general room of the old
farm-house—from the seeds of a Bible, an al-
manac, Milton's Paradise Lost, Baxter's Saint's
Rest and a Government report on cattle. But the
art collection had stood still for years—a fac-
simile of the Declaration of Independence, an-
other of the Emancipation Proclamation, pictures
of Washington, Lincoln and Napoleon, the last


36 THE COST
held in that household second only to Washing-
ton in all history as a "leveler."
The only daughter, Arabella, had been sent to
boarding-school in Cincinnati. She married a
rich man, lived in the city and, under the inspira-
tion of English novels and the tutelage of a
woman friend who visited in New York and
often went abroad, was developing ideas of fam-
ily and class and rank. She talked feelingly of
the "lower classes" and of the duty of the "upper
class" toward them. Her "goings-on" created
an acid prejudice against higher education in her
father's mind. As she was unfolding to him a
plan for sending Hampden to Harvard he inter-
rupted with, "No more idiots in my family at
my expense," and started out to feed the pigs. The
best terms Hampden's mother could make were
that he should not be disinherited and cast off if
he went to Battle Field and paid his own way.
He did not tell Pauline all of this, nor did he
repeat to her the conversation between himself
and his father a few days before he left home.
"Is 'Bella going to pay your way through?"
asked his father, looking at him severely—but
he looked severely at every one except Hamp-
den's gentle-voiced mother.


AND SCARBOROUGH 37
"No, sir." The son's voice was clear.
"Is your mother?"
"No, sir."
"Have you got money put by?"
"Four hundred dollars."
"Is that enough?"
"It'll give me time for a long look around."
The old man drew a big, rusty pocketbook
from the inside pocket of the old-fashioned, flow-
ered-velvet waistcoat he wore even when he fed
the pigs. He counted out upon his knee ten one-
hundred-dollar bills. He held them toward his
son. "That'll have to do you," he said. "That's
all you'll get."
"No, thank you," replied Hampden. "I wish
no favors from anybody."
"You've earned it over and above your keep,"
retorted his father. "It belongs to you."
"If I need it I'll send for it," said Hampden,
that being the easiest way quickly to end the
matter.
But he did tell Pauline that he purposed to pay
his own way through college.
"My father has a notion," said he, "that the
things one works for and earns are the only
things worth having. And I think one can't begin


38 THE COST
to act on that notion too early. If one is trying
to get an education, why not an all-round educa-
tion, instead of only lessons out of books?"
From that moment Pauline ceased to regard
dress or any other external feature as a factor in
her estimate of Hampden Scarborough.
"But your plan might make a man too late in
getting a start—some men, at least," she sug-
gested.
"A start—for what?" he asked.
"For fame or fortune or success of any kind."
Scarborough's eyes, fixed on the distance, had
a curious look in them—he was again exactly
like that first view she had had of him.
"But suppose one isn't after any of those
things," he said. "Suppose he thinks of life as
simply an opportunity for self-development. He
starts at it when he's born, and the more of it
he does the more he has to do. And—he can't
possibly fail, and every moment is a triumph—
and "He came back from his excursion and
smiled apologetically at her.
But she was evidently interested.
"Don't you think a man ought to have ambi-
tion?" she asked. She was thinking of her love*
x


'

'HUT SUPPOSE ONE ISN T AFTER ANY OF THOSE THINGS





AND SCARBOROUGH 39
and his audacious schemes for making himself
powerful.
"Oh—a man is what he is. Ambition means
so many different things."
"But shouldn't you like to be rich and famous
and—all that?"
"It depends "Scarborough felt that if he
said what was in his mind it might sound like
cant. So he changed the subject. "Just now
my ambition is to get off that zoology condition."


A DUMONT TRIUMPH 41
great horizon of her faith in the future; a small
cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And
she had no suspicion that he had returned from
Chicago deliberately to raise that cloud.
A few days later another letter from Jennie,
full of gossip about Jack and Caroline, a News-
Bulletin with a long article about Caroline, end-
ing with an even broader hint of her approaching
marriage—and Dumont sent Pauline a note from
the hotel in Villeneuve, five miles from Battle
Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It
means everything to both of us—what I want to
say to you." And he asked her to meet him in
the little park in Battle Field on the bank of the
river where no one but the factory hands and
their families ever went, and they only in the
evenings. The hour he fixed was ten the next
morning, and she "cut" ancient history and was
there. As he advanced to meet her she thought
she had never before appreciated how handsome
he was, how distinguished-looking—perfectly her
ideal of what a man should be, especially in that
important, and at Battle Field neglected, matter,
dress.
She was without practice in indirection, but
she successfully hid her jealousy and her fears,


42 THE COST
though his manner was making their taunts and
threats desperately real. He seemed depressed
and gloomy; he would not look at her; he shook
hands with her almost coldly, though they had not
seen each other for weeks, had not talked together
for months. She felt faint, and her thoughts were
like flocks of circling, croaking crows.
"Polly," he began, when they were in the se-
cluded corner of the park, "father wants me to get
married. He's in a rage at your father for treat-
ing me so harshly. He wants me to marry a girl
who's visiting us. He's always at me about it,
making all sorts of promises and threats. Her
father's in the same business that we are,
and"
He glanced at her to note the effect of his
words. She had drawn her tall figure to its full
height, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
curiously bright. He had stabbed straight and
deep into the heart of her weakness, but also into
the heart of her pride.
The only effect of his thrust that was visible to
him put him in a panic. "Don't—please don't
look that way, Polly," he went on hastily. "You
don't see what I'm driving at yet. I didn't mean
that I'd marry her, or think of it. There isn't


A DUMONT TRIUMPH 43
anybody but you. There couldn't be—you know
that."
"Why did you tell me, then?" she asked
haughtily.
"Because—I had to begin somewhere. Polly,
I'm going away, going abroad. And I'm not to
see you for—for I don't know how long—and
—we must be married!"
She looked at him in a daze.
"We can cross on the ferry at half-past ten,"
he went on. "You see that house—the white
one?" He pointed to the other bank of the river
where a white cottage shrank among the trees not
far from a little church. "Mr. Barker lives there
—you must have heard of him. He's married
scores and hundreds of couples from this side.
And we can be back here at half-past eleven—
twelve at the latest."
She shook her head—expressed, not determina-
tion, only doubt.
"I can't, Jack," she said. "They"
"Then you aren't certain you're ever going to
marry me," he interrupted bitterly. "You don't
mean what you promised me. You care more
for them than you do for me. You don't really
care for me at all."


44 THE COST
"You don't believe that," she protested, her
eyes and her mind on the little white cottage.
"You couldn't—you know me too well."
"Then there's no reason why we shouldn't get
married. Don't we belong to each other now?
Why should we refuse to stand up and say so?"
That seemed unanswerable—a perfect excuse
for doing what she wished to do. For the little
white cottage fascinated her—how she did long
to be sure of him! And she felt so free, so abso-
lutely her own mistress in these new surround-
ings, where no one attempted to exercise author-
ity over another.
"I must feel sure of you, Pauline. Sometimes
everything seems to be against me, and I even
doubt you. And—that's when the temptations
pull hardest. If we were married it'd all be dif-
ferent."
Yes, it would be different. And he would be
securely hers, with her mind at rest instead of
harassed as it would be if she let him go so far
away, free. And where was the harm in merely
repeating before a preacher the promise that now
bound them both? She looked at him and he at
her.
y


A DUMONT TRIUMPH 45
"You don't put any others before me, do you,
dear?" he asked.
"No, Jack—no one. I belong to you."
"Come!" he pleaded, and they went down to
the boat. She seemed to herself to be in a dream
—in a trance.
As she walked beside him along the country
road on the other shore a voice was ringing in
her ears: "Don't! Don't! Ask Olivia's advice
first!" But she walked on, her will suspended,
substituted for it his will and her jealousy and
her fears of his yielding to the urgings of his
father and the blandishments of "that Cleveland
girl." He said little but kept close to her, watch-
ing her narrowly, touching her tenderly now and
then.
The Reverend Josiah Barker was waiting for
them—an oily smirk on a face smooth save where
a thin fringe of white whiskers dangled from his
jaw-bone, ear to ear; fat, damp hands rubbing in
anticipation of the large fee that was to repay
him for celebrating the marriage and for keep*
ing quiet about it afterward. At the proper place
in the brief ceremony Dumont, with a sly smile
at Pauline which she faintly returned, produced
the ring—he had bought it at Saint X a week


46 THE COST
before and so had started a rumor that he and
Caroline Sylvester were to be married in haste.
He held Pauline's hand firmly as he put the ring
on her finger—he was significantly cool and calm
for his age and for the circumstances. She was
trembling violently, was pale and wan. The ring
burned into her flesh.
"Whom God hath joined together let no man
put asunder," ended Barker, with pompous
solemnity.
Dumont kissed her—her cheek was cold and
at the touch of his lips she shuddered.
"Don't be afraid," he said in a low voice that
was perfectly steady.
They went out and along the sunny road in
silence. "Whom God hath joined," the voice was
now dinning into her ears. And she was saying
to herself, "Has God joined us? If so, why do I
feel as if I had committed a crime?" She looked
guiltily at him—she felt no thrill of pride or love
at the thought that he was her husband, she his
wife. And into her mind poured all her father's
condemnations of him, with a vague menacing
fear riding the crest of the flood.
"You're sorry you've done it?" he said sullenly.
She did not answer.


A DUMONT TRIUMPH ±7
"Well, it's done," he went on, "and it can't be
undone. And I've got you, Polly, in spite of
them. They might have known better than to try
to keep me from getting what .1 wanted. I always
did, and I always shall!"
She looked at him startled, then hastily looked
away. Even more than his words and his tone,
she disliked his eyes—gloating, triumphant. But
not until she was years more experienced did she
study that never-forgotten expression, study it
as a whole—words, tone, look. Then, and not
until then, did she know that she had instinctively
shrunk because he had laid bare his base and all
but loveless motive in marrying her.
"And," he added, "I'll force father to give me
a big interest in the business very soon. Then—
we'll announce it."
Announce it? Announce what? "Why, I'm a
married woman," she thought, and she stumbled
and almost fell. The way danced before her eyes,
all spotted with black. She was just able to walk
aboard the boat and drop into a seat.
He sat beside her, took her hand and bent over
it; as he kissed it a tear fell on it. He looked
at her and she saw that his eyes were swimming.
A sob surged into her throat, but she choked it


48 THE COST
back. "Jack!" she murmured, and hid her face in
her handkerchief.
When they looked each at the other both smiled
—her foreboding had retreated to the back-
ground. She began to turn the ring round and
round upon her finger.
"Mrs. John Dumont," she said. "Doesn't it
sound queer?" And she gazed dreamily away
toward the ranges of hills between which the
river danced and sparkled as it journeyed west-
ward. When she again became conscious of her
immediate surroundings—other than Dumont—
she saw a deck-hand looking at her with a friendly
grin.
Instantly she covered the ring with her hand
and handkerchief. "But I mustn't wear it," she
said to Dumont.
"No—not on your finger." He laughed and
drew from his pocket a slender gold chain. "But
you might wear it on this, round your neck. It'll
help to remind you that you don't belong to your-
self any more, but to me."
She took the chain—she was coloring in a
most becoming way—and hid it and the ring in
her bosom. Then she drew off a narrow hoop of



'MRS. JOHN DUMONT," SHE SAID, "DOESNT IT SOUND QUEER?'


^


A DUMONT TRIUMPH 49
gold with a small setting and pushed it on his big
little finger.
"And that, sir," she said, with a bewitching
look, "may help you not to forget that you belong
to me."
She left the ferry in advance of him and faced
Olivia just in time for them to go down together
to the half-past twelve o'clock dinner.


FOUR FRIENDS.
As Mrs. Trent's was the best board in Battle
Field there were more applicants than she could
make places for at her one table. In the second
week of the term she put a small table in the
alcove of the dining-room and gave it to her
"star" boarders—Pierson, Olivia and Pauline.
They invited Scarborough to take the fourth
place. Not only did Pierson sit opposite Olivia
and Scarborough opposite Pauline three times a
day in circumstances which make for intimacy,
but also Olivia and Pierson studied together in
his sitting-room and Pauline and Scarborough in
her sitting-room for several hours three or four
times a week. Olivia and Pierson were sopho-
mores. Pauline and Scarborough were freshmen;
also, they happened to have the same three "senior
prep" conditions to "work off"—Latin, zoology
and mathematics.
Such intimacies as these were the matter-of-
course at Battle Field. They were usually brief
and strenuous. A young man and a young
60


FOUR FRIENDS 51
woman would be seen together constantly, would
fall in love, would come to know each the other
thoroughly. Then, with the mind and character
and looks and moods of each fully revealed to
the other, they would drift or fly in opposite direc-
tions, wholly disillusioned. Occasionally they
found that they were really congenial, and either
love remained or a cordial friendship sprang up.
The modes of thought, inconceivable to Euro-
peans or Europeanized Americans, made catas-
trophe all but impossible.
It was through the girls that Scarborough got
his invitation to the alcove table. There he came
to know Pierson and to like him. One evening
he went into Pierson's rooms—the suite under
Olivia and Pauline's. He had never seen—but
had dreamed of—such a luxurious bachelor inter-
ior. Pierson's father had insisted that his son
must go to the college where forty years before
he had split wood and lighted fires and swept
corridors to earn two years of higher education.
Pierson's mother, defeated in her wish that her
son should go East to college, had tried to miti-
gate the rigors of Battle Field's primitive sim-
plicity by herself fitting up his quarters. And she
made them the show-rooms of the college.


88 THE COST
"Now let's see what can be done for you,"
said Pierson, with the superiority of a whole
year's experience where Scarborough was a
beginner. "I'll put you in the Sigma Alpha fra-
ternity for one thing. It's the best here."
"I don't know anything about fraternities,"
Scarborough said. "What are they for?"
"Oh, everybody that is anybody belongs to a
fraternity. There are about a dozen of them
here, and among them they get all the men with
any claim to recognition. Just now, we lean
rather toward taking in the fellows who've been
well brought up."
"Does everybody belong to a fraternity?"
"Lord, no! Two-thirds don't belong. The
fellows outside are called 'barbs'—that is, barbar-
ians; we on the inside are Greeks. Though, I
must say, very few of us are Athenians and most
of us are the rankest Macedonians. But the worst
Greeks are better than the best barbs. They're
the rummest lot of scrubs you ever saw—stupid
drudges who live round in all sorts of holes and
don't amount to anything. The brush of the
backwoods."
"Oh, yes—mm—I see." Scarborough was
looking uncomfortable.
N


FOUR FRIENDS 53
"The Sigma Alphas'll take you in next Satur-
day," said Pierson. "They do as I say, between
ourselves."
"I'm ever so much obliged, but "Scar-
borough was red and began to stammer. "You
see—I—it"
"What's the matter? Expense? Don't let that
bother you. The cost's nothing at all, and the
membership is absolutely necessary to your posi-
tion."
"Yes—a matter of expense." Scarborough was
in control of himself now. "But not precisely the
kind of expense you mean. No—I can't join.
I'd rather not explain. I'm ever so much obliged,
but really I can't."
"As you please." Pierson was offended. "But
I warn you, you've got to belong to one or the
other of these fraternities or you'll be cut off from
everything. And you oughtn't to miss the chance
to join the best."
"I see I've offended you." Scarborough spoke
regretfully. "Please don't think I'm not appre-
ciating your kindness. But—I've made a sort of
agreement with myself never to join anything
that isn't organized for a general purpose and


54 THE COST
that won't admit anybody who has that purpose,
too."
Pierson thought on this for a moment. "Par-
don me for saying so, but that's nonsense. You
can't afford to stand alone. It'll make everything
harder for you—many things impossible. You've
got to yield to the prejudices of people in these
matters. Why, even the barbs have no use for
each other and look up to us. When we have an
election in the Literary Society I can control more
barb votes than any one else in college. And the
reason is—well, you can imagine." (Mr. Pierson
was only twenty years old when he made that
speech.)
"It doesn't disturb me to think of myself as
alone." The strong lines in Scarborough's face
were in evidence. "But it would disturb me if I
were propped up and weren't sure I could stand
alone. I'm afraid to lean on any one or any-
thing—my prop might give way. And I don't
want any friends or any associates who value me
for any other reason than what I myself am. I
purpose never to 'belong' to anything or any-
body."
Pierson laughed. "Do as you please," he said.
-


FOUR FRIENDS 55
"I'd like to myself if it wasn't such an awful lot
of trouble!"
"Not in the end," replied Scarborough.
"Oh, bother the end. To-day's good enough
for me."
"You'd better not let Miss Shrewsbury hear
you say that," said Scarborough, his eyes mock-
ing.
Pierson grew serious at once. "Splendid girl,
isn't she?" She happened to be the first he had
known at all well who hadn't agreed with him in
everything he said, hadn't shown the greatest
anxiety to please him and hadn't practically
thrown herself at his head. His combination of
riches, good looks, an easy-going disposition and
cleverness had so agitated those who had inter-
ested him theretofore that they had overreached
themselves. Besides, his mother had been subtly
watchful.
"Indeed, yes," assented Scarborough, heartily
but not with enthusiasm—he always thought of
Olivia as Pauline's cousin.
The four had arranged to go together to Indian
Rock on the following Sunday. When the day
came Olivia was not well; Pierson went to a
poker game at his fraternity house; Pauline and


56 THE COST
Scarborough walked alone. As she went through
the woods beside him she was thinking so
intensely that she could not talk. But he was not
disturbed by her silence—was it not enough to
be near her, alone with her, free to look at her, so
graceful and beautiful, so tasteful in dress, in
every outward way what he thought a woman
ought to be? Presently she roused herself and
began a remark that was obviously mere polite-
ness.
He interrupted her. "Don't mind me. Go on
with your thinking—unless it's something you
can say."
She gave him a quizzical, baffling smile. "How
it would startle you if I did!" she said. "But
—I shan't. And"—she frowned impatiently
—"there's no use in thinking about it. It's all
in the future."
"And one can't control the future."
"Yes, indeed—one can," she protested.
"I wish you'd tell me how. Are you sure you
don't mean you could so arrange matters that the
future would control you? Anybody can surren-
der to the future and give it hostages. But that's
not controlling, is it?"
"Certainly it is—if you give the hostages in


FOUR FRIENDS 67
exchange for what you want." And she looked
triumphant.
"But how do you know what you'll want in
the future? The most I can say is that I know a
few things I shan't want."
"I shouldn't like to be of that disposition," she
said.
"But I'm afraid you are, whether you like it or
not." Scarborough was half-serious, half in jest.
"Are you the same person you were a month
ago?
Pauline glanced away. "What do you mean?"
she asked.
"I mean in thought—in feeling."
"Yes—and no," she replied presently, when she
had recovered from the shock of his chance knock
at the very door of her secret. "My coming here
has made a sort of revolution in me already. I
believe I've a more—more grown-up way of look-
ing at things. And I've been getting into the
habit of thinking—and—and acting—for my-
self."
"That's a dangerous habit to form—in a
hurry," said Scarborough. "One oughtn't to try
to swim a wide river just after he's had his first
lesson in swimming."


58 THE COST
Pauline, for no apparent reason, flushed crim-
son and gave him a nervous look—it almost
seemed a look of fright.
"But," he went on, "we were talking of the
change in you. If you've changed so much in
thirty days, or, say, in sixty-seven days—you've
been here that long, I believe—think of your
whole life. The broader your mind and your life
become, the less certain you'll be what sort of
person to-morrow will find you. It seems to me
—I know that, for myself, I'm determined to
keep the future clear. I'll never tie myself to
the past."
"But there are some things one must anchor
fast to." Pauline was looking as if Scarborough
were trying to turn her adrift in an open boat on
a lonely sea. "There are—friends. You wouldn't
desert your friends, would you?"
"I couldn't help it if they insisted on deserting
me. I'd keep them if their way was mine. If it
wasn't—they'd give me up."
"But if you were—were!—married?"
Scarborough became intensely self-conscious.
"Well—I don't know—that is "He paused,
went on: "I shouldn't marry until I was sure—
her way and mine were the same."
>


FOUR FRIENDS 59
"The right sort of woman makes her husband's
way hers," said she.
"Does she? I don't know much about women.
But it has always seemed to me that the kind of
woman I'd admire would be one who had her
own ideals and ideas of life—and that—if—if she
liked me, it would be because we suited each other.
You wouldn't want to be—like those princesses
that are brought up without any beliefs of any
sort so that they can accept the beliefs of the
kingdom of the man they happen to marry?"
Pauline laughed. "I couldn't, even if I
wished," she said.
"I should say not!" he echoed, as if the idea in
connection with such an indelibly distinct young
woman were preposterous.
"But you have such a queer way of expressing
yourself. At first I thought you were talking of
upsetting everything."
"I? Mercy, no. I've no idea of upsetting any-
thing. I'm only hoping I can help straighten a
few things that have been tumbled over or turn-
ed upside down."
Gradually, as they walked and talked, her own
affairs—Dumont's and hers—retreated to the
background and she gave Scarborough her whole


60 THE COST
attention. Even in those days—he was then
twenty-three—his personality usually dominated
whomever he was with. It was not his size or
appearance of strength; it was not any compulsion
of manner; it was not even what he said or the
way he said it. All of these—and his voice—
contributed; but the real secret of his power was
that subtile magnetic something which we try to
fix—and fail—when we say "charm."
He attracted Pauline chiefly because he had a
way of noting the little things—matters of dress,
the flowers, colors in the sky or the landscape, the
uncommon, especially the amusing, details of per-
sonality—and of connecting these trifles in unex-
pected ways with the large aspects of things. He
saw the mystery of the universe in the contour
of a leaf; he saw the secret of a professor's char-
acter in the way he had built out his whiskers to
hide an absolute lack of chin and to give the
impression that a formidable chin was there. He
told her stories of life on his father's farm that
made her laugh, other stories that made her feel
like crying. And—he brought out the best there
was in her. She was presently talking of the
things about which she had always been reticent
—the real thoughts of her mind, those she had


FOUR FRIENDS 61
suppressed because she had had no sympathetic
listener, those she looked forward to talking over
with Dumont in that happy time when they would
be together and would renew the intimacy inter-
rupted since their High School days.
When she burst in upon Olivia her eyes were
sparkling and her cheeks glowing. "The air was
glorious1," she said, "and Mr. Scarborough is so
interesting."
And Olivia said to herself: "In spite of his
tight clothes he may cure her of that worthless
Dumont."
'


VI.
Scarborough soon lifted himself high above the
throng, and was marked by faculty and students
as a man worth watching. The manner of this
achievement was one of those forecasts of the
future with which youth bristles for those who
take the trouble to watch it.
Although Pierson was only a sophomore he
was the political as well as the social leader of
his fraternity. Envy said that the Sigma Alphas
truckled to his wealth; perhaps the exacter truth
was that his wealth forced an earlier recognition
of his real capacity. His position as leader made
him manager of the Sigma Alpha combination
of fraternities and barbs which for six years
had dominated the Washington and Jefferson Lit-
erary Society. The barbs had always voted hum-
bly with the aristocratic Sigma Alphas; so Pier-
son's political leadership apparently had no oner-
ous duties attached to it—and he was not the man
to make work for himself.
As the annual election approached he heard,
62


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 63
rumors of barb disaffection, of threatened barb
revolt. Vance, his barb lieutenant, reassured him.
"Always a few kickers," said Vance, "and they
make a lot of noise. But they won't draw off
twenty votes." Pierson 'made himself easy—
there was no danger of one of those hard-fought
contests which in past years had developed at
Battle Field many of Indiana's adroit political
leaders.
On election night he felt important and power-
ful as he sat in the front row among the arrogant
Sigma Alphas, at the head of his forces massed
in the left side of the hall. He had insisted on
Scarborough's occupying a seat just behind him.
He tilted back in his arm-chair and said, in an
undertone: "You're voting with us?"
Scarborough shook his head. "Can't do it.
I'm pledged to Adee."
Pierson looked amused. "Who's he? And
who's putting him up?"
"I'm nominating him," replied Scarborough,
"as the barb candidate."
"Take my advice—don't do it, old man," said
Pierson in a friendly, somewhat patronizing tone.
"You'll only get our fellows down on you—them
and all the fraternity men. And—well, your
r


64 THE COST
candidate'll have a dozen votes or so, at most—
and there'll be a laugh."
"Yes—I suppose there will be a laugh," said
Scarborough, his eyes twinkling.
"Don't do it," urged Pierson. "Be practical."
"No—I leave that to your people."
Just then nominations for president were called
for and the candidates of the two factions were
proposed and seconded. "The nominations for
president are "began the chairman, but be-
fore he could utter the word "closed" Scar-
borough was on his feet—was saying, "Mr.
Chairman!"
Pierson dropped his eyes and grew red with
embarrassment for his friend who was thus "rush-
ing on to make a fool of himself."
Scarborough's glance traveled slowly from row
to row of expectant young men.
"Mr. Chairman and fellow-members of the
Washington and Jefferson Society," he said in a
conversational tone. "I have the honor of plac-
ing in nomination Frank Adee, of Terre Haute.
In addition to other qualifications of which it
would be superfluous for me to speak in this pres-
ence, he represents the masses of the membership
of this society which has been too long dominated



"LIKE HIS FATHER" 65
by and for its classes. It is time to compel the
fraternities to take faction and caste and political
wire-pulling away from this hall, and to keep
them away. It is time to rededicate our society
to equality, to freedom of thought and speech,
to the democratic ideas of the plain yet proud
builders of this college of ours."
Scarborough made no attempt at oratory, made
not a single gesture. It was as though he were
talking privately and earnestly with each one
there. He sat amid silence; when a few barbs
nervously applauded, the fraternity men of both
factions, recovering themselves, raised a succes-
sion of ironical cheers. A shabby, frightened
barb stood awkwardly, and in a trembling, weak
voice seconded the nomination. There was an
outburst of barb applause—strong, defiant. Pier-
son was anxiously studying the faces of his barbs.
"By Jove," he muttered, "Vance has been
caught napping. I believe Scarborough has put
up a job on us. If I can't gain time we're beat."
And he sprang to his feet, his face white. In a
voice which he struggled in vain to keep to his
wonted affected indifferent drawl, he said: "Mr.
Chairman, I move you, sir, that we adjourn." As


66 THE COST
he was bending to sit his ready lieutenant second-
ed the motion.
"Mr. Chairman!" It was an excited voice from
the rear of the hall—the voice of a tall, lank, sal-
low man of perhaps thirty-five. "What right," he
shouted shrilly, "has this Mr. Pierson to come
here and make that there motion? He ain't never
seen here except on election nights. He"
The chairman rapped sharply.
"Motion to adjourn not debatable," he said,
and then mumbled rapidly: "The question's the
motion to adjourn. All in favor say Aye—all
opposed, No.—the ayes seem to have it—the
ayes have"
"Mr. Chairman; I call for a count of the ayes
and noes!" It was Scarborough, standing, com-
pletely self-possessed. His voice was not raised but
it vibrated through that room, vibrated through
those three hundred intensely excited young men.
The chairman—Waller, a Zeta Rho, of the
Sigma Alpha combination—knew that Pierson
was scowling a command to him to override the
rules and adjourn the meeting; but he could not
take his eyes from Scarborough's, dared not dis-
obey Scarborough's imperious look. "A count of


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 67
the ayes and noes is called for," he said. "The
secretary will call the roll."
Pierson's motion was lost—one hundred and
thirty-two to one hundred and seventy-nine. For
the first time in his life he was beaten; and it was
an overwhelming, a public defeat that made his
leadership ridiculous. His vanity was cut sav-
agely; it was impossible for him to control him-
self to stay and witness the inevitable rout. He
lounged down the wide aisle, his face masked in
a supercilious smile, his glance contemptuously
upon the jubilant barbs. They were thick about
the doors, and as he passed among them he said,
addressing no one in particular: "A revolt of the
Helots." A barb raised a threatening fist; Pier-
son sneered, and the fist unclenched and dropped
before his fearless eyes.
An hour later Scarborough, his ticket elected
and the society adjourned, reached Mrs. Trent's
porch. In its darkness he saw the glowing end
of a cigarette. "That you, Pierson?" he asked
in the tone of one who knows what the answer
will be.
"Sit down for a few minutes," came the reply,
in a strained voice.
He could not see even the outline of Pierson's


68 THE COST
face, but with those acute sensibilities which
made life alternately a keen pleasure and a pain
to him, he felt that his friend was struggling for
self-control. He waited in silence.
At last Pierson began: "I owe you an apology.
I've been thinking all sorts of things about you.
I know they're unjust and—mean, which is worse.
But, damn it, Scarborough, I hate being beaten.
And it doesn't make defeat any the easier because
you did it."
He paused; but Scarborough did not speak.
"I'm going to be frank," Pierson went on with
an effort. "I know you had a perfect right to do
as you pleased, but—hang it all, old man—you
might have warned me."
"But I didn't do as I pleased," said Scar-
borough. "And as for telling you—" He
paused before he interrupted himself with: "But
first I want to say that I don't like to give an
account of myself to my friends. What does
friendship mean if it forbids freedom? I didn't
approve or condemn you because you belonged to
a fraternity, and because you headed a clique that
was destroying the Literary Society by making
it a place for petty fraternity politics instead of a
place to develop speakers, writers and debaters.


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 69
Yet now you're bringing me to account because I
didn't slavishly accept your ideas as my own. Do
you think that's a sound basis for a friendship,
Pierson?"
When Scarborough began Pierson was full of a
grievance which he thought real and deep. He
was proposing to forgive Scarborough, forgive
him generously, but not without making him
realize that it was an act of generosity. As Scar-
borough talked he was first irritated, then, and
suddenly, convinced that he was himself in the
wrong—in the wrong throughout.
"Don't say another word, Scarborough," he
replied, impulsively laying his hand on the arm of
his friend—how powerful it felt through the
sleeve! "I've been spoiled by always having my
own way and by people letting me rule them.
You gave me my first lesson in defeat. And—I
needed it badly. As for your not telling me, you'd
have ruined your scheme if you had. Besides,
looking back, I see that you did warn me. I know
now what you meant by always jumping on the
fraternities and the combinations."
"Thank you," said Scarborough, simply.
"When I saw you leaving the society hall I feared
I'd lost a friend. Instead, I've found what a friend


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 71
ambition. He'd sacrifice anything, any one, to
ambition. I shall never like him again."
Pierson was puzzled—being in love with her,
he had been deceived by her pretense that she had
a poor opinion of him; and he did not appreciate
that her sense of justice was now clouded by re-
sentment for his sake. At dinner, when the four
were together, she attacked Scarborough.
Though she did not confess it, he forced her to
see that at least his motives were not those she
had been attributing to him. When he and Pauline
were alone—Olivia and Pierson had to hurry
away to a lecture—he said: "What do you think,
Miss Gardiner? You—did you—do you—agree
with your cousin?
"I?" Pauline dropped her eyes. "Oh, I—"
She hesitated so long that he said: "Go on—
tell me just what you think. I'd rather know
than suspect."
"I think you did right. But—I don't see how
you had the courage to do it."
"That is, you think I did right—but the sort
of right that's worse than wrong."
"No—no!" she protested, putting a good deal
of feeling into her voice in the effort to reassure
him. "I'd have been ashamed of you if you hadn't


72 THE COST
done it. And—oh, I despise weakness in a man
most of all! And I like to think that if everybody
in college had denounced you, you'd have gone
straight on. And—you would!"
Within a week after this they were calling each
the other by their first names. .
For the Christmas holidays she went with her
mother from Battle Field direct to Chicago, to
her father's sister, Mrs. Hayden—Colonel Gard-
iner had been called south on business. When
she came back she and Scarborough took up their
friendship where they had left it. They read the
same books, had similar tastes, disagreed sym-
pathetically, agreed with enthusiasm. She saw
a great deal of several other men in her class,
enough not to make her preference for him sig-
nificant to the college—or to herself. They went
for moonlight straw-rides, on moonlight and
starlight skating and ice-boat parties, for long
walks over the hills—all invariably with others,
but they were often practically alone. He rapidly
dropped his rural manners and mannerisms—Fred
Pierson's tailor in Indianapolis made the most
radical of the surface changes in him.
Late in February his cousin, the superintend-
X


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 73
ent of the farm, telegraphed him to come home.
He found his mother ill—plainly dying. And his
father—Bladen Scarborough's boast had been
that he never took a "dose of drugs" in his life,
and for at least seventy of his seventy-nine years
he had been "on the jump" daily from long before
dawn until long after sundown. Now he was
content to sit in his arm-chair and, with no more
vigorous protest than a frown and a growl, to
swallow the despised drugs.
Each day he made them carry him in his great
chair into her bedroom. And there he sat all day
long, his shaggy brows down, his gaze rarely
wandering from the little ridge her small body
made in the high white bed; and in his stern eyes
there was a look of stoic anguish. Each night,
as they were carrying him to his own room, they
took him near the bed; and he leaned forward,
and the voice that in all their years had never been
anything but gentle for her said: "Good night,
Sallie." And the small form would move slightly,
there would be a feeble turning of the head, a wan
smile on the little old face, a soft "Good night,
Bladen."
It was on Hampden's ninth day at home that
the old man said "Good night, Sallie," and there


74 THE COST
was no answer—not even a stir. They did not
offer to carry him in the next morning; nor did
he turn his face from the wall. She died that day;
he three days later—he had refused food and
medicine; he had not shed a tear or made a sound.
Thus the journey side by side for fifty-one
years was a journey no longer. They were
asleep side by side on the hillside for ever.
Hampden stayed at home only one day after
the funeral. He came back to Battle Field appar-
ently unchanged. He was not in black, for Bla-
den Scarborough abhorred mourning as he
abhorred all outward symbols of the things of
the heart. But after a week he told Pauline about
it; and as he talked she sobbed, though his voice
did not break nor his eyes dim.
"He's like his father," she thought.
When Olivia believed that Dumont was safely
forgotten she teased her—"Your adoring and
adored Scarborough."
Pauline was amused by this. With his unfail-
ing instinct, Scarborough had felt—and had never
permitted himself to forget—that there was some
sort of wall round her for him. It was in perfect
good faith that she answered Olivia: "You don't


"LIKE HIS FATHER" 75
understand him. He's a queer man—sometimes
I wonder myself that he doesn't get just a little
sentimental. I suppose I'd find him exasperating
—if I weren't otherwise engaged."
Olivia tried not to show irritation at this refer-
ence to Dumont. "I think you're mistaken about
which of you is queer," she said. "You are the
one—not he."
"I?" Pauline laughed—she was thinking of
her charm against any love but one man's, the
wedding ring she always wore at her neck. "Why,
I couldn't fall in love with him."
"The woman who gets him will do mighty
well for herself—in every way," said Olivia.
"Indeed she will. But—I'd as soon think of
falling in love with a tree or a mountain."
She liked her phrase; it seemed to her exactly
to define her feeling for Scarborough. She liked
it so well that she repeated it to herself reassur-
ingly many times in the next few weeks.


VII.
PAULINE AWAKENS.
In the last week of March came a succession of
warm rains. The leaves burst from their impa-
tient hiding just within the cracks in the gray
bark. And on Monday the unclouded sun was
irradiating a pale green world from a pale blue
sky. The four windows of Pauline and Olivia's
sitting-room were up; a warm, scented wind was
blowing this way and that the strays of Pauline's
red-brown hair as she sat at the table, her eyes
on a book, her thoughts on a letteri—Dumont's
first letter on landing in America. A knock, and
she frowned slightly.
"Come!" she cried, her expression slowly veer-
ing toward welcome.
The door swung back and in came Scar-
borough. Not the awkward youth of last Octo-
ber, but still unable wholly to conceal how much
at a disadvantage he felt before the woman he
particularly wished to please.
"Yes—I'm ten minutes early," he said, apology
in his tone—for his instinct told him that he was
76


PAULINE AWAKENS 77
interrupting, and he had too little vanity to see
that the interruption was agreeable. "But I
thought you'd be only reading a novel."
For answer she held up the book which lay
before her—a solemn volume in light brown calf.
"Analytical geometry," he said; "and on the
first day of the finest spring the world ever saw!"
He was at the window, looking out longingly—-
sunshine, and soft air washed clean by the rains;
the new-born leaves and buds; the pioneer birds
and flowers. "Let's go for a walk. We can do
the Vergil to-night."
"You—talking of neglecting work!" Her smile
seemed to him to sparkle as much in the waves of
her hair as in her even white teeth and gold-brown
eyes. "So you're human, just like the rest of us."
"Human!" He glanced at her and instantly
glanced away.
"Do leave that window," she begged. "We
must get the Vergil now. I'm reading an essay at
the society to-night—they've fined me twice for
neglecting it. But if you stand there reminding
me of what's going on outside I'll not be able to
resist."
"How this would look from Indian Rock!"
She flung open a Vergil text-book with a relent-


78 THE COST
less shake of the head. "I've got the place. Book
three, line two forty-five
"'Una in praecelsa consedit rupe Celaeno '"
"It does n't matter what that hideous old Harpy
howled at the pious iEneas," he grumbled. "Let's
go out and watch the Great God Pan dedicate his
brand-new temple."
"Do sit there!" She pointed a slim white fore-
finger at the chair at the opposite side of the table
—the side nearer him. "I'll be generous and
work the dictionary to-day." And she opened a
fat, black, dull-looking book beside the Vergil.
"Where's the Johnnie?" he asked, reluctantly
dropping into the chair.
She laid Dryden's translation of the Aeneid on
his side of the table. They always read the poeti-
cal version before they began to translate for the
class-room—Dryden was near enough to the orig-
inal to give them its spirit, far enough to quiet
their consciences. "Find the place yourself," said
she. "I'm not going to do everything."
He opened the Dryden and languidly turned the
pages. "'At length rebuff'd, they leave their
mangled '" he began.
"No—two or three lines farther down," she
interrupted. "That was in the last lesson."



HB PLUNGED HIS ELBOWS FIERCELY UPON THE TABLE . . . AND
BEGAN AGAIN





PAULINE AWAKENS 79
He pushed back the rebellious lock that insisted
on falling down the middle of his forehead,
plunged his elbows fiercely upon the table, put
his fists against his temples, and began again:
"'High on a craggy cliff Celseno sate
And thus her dismal errand did relate—'
Have you got the place in the Latin?" he inter-
rupted himself.
Fortunately he did not look up, for she was
watching the waving boughs. "Yes," she replied,
hastily returning to the book. "You do your
part and I'll do mine."
He read a few lines in an absent-minded sing-
song, then interrupted himself once more: "Did
you ever smell anything like that breeze?"
"Never. 'Bellum etiam pro caede bovum'—go
on—I'm listening—or trying to."
He read:
"'But know that ere your promised walls you
build,
My curse shall severely be fulfilled.
Fierce famine is your lot—for this misdeed,
Reduced to grind the plates on which you feed.'"


80 THE COST
He glanced at her. She was leaning on her
elbow, obviously weaving day-dreams round those
boughs as they trembled with the ecstasy of
spring.
"You are happy to-day?" he said.
"Yes—happier than I have been for a year."
She smiled mysteriously. "I've had good news."
She turned abruptly, looked him in the eyes with
that frank, clear expression—his favorite among
his memory-pictures of her had it. "There's one
thing that worries me—it's never off my mind
longer than a few minutes. And when I'm blue,
as I usually am on rainy days, it makes me—
horribly uncomfortable. I've often almost asked
your advice about it."
"If you'd be sorry afterward that you told me,"
said he, "I hope you won't. But if I can help you,
you know how glad I'd be."
"It's no use to tell Olivia," Pauline went on.
"She's bitterly prejudiced. But ever since the first
month I knew you, I felt that I could trust you,
that you were a real friend. And you're so fair
in judging people and things."
His eyes twinkled.
"I'm afraid I'd tilt the scales—just a little—
where you were concerned."


PAULINE AWAKENS 81
"Oh, I want you to do that," she answered
with a smile. "Last fall I did something—well,
it was foolish, though I wouldn't admit that to
any one else. I was carried away by an impulse.
Not that I regret. In the only really important
way, I wouldn't undo it if I could—I think."
Those last two words came absently, as if she
were debating the matter with herself.
"If it's done and can't be undone," he said
cheerfully, "I don't see that advice is needed."
"But—you don't understand." She seemed to
be casting about for words. "As I said, it was
last fall—here. In Saint X there was a man—
and he and I—we'd cared for each other ever
since we were children. And then he went away
to college. He did several things father didn't
like. You know how older people are—they don't
make allowances. And though father's the gen-
tlest, best—at any rate, he turned against Jack,
and—"
Scarborough abruptly went to the window and
stood with his back to her.
After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he
came here last fall and we got married."
There was a long silence.
"It was dreadful, wasn't it?" she said in the
r


82 THE COST
tone of one who has just made a shocking dis-
covery.
Scarborough did not answer.
"I never realized till this minute," she went on
after a while. "Not that I'm sorry or that I don't
—don't eare—just as I always did. But some-
how, telling it out loud to some one else has
made me see it in a different light. It didn't seem
like treachery to them—to father and mother—,
then. It hasn't seemed like a—a marriage—
really marriage—until now."
Another long silence. Then she burst out
appealingly: "Oh, I don't see how I'm ever going
to tell them!"
Scarborough came back to his chair and seated
himself. His face was curiously white. It was
in an unnatural voice that he said: "How old is
he?"
"Twenty-five," she replied, then instantly flared
up, as if he had attacked Dumont: "But it wasn't
his fault—not in the least. I knew what I was
doing—and I wanted to do it. You mustn't get
a false impression of him, Hampden. You'd
admire and respect him. You—any one—would
have done as he did in the same circumstances."
She blushed slightly. "You and he are ever so


PAULINE AWAKENS 83
much alike—even in looks. It was that that made
me tell you, that made me like you as I have—
and trust you."
Scarborough winced. Presently he began:
"Yet you regret"
"No—no!" she protested—too vehemently. "I
do not regret marrying him. That was certain
to be sooner or later. All I regret ;s that I did
something that seems underhanded. Perhaps
I'm really only sorry I didn't tell them as soon
as I'd done it."
She waited until she saw he was not going to
speak.
"And now," she said, "I don't know how to
tell them." Again she waited, but he did not
speak, continued to look steadily out into the sky.
"What do you think?" she asked nervously. "But
I can see without your saying. Only I—wish
you'd say it."
"No, I don't condemn you," he said slowly.
"I know you. You couldn't possibly do anything
underhanded. If you'd been where you'd have
had to conceal it directly, face to face, from some
one who had the right to know—you'd never have
done it." He rested his arms on the table and
looked straight at her. "I feel I must tell you


84 THE COST
what I think. And I feel, too, it wouldn't be fair
and honest if I didn't let you see why you might
not want to take my advice."
She returned his gaze inquiringly.
"I love you," he went on calmly. "I've known
it ever since I missed you so at the Christmas
holidays. I love you for what you are, and for
what you're as certain to be as—as a rosebud is
certain to be a full-blown rose. I love you as my
father loved my mother. I shall love you—
always." His manner was calm, matter-of-fact;
but there was in his musical, magical voice a cer-
tain quality which set her nerves and her blood
suddenly to vibrating. She felt as if she were
struggling in a great sea—the sea of his love for
her—struggling to reach the safety of the shore.
"Oh—I zvish you hadn't told me!" she ex-
claimed.
"Suppose I hadn't; suppose you had taken my
advice? No"—he shook his head slowly—"I
couldn't do that, Pauline—not even to win you."
"I'm sorry I said anything to you about it."
"You needn't be. You haven't harmed your-
self. And maybe I can help you."
"No—we won't talk of it," she said—she was
pressing her hand on her bosom where she could


PAULINE AWAKENS 85
feel her wedding ring. "It wouldn't be right,
now. I don't wish your advice."
"But I must give it. I'm years and years older
than you—many, many years more than the six
between us. And"
"I don't wish to hear."
"For his sake, for your own sake, Pauline, tell
them! And they'll surely help you to wait till
you're older before you do anything—irrevoc-
able."
"But I care for him," she said—angrily, though
it could not have been what he was saying so
gently that angered her. "You forget that I care
for him. It is irrevocable now. And I'm glad
it is!"
"You like him. You don't love him. And
—he's not worthy of your love. I'm sure it isn't
prejudice that makes me say it. If he were, he'd
have waited"
She was on her feet, her eyes blazing.
. "I asked for advice, not a lecture. I despise
you! Attacking the man I love—and behind his
back! I wish to be alone."
He rose but met her look without flinching.
"You can send me away," he said gently, "but
you can't send away my words. And if they're


86 THE COST
true you'll feel them when you get over your
anger. You'll do what you think right. But—
—be sure, Pauline. Be sure!" In his eyes there
was a look—the secret altar with the never-to-
be-extinguished flame upon it. "Be sure, Pauline.
Be sure."
Her anger fell; she sank, forlorn, into a chair.
For both, the day had shriveled and shadowed.
And as he turned and left the room the warmth
and joy died from air and sky and earth; both
of them felt the latent chill—it seemed not a rem-
iniscence of winter past but the icy foreboding of
winter closing in.
When Olivia came back that evening from
shopping in Indianapolis she found her cousin
packing.
"Is it something from home?" she asked,
alarmed.
Pauline did not look up as she answered:
"No—but I'm going home—to stay—going in
the morning. I've telegraphed them."
"To stay!"
"Yes—I was married to Jack—here—last
fall."
"You—married! To John Dumont—you, only
seventeen—oh, Pauline "And Olivia gave


PAULINE AWAKENS 87
way to tears for the first time since she was a
baby.
Scarborough was neither at supper nor at
. breakfast—Pauline left without seeing him again.


VIII.
THE DECISION.
When the sign-board on a station platform said
"5.2 miles to St. X," Pauline sank back in her
chair in the parlor-car with blanched face. And
almost immediately, so it seemed to her, Saint
X came into view—home! She fancied she could
see the very house as she looked down on the mass
of green in which the town was embowered. The
train slid into the station, slowed down—there
were people waiting on the platform—her father!
He was glancing from window to window, try-
ing to catch a glimpse of her; and his expression
of almost agonized eagerness made her heartsick.
She had been away from him for nearly seven
months—long enough to break the habit which
makes it impossible for members of a family to
know how they really look to each other. How
gray and thin his beard seemed! What was the
meaning of that gaunt look about his shoulders?
What was the strange, terrifying shadow over
him? "Why, he's old!" The tears welled into
her eyes—"He's gliding away from me!" She
88


THE DECISION 89
remembered what she had to tell him and her
knees almost refused to support her.
He was at the step as she sprang down. She
flew into his arms. He held her away from him
and scanned her face with anxious eyes.
"Is my little girl ill?" he asked. "The tele-
gram made me uneasy."
"Oh, no!" she said with a reassuring hug.
"Where's mother?"
"She—she's got a—a—surprise for you. We
must hurry—she'll be impatient, though she's
seen you since I have."
At the curbstone stood the familiar surrey, with
Mordecai humped upon the front seat. "I don't
see how the colonel ever knowed you," said he,
as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the
like for growin'."
"But you look just the same, Mordecai—you
and the surrey and the horses. And how's
Amanda?"
"Poorly," replied Mordecai—his invariable an-
swer to inquiries about his wife. She patterned
after the old school, which held that for a woman
to confess to good health was for her to confess
to lack of refinement, if not of delicacy.
"You think I've changed, father?" asked


90 THE COST
Pauline, when the horses were whirling them
home. She was so busily greeting the familiar
streets and houses and trees and faces that she
hardly heard his reply.
"'I never seen the like for growin','" he
quoted, his eyes shining with pride* in her. He
was a reticent man by nature as well as by train-
ing; he could not have said how beautiful, how
wonderful he thought her, or how intensely he
loved her. The most he could do to express him-
self to her was, a little shyly, to pat her hand—
and to look it into Mordecai's back.
She was about to snuggle up to him as a wave
of delight at being home again swept over her;
but her secret rushed from the background of her
mind. "How could I have done it? How can
I tell them?" Then, the serene and beautiful
kindness of her father's face reassured her.
Her mother was waiting in the open front door
as the surrey came up the drive—still the same
dear old-young mother, with the same sweet dig-
nity and gentleness.
"Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed Pauline,
leaping from the carriage into her arms. And
as they closed about her she felt that sorrow and
evil could not touch her; felt just as when she,


THE DECISION 91'
a little girl, fleeing from some frightful phantom
of her own imagining, had rushed there for safety.
She choked, she sobbed, she led her mother to
the big sofa opposite the stairway; and, sitting
there, they held each the other tightly, Pauline
kissing her, smoothing her hair, she caressing
Pauline and crying softly.
"We've got a surprise for you, Polly," said she,
when they were calmer.
"I don't want anything but you and father,"
replied Pauline.
Her father turned away—and so she did not
see the shadow deepen in his face. Her mother
shook her head, mischief in her eyes that were
young as a girl's—younger far than her daugh-
ter's at that moment. "Go into the sitting-room
and see," she said.
Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John
Dumont caught her in his arms. "Polly!" he
exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come round
and—and—here I am!"
Pauline pushed him away from her and sank
to the floor in a faint.
When she came to herself she was lying on the
divan in the sitting-room. Her mother was
kneeling beside her, bathing her temples with


92 THE COST
cold water; her father and her husband were
standing, helplessly looking at her. "Send him
away," she murmured, closing her eyes.
Only her mother heard. She motioned to the
two men to leave the room. When the door
closed Pauline sat up.
"He said it was all right," she began feverishly.
"What did he mean, mother?" She was hoping
she was to be spared the worst part of her ordeal.
But her mother's reply dashed her hopes, made
her settle back among the cushions and hide her
face. "It is all right, Polly. You're to have your
own way, and it's your father's way. John has
convinced him that he really has changed. We
knew—that is, I suspected why you were coming,
and we thought we'd give you a surprise—give
you what your heart was set on, before you had
to ask for it. I'm so sorry, dear, that the shock
was—"
Pauline lay perfectly still, her face hidden.
After a pause: "I don't feel well enough to see
him now. I want this day with you and father.
To-morrow—to-morrow, we'll—to-day I want to
be as I was when I was—just you and father, and
the house and the garden."
Her mother left her for a moment and, when


THE DECISION 93
she came back, said: "He's gone." Pauline gave
a quick sigh of relief. Soon she rose. "I'm go-
ing for father, and we'll walk in the garden and
forget there's anybody else in the world but just
us three."
At half-past eight they had family prayers in
the sitting-room; Pauline kneeling near her
mother, her father kneeling beside his arm-chair
and in a tremulous voice pouring out his grati-
tude to God for keeping them all "safe from the
snares and temptations of the world," for leadr
ing them thus far on the journey.
"And, God, our Father, we pray Thee, have
this daughter of ours, this handmaiden of Thine,
ever in Thy keeping. And these things we ask in
the name of Thy Son—Amen." The serene quiet,
the beloved old room, the evening scene familiar
to her from her earliest childhood, her father's
reverent, earnest voice, halting and almost break-
ing after every word of the petition for her; her
mother's soft echo of his "Amen"—Pauline's
eyes were swimming as she rose from her knees.
Her mother went with her to her bedroom,
hovered about her as she undressed, helped her
now and then with fingers that trembled with
happiness, and, when she was in bed, put out the


94 THE COST
light and "tucked her in" and kissed her—as
in the old days. "Good night—God bless my little
daughter—my happy little daughter."
Pauline waited until she knew that they were
sleeping. Then she put on a dressing-gown and
went to the open window—how many spring-
times had she sat there in the moonlight to watch,
as now, the tulips and the hyacinths standing like
fairies and bombarding the stars with the most
delicious perfumes.
She sat hour after hour, giving no outward sign
of battle within. In every lull came Scar-
borough's "Be sure, Pauline!" to start the tumult
afresh. When the stars began to pale in the
dawn she rose—she was sure. Far from sure
that she was doing the best for herself; but sure,
sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty
to her parents.
"I must not punish them for my sin," she said.
Late the next morning she went to the farthest
corner of the garden, to the small summer-house
where she had played with her dolls and her
dishes, where she had worked with slate and spell-
ing-book, where she had read her favorite school-
girl romances, where she had dreamed her own


THE DECISION 95
school-girl romance. She was waiting under the
friendly old canopy of bark—the posts support-
ing it were bark-clad, too; up and around and
between them clambered the morning-glories in
whose gorgeous, velvet-soft trumpets the sun-
jewels glittered.
And presently he came down the path, his keen
face and insolent eyes triumphant. He was too
absorbed in his own emotion especially to note
hers. Besides, she had always been receptive
rather than demonstrative with him.
"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out
of a sensation," he said. Though she was not
looking at him, his eyes shifted from her face
as he added in a voice which at another time she
might have thought strained: "Then, too, your
father and mother and mine are so strait-laced—
it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're
a good deal like them, Polly—only in a modern
sort of way."
Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips.
She said presently: "You're sure you wish it?"
"Wish what?"
"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're
both too young, that we might wait"
He put his arm round her with an air of proud


96 THE COST
possession. "What'd be the sense in that?" he
demanded gaily. "Aren't you mine?"
And again she flushed and lowered her eyes
and compressed her lips. Then she astonished
him by flinging her arms round his neck and kiss-
ing him hysterically. "But I do love you!" she
exclaimed. "I do! I do!"


IX.
A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY.
It was midday six weeks later, and Pauline and
Dumont were landing at Liverpool, when Scar-
borough read in the college-news column of the
Battle Field Banner that she had "married the
only son of Henry Dumont, of Saint Christo-
pher, one of the richest men in our state, and has
departed for an extended foreign tour." Olivia—
and Pierson naturally—had known, but neither
had had the courage to tell him.
Scarborough was in Pierson's room. He low-
ered the paper from in front of his face after a
few minutes.
"I see Pauline has married and gone abroad,"
he said.
"Yes, so I heard from Olivia," replied Pierson,
avoiding Scarborough's eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me?" continued Scar-
borough, tranquil so far as Pierson could judge.
"I'd have liked to send her a note."
Pierson was silent.
97


98 THE COST
"I thought it would cut him horribly," he was
thinking. "And he's taking it as if he had only
a friendly interest." Scarborough's face was
again behind the newspaper. When he had fin-
ished it he sauntered toward the door. He
paused there to glance idly at the titles of the
top row in the book-case. Pierson was watching
him. "No—it's .all right," he concluded. Scar-
borough was too straight and calm just to have
received such a blow as that news would have
been had he cared for Pauline. Pierson liked his
look better than ever before—the tall, powerful
figure; the fair hair growing above his wide and
lofty brow, with the one defiant lock; and in his
aquiline nose and blue-gray eyes and almost per-
fect mouth and chin the stamp of one who would
move forward irresistibly, moving others to his
will.
"How old are you, Scarborough?" he asked.
"Twenty-three—nearly twenty-four. I ought
to be ashamed to be only a freshman, oughtn't
I?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm tired of
it all." And he strolled out.
He avoided Pierson and Olivia and all his
friends for several days, went much into the
woods alone, took long walks at night. Olivia


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 99
would have it that he had been hard hit, and
almost convinced Pierson.
"He's the sort of person that suffers the most,"
she said. "I've a brother like him—won't have
sympathy, keeps a wound covered up so that it
can't heal."
"But what shall I do for him?" asked Pierson.
"Don't do anything—he'd hate you if you did."
After a week or ten days he called on Pierson
and, seating himself at the table, began to shuffle
a pack of cards. He looked tired.
"I never saw cards until I was fifteen," he said.
"At home they .thought them one of the devil's
worst devices—we had a real devil in our house."
"So did we," said Pierson.
"But not a rip-snorter like ours—they don't
have him in cities, or even in towns, any more.
I've seen ours lots of times after the lights were
out—saw him long after I'd convinced myself in
daylight that he didn't exist. But I never saw
him so close as the night of the day I learned
to play casino."
"Did you learn in the stable?" asked Pierson.
"That's where I learned, and mother slipped up
behind me—I didn't know what was coming till


100 THE COST
I saw the look in the other boy's face. Then—"
Pierson left the rest to imagination.
"I learned in the hay-loft—my sister and my
cousin Ed and I. One of the farm-hands taught
us. The cards were so stained we could hardly
see the faces. That made them look the more
devilish. And a thunder-storm came up and the
lightning struck a tree a few rods from the barn."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Pierson. "I'll bet you
fell to praying."
"Not I. I'd just finished Tom Paine's Age of
Reason—a preacher's son down the pike stole it
from a locked closet in his father's library and
loaned it to me. But I'll admit the thunderbolt
staggered me. I said to them—pretty shakily, I
guess: 'Come on, let's begin again.' But the
farm-hand said: 'I reckon I'll get on the safe
side,' and began to pray—how he roared! And
I laughed—how wicked and reckless and brave
that laugh did sound to me. 'Bella and Ed didn't
know which to be more afraid of—my ridicule
or the lightning. They compromised—they
didn't pray and they didn't play."
"And so you've never touched a card since."
"We played again the next afternoon—let's


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 101
have a game of poker. I'm bored to death to-
day."
This was Scarborough's first move toward the
fast set of which Pierson was leader. It was a
small fast set—there were not many spoiled sons
at Battle Field. But its pace was rapid; for every
member of it had a constitution that was a huge
reservoir of animal spirits and western energy.
They "cribbed" their way through recitations and
examinations—as the faculty did not put the stu-
dents on honor but watched them, they reasoned
that cribbing was not dishonorable provided
one did barely enough of it to pull him through.
They drank a great deal—usually whisky, which
they disliked but poured down raw, because it
was the "manly" drink and to take it undiluted
was the "manly" way. They made brief excur-
sions to Indianapolis and Chicago for the sort
of carousals that appeal to the strong appetites
and undiscriminating tastes of robust and curious
youth.
Scarborough at once began to reap the reward
of his advantages—a naturally bold spirit, an un-
naturally reckless mood. In two weeks he won
three hundred dollars, half of it from Pierson.
He went to Chicago and in three nights' play in-


102 THE COST
creased this to twenty-nine hundred. The noise
of the unprecedented achievement echoed through
the college. In its constellation of bad examples
a new star had blazed out, a star of the first mag-
nitude.
Bladen Scarborough had used his surplus to
improve and extend his original farm. But farms
were now practically unsalable, and Hampden
and Arabella were glad to let their cousin Ed—
Ed Warfield—stay on, rent free, because with
him there they were certain that the place would
be well kept up. Hampden, poor in cash, had in-
tended to spend the summer as a book agent. In-
stead, he put by a thousand dollars of his win-
nings to insure next year's expenses and visited
Pierson at his family's cottage in the summer
colony at Mackinac. He won at poker there and
went on East, taking Pierson. He lost all he had
with him, all Pierson could lend him, tele-
graphed to Battle Field for half his thousand dol-
lars, won back all he had lost and two thousand
besides.
When he reappeared at Battle Field in Septem-
ber he was dazzling to behold. His clothes were
many and had been imported for him by the Chi-
cago agent of a London tailor. His shirts and


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 103
ties were in patterns and styles that startled Battle
Field. He had taken on manners and personal
habits befitting a "man of the world"—but he had
not lost that simplicity and directness which were
as unchangeably a part of him as the outlines of
his face or the force which forbade him to be
idle for a moment. He and Pierson—Pierson
was pupil, now—took a suite of rooms over a
shop in the town and furnished them luxuriously.
They had brought from New York to look after
them and their belongings the first English man-
servant Battle Field had seen.
Scarborough kept up his college work; he con-
tinued regularly to attend the Literary Society
and to be its most promising orator and debater;
he committed no overt act—others might break
the college rules, might be publicly intoxicated
and noisy, but he was always master of himself
and of the situation. Some of the fanatical
among the religious students believed and said
that he had sold himself to the devil. He would
have been expelled summarily but for Pierson—
Pierson's father was one of the two large contrib-
utors to the support of the college, and it was
expected that he would will it a generous endow-
ment. To entrap Scarborough was to entrap Pier-


104 THE COST
son. To entrap Pierson— The faculty strove to
hear and see as little as possible of their doings.
In the college Y. M. C. A. prayers were offered
for Scarborough—his name was not spoken, but
every one understood. A delegation of the relig-
ious among his faithful fellow barbs called upon
him to pray and to exhort. They came away
more charmed than ever with their champion, and
convinced that he was the victim of slander and
envy. Not that he had deliberately deceived
them, for he hadn't; he was simply courteous and
respectful of their sincerity.
"The fraternities are in this somewhere," the
barbs decided. "They're trying to destroy him
by lying about him." And they liked it that their
leader was the brilliant, the talked-about, the
sought-after person in the college. When he stood
up to speak in the assembly hall or the Literary
Society they always greeted him with several
rounds of applause.
To the chagrin of the faculty and the irrita-
tion of the fraternities a jury of alumni selected
him to represent Battle Field at the oratorical con-
test among the colleges of the state. And he not
only won there but also at the interstate contest
—a victory over the orators of the colleges of


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 105
seven western states in which public speaking was,
and is, an essential part of higher education. His
oratory lacked style, they thought at Battle
Field. It was the same then, essentially, as it
was a few years later when the whole western
country was discussing it. He seemed to depend
entirely upon the inherent carrying power of his
ably constructed sentences—like so many arrows,
some flying gracefully, others straight and swift,
all reaching the mark at which they were aimed.
In those days, as afterward, he stood upon the
platform almost motionless; his voice was clear
and sweet, never noisy, but subtly penetrating and,
when the sense demanded it, full of that mysteri-
ous quality which makes the blood run more
swiftly and the nerves tingle. "Merely a talker,
not an orator," declared the professor of elocu-
tion, and few of those who saw him every day ap-
preciated his genius then. It was on the subject-
matter of his oration, not on his "delivery," that
the judges decided for him—so they said and
thought.
In February of this resplendent sophomore year
there came in his mail a letter postmarked Battle
Field and addressed in printed handwriting. The


106 THE COST
envelope contained only a newspaper cutting—
from the St. Christopher Republic:
At four o'clock yesterday afternoon
a boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. John
Dumont. It is their first child, the first
grandchild of the Dumont and Gardiner
families. Mother and son are reported
as doing well.
Scarborough spent little time in the futile effort
to guess what coward enemy had sped this anony-
mous shaft on the chance of its hitting him. His
only enemies that interested him were those within
himself. He destroyed envelope and clipping,
then said to Pierson: "I neglected to celebrate
an important event not long ago." He paused to
laugh—so queerly that Pierson looked at him
uneasily. "We must go to Chicago to celebrate
it."
"Very good," said Fred. "We'll get Chalmers
to go with us to-morrow."
"No—to-day—the four-o'clock train—we've
got an hour and a half. And we'll have four clear
days."
"But there's the ball to-night and I'm down
for several dances."


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 107
"We'll dance them in Chicago. I've never been
really free to dance before." He poured out a
huge drink. "I'm impatient for the ball to be-
gin." He lifted his glass. "To our ancestors,"
he said, "who repressed themselves, denied them-
selves, who hoarded health and strength and ca-
pacity for joy, and transmitted them in great
oceans to us—to drown our sorrows in!"
He won six hundred dollars at faro in a club
not far from the Auditorium, Pierson won two
hundred at roulette, Chalmers lost seventy—they
had about fourteen hundred dollars for their four
days' "dance." When they took the train for Bat-
tle Field they had spent all they had with them
—had flung it away for dinners, for drives, for
theaters, for suppers, for champagne. All the r'e-
turn journey Scarborough stared moodily out of
the car window. And at every movement that dis-
turbed his clothing there rose to nauseate him, to
fill him with self-loathing, the odors of strong,
sickening-sweet perfumes.
The next day but one, as he was in the woods
near Indian Rock, he saw Olivia coming toward
him. They had hardly spoken for several months.
He turned to avoid her but she came on after
him.


108 , THE COST
"I wish to talk with you a few minutes, Mr.
Scarborough," she said coldly, storm in her brave
eyes.
"At your service," he answered with strained
courtesy. And he walked beside her.
"I happen to know," she began, "that they're
going to expel you and Fred Pierson the next
time you leave here without permission."
"Indeed! You are very kind to warn me of
my awful danger." He looked down at her with
a quizzical smile.
"And I wish to say I think it's a disgrace that
they didn't do it long ago," she went on, her anger
rising to the bait of his expression.
"Your opinions are always interesting," he re-
plied. "If you have nothing further I'll ask your
permission to relieve you of"
"No," she interrupted. "I've not said what I
wished to say. You're making it hard for me. I
can't get accustomed to the change in you since
last year. There used to be a good side to you,
a side one could appeal to. And I want to talk
about—Fred. You're mining him."
"You flatter me." He bowed mockingly. "But
I doubt if he'd feel flattered."
"I've told him the same thing, but you're too


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 109
strong for me." Her voice trembled; she stead-
ied it with a frown. "I can't influence him any
longer."
"Really, Miss Shrewsbury"
"Please!" she said. "Fred and I were en-
gaged. I broke it last night. I broke it because
—you know why."
Scarborough flushed crimson.
"Oh," he said. "I didn't know he was
engaged."
"I know you, Hampden Scarborough," Olivia
continued. "I've understood why you've been de-
grading yourself. And I haven't blamed you—
though I've wondered at your lack of manhood."
"You are imposing on my courtesy," he said
haughtily.
"I can't help it. You and I must talk this thing
to the end. You're robbing me of the man I
love. Worse than that, you're destroying him,
dragging him down to a level at which he may
stay, while you are sure to rise again. You've
got your living to make—I don't agree with those
who think you'll become a professional gambler.
But he—his father's rich and indulgent, and—
God only knows how low he'll sink if you keep
on pushing him."
r


110 THE COST
"You are excited, hysterical. You misjudge
him, believe me," said Scarborough, gently.
"No—I know he's not depraved—yet. Do you
think I could care for him if he were?"
"I hope so. That's when he'd need it most."
Olivia grew red. "Well, perhaps I should. I'm
a fool, like all women. But I ask you to let him
alone, to give his better self a chance."
"Why not ask him to let me alone—to give my
better nature a chance?"
"You—laughing at me in these circumstances!
You who pretended to be a man, pretended to love
Pauline Gardiner"
He started and his eyes blazed, as if she had
cut him across the face with a whip. Then he
drew himself up with an expression of insolent
fury. His lips, his sharp white teeth, were cruel.
She bore his look without flinching.
"Yes," she went on, "you think you love her.
Yet you act as if her love were a degrading in-
fluence in your life, as if she were a bad woman
instead of one who ought to inspire a man to do
and be his best. How ashamed she'd be of you,
of your love, if she could see you as you are now
—the tempter of all the bad impulses in this col-
lege."


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 111
He could not trust himself to reply. He was
suffocating with rage and shame. He lifted his
hat, walked rapidly away from her and went
home. Pierson had never seen him in an ugly
mood before. And he, too, was in an ugly mood
—disgusted with his own conduct, angry at Scar-
borough, whom he held responsible for the unpre-
cedented excesses of this last trip to Chicago and
for their consequences.
"What's happened?" he asked sourly. "What's
the matter with you?"
"Your Olivia," replied Scarborough, with a
vicious sneer, "has been insulting me for your
sins. She is a shrew! I don't wonder you dropped
her."
Pierson rose slowly and faced him.
"You astonish me," he said. "I shouldn't have
believed you capable of a speech which no gentle-
man could possibly utter."
"You, sitting as a court of honor to decide
what's becoming a gentleman!" Scarborough
looked amused contempt. "My dear Pierson,
you're worse than offensive—you are ridiculous."
"No man shall say such things to me—espec-
ially a man who notoriously lives by his wits."
Scarborough caught him up as if he had been


112 THE COST
a child and pinned him against the wall. "Take
that back," he said, "or I'll kill you." His tone
was as colorless as his face.
"Kill and be damned," replied Pierson, cool and
disdainful. "You're a coward."
Scarborough's fingers closed on Pierson's
throat. Then flashed into his mind that warning
which demands and gets a hearing in the wildest
tempest of passion before an irrevocable act can
be done. It came to him in the form of a re-
minder of his laughing remark to Pauline when
he told her of the traditions of murder in his fam-
ily. He released Pierson and fled from the apart-
ment.
Half an hour later Pierson was reading a note
from him:
"I've invited some friends this evening. I trust
it will be convenient for you to absent yourself.
They'll be out by eleven, and then, if you return,
we can decide which is to stay in the apartment
and which to leave."
Pierson went away to his fraternity house and
at half-past eight Scarborough, Chalmers, Jack
Wilton and Brigham sat down to a game of
poker. They had played about an hour, the cards
steadily against Chalmers and Brigham—the


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 118
cards were usually against Brigham. He was a
mere boy, with passionate aspirations to be con-
sidered a sport. He had been going a rapid
gait for a year. He had lost to Scarborough alone
as much as he had expected to spend on the year's
education.
Toward ten o'clock there was a jack-pot with
forty-three dollars in it and Brigham was betting
wildly, his hands and his voice trembling, his lips
shriveled. With a sudden gesture Chalmers
caught the ends of the table and jerked it back.
There—in Brigham's lap—were two cards.
"I thought so!" exclaimed Chalmers. "You
dirty little cheat! I've been watching you."
The boy looked piteously at Chalmers' sneering
face, at the faces of the others. The tears rolled
down his cheeks. "For God's sake, boys," he
moaned, "don't be hard on me. I was desperate.
I've lost everything, and my father can't give me
any more. He's a poor man, and he and mother
have been economizing and -sacrificing to send me
here. And when I saw I was ruined—God knows,
I didn't think what I was doing." He buried his
face in his hands. "Don't be hard on me," he
sobbed. "Any one of you might have done the
same if he was in my fix."


114 THE COST
"You sniveling cur," said Chalmers, high and
virtuous, "how dare you say such a thing! You
forget you're among gentlemen"
"None of that, Chalmers," interrupted Scar-
borough. "The boy's telling the truth. And no-
body knows it better than you." This with a sig-
nificant look into Chalmers' eyes. They shifted
and he colored.
"I agree with Scarborough," said Wilton. "We
oughtn't to have let the boy into our games. We
must never mention what has happened here this
evening."
"But we can't allow a card sharp to masquerade
as a gentleman," objected Chalmers. "I confess,
Scarborough, I don't understand how you can
be so easy-going in a matter of honor."
"You think I must have a fellow-feeling for
dishonor, eh?" Scarborough smiled satirically.
"I suppose because I was sympathetic enough with
you to overlook the fact that you were shy on
your share of our Chicago trip."
"What do you mean?"
"The three hundred you borrowed of Pierson
when you thought he was too far gone to know
what he was doing. My back was turned—but
there was the mirror."


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 115
Chalmers' sullen, red face confirmed Scar-
borough's charge.
"No," continued Scarborough, "we gentlemen
ought to be charitable toward one another's dis-
covered lapses." He seated himself at his desk
and wrote rapidly:
We, the undersigned, exonerate Edwin
Brigham of cheating in the poker game in
Hampden Scarborough's rooms on Satur-
day evening, February 20, 18—. And we
pledge ourselves never to speak of the mat-
ter either to each other or to any one else.
"I've signed first," said Scarborough, rising and
holding the pen toward Chalmers. "Now, you
fellows sign. Chalmers!"
Chalmers signed, and then Wilton.
"Take Chalmers away with you," said Scar-
borough to Wilton in an undertone. "I've some-
thing to say to Brigham."
When they were gone he again seated himself
at his desk and, taking his check-book, wrote a
check and tore it out
"Now, listen to me, Brig," he said friendlily to
Brigham, who seemed to be in a stupor. "I've
won about six hundred dollars from you, first
and last—more, rather than less. Will that


116 THE COST
amount put you in the way of getting straight?"
"Yes," said Brigham, dully.
"Then here's a check for it. And here's the
paper exonerating you. And—I guess you won't
play again soon."
The boy choked back his sobs.
"I don't know how I ever came to do it, Scar-
borough. Oh, I'm a dog, a dog! When I started
to come here my mother took me up to her bed-
room and opened the drawer of her bureau and
took out a savings-bank book—it had a credit of
twelve hundred dollars. 'Do you see that?' she
said. 'When you were born I began to put by as
soon as I was able—every cent I could from the
butter and the eggs—to educate my boy. And
now it's all coming true,' she said, Scarborough,
and we cried together. And "Brigham
burst into a storm of tears and sobs. "Oh, how
could I do it!" he said. "How could I!"
"You've done wrong," said Scarborough, shak-
ily, "but I've done much worse, Eddie. And it's
over now, and everything'll be all right."
"But I can't take your money, Scarborough.
I must pay for what I've done."
"You mean, make your mother pay. No, you
must take it back, Brigham. I owe it to you—I


A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 117
owe it to your mother. This is the butter and
egg money that I—I stole from her."
He put the papers into the boy's pocket. "You
and I are going to be friends," he went on.
"Come round and see me to-morrow—no, I'll look
you up." He put out his hand and held Brig-
ham's hand in a courage-giving grasp. "And—
I hope I'll have the honor of meeting your mother
some day."
Brigham could only look his feelings. Soon
after he left Pierson came. His anger had evap-
orated and his chief emotion was dread lest Scar-
borough might still be angry. "I want to take
back "he began eagerly, as soon as his head
was inside the door.
"I know you do, but you shan't," replied Scar-
borough. "What you said was true, what Olivia
said was true. I've been acting like a black-
guard."
"No," said Pierson, "what I said was a dis-
graceful lie. Will you try to forget it, Scar-
borough?"
"Forget it?" Scarborough looked at his friend
with brilliant eyes. "Never! So help me God,
never! It's one of three things that have oc-
curred to-day that I must never forget."


118 THE COST
"Then we can go on as before. You'll still be
my friend?"
"Not still, Fred, but for the first time."
He looked round the luxurious study with a
laugh and a sigh. "It'll be a ghastly job, getting
used to the sort of surroundings I can earn for
myself. But I've got to grin and bear it. We'll
stay on here together to the end of the term—my
share's paid, and besides, I'm not going to do any-
thing sensational. Next year—we'll see."
While Pierson was having his final cigarette
before going to bed he looked up from his book
to see before him Scarborough, even more tre-
mendous and handsome in his gaudy pajamas.
"I wish to register a solemn vow," said he,
with mock solemnity that did not hide the seri-
ousness beneath. "Hear me, ye immortal gods!
Never again, never again, will I engage in any
game with a friend where there is a stake. I
don't wish to tempt. I don't wish to be tempted."
"What nonsense!" said Pierson. "You're
simply cutting yourself off from a lot of fun."
"I have spoken," said Scarborough, and he
withdrew to his bedroom. When the door was
closed and the light out he paused at the edge of
the bed and said: "And never again, so long as



'HEAR ME, YE IMMORTAL GODS!"





A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY 119
he wishes to retain his title to the name man, will
Hampden Scarborough take from anybody any-
thing which he hasn't honestly earned."
And when he was in bed he muttered: "I shall
be alone, and I may stay poor and obscure, but
I'll get back my self-respect—and keep it—
Pauline 1"


MRS. JOHN DUMONT.
. And Pauline?—She was now looking back
upon the first year of her married life.
She had been so brought up that at seventeen,
within a few weeks of eighteen, she had only
the vaguest notion of the meaning of the step
she was about to take in "really marrying" John
Dumont. Also, it had never occurred to her as
possible for a properly constituted woman not to
love her husband. It was clearly her duty to
marry Jack; therefore, the doubting thoughts
and the ache at the heart which would not ease
were merely more outcroppings of the same evil
part of her nature that had tempted her into
deceiving her parents, and into entangling herself
and Scarborough. She knew that, if she were
absolutely free, she would not marry Jack. But
she felt that she had bartered away her birthright
of freedom; and now, being herself, the daughter
of her father and her mother, she would honor-
ably keep her bargain, would love where she
120


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 121
ought to love—at seventeen "I will" means "I
shall." And so—they were "really married."
But the days passed, and there was no sign of
the miracle she had confidently expected. The
magic of the marriage vow failed to transform
her; Pauline Dumont was still Pauline Gardiner
in mind and in heart. There was, however, a
miracle, undreamed of, mysterious, overwhelm-
ing—John Dumont, the lover, became John
Dumont, the husband. Beside this transforma-
tion, the revelation that the world she loved and
lived in did not exist for him, or his world for
her, seemed of slight importance. She had not
then experience enough to enable her to see that
transformation and revelation were as intimately
related as a lock and its key.
"It's all my fault," she told herself. "It must
be my fault." And Dumont, unanalytic and self-
absorbed, was amused whenever Pauline's gentle-
ness reminded him of his mother's half-believed
warnings that his wife had "a will of her own,
and a mighty strong one."
They were back at Saint X in August and
lived at the Frobisher place in Indiana Street—
almost as pretentious as the Dumont homestead
and in better taste. Old Mrs. Dumont had gone


122 THE COST
to Chicago alone for the furnishings for her own
house; when she went for the furnishings for her
son's house, she got Mrs. Gardiner to go along—
and Pauline's mother gave another of her many
charming illustrations of the valuable truth that
tact can always have its own way. Saint X was
too keen-eyed and too interested in the new Mrs.
Dumont to fail to note a change in her. It was
satisfied with the surface explanation that Europe
in general and Paris in particular were respon-
sible. And it did not note that, while she had
always been full of life and fond of company,
she was now feverish in her restlessness, inces-
santly seeking distraction, never alone when she
could either go somewhere or induce some one
to come to her.
"You must be careful, my dear," said her
mother-in-law, as soon as she learned that she
had a grandmotherly interest in her daughter-in-
law's health. "You'll wear yourself out with all
this running about."
Pauline laughed carelessly, recklessly.
"Oh, I'm disgustingly healthy. Nothing hurts
me. Besides, if I were quiet, I think I should—
explode!"
Late in September Dumont had to go to Newi


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 123
York. He asked her to go with him, assuming
that she would decline, as she had visitors com-
ing. But she was only too glad of the chance
to give her increasing restlessness wider range.
They went to the Waldorf—Scarborough and
Pierson had been stopping there not a week
before, making ready for that sensational descent
upon Battle Field which has already been re-
corded. The first evening Dumont took her to
the play. The next morning he left her early
for a busy day down-town—"and I may not be
able to return for dinner. I warned you before
we left Saint X," he said, as he rose from break-
fast in their sitting-room.
"I understand," she answered. "You needn't
bother to send word even, if you don't wish. I'll
be tired from shopping and shan't care to go out
this evening, anyhow."
In the afternoon she drove with Mrs. Fanshaw,
wife of one of Jack's business acquaintances—
they had dined at the Fanshaws' when they
paused in New York on the way home from
Europe. Pauline was at the hotel again at five;
while she and Mrs. Fanshaw were having tea
together in the palm garden a telegram was
handed to her. She read it, then said to Mrs.


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 125
afterward that he was Mowbray Langdon. He
was now giving her a stare of amused mock-
admiration. When he saw that he had her at-
tention, he said: "Really, Mrs. Dumont, I can't
decide which to admire most—your trust or your
husband's."
Pauline laughed—it struck her as ridiculous
that either she or Jack should distrust the other.
Indeed, she only hazily knew what distrust meant,
and hadn't any real belief that "such things"
actually existed.
Half an hour later the party was driving up
to Weber and Fields'. Pauline, glancing across
the thronged sidewalk and along the empty, bril-
liantly lighted passage leading into the theater,
saw a striking, peculiar-looking woman standing
at the box-office while her escort parleyed with
the clerk within. "How much that man looks
like Jack," she said to herself—and then she saw
that it was indeed Jack. Not the Jack she
thought she knew, but quite another person, the
one he tried to hide from her—too carelessly,
because he made the common mistake of under-
estimating the sagacity of simplicity. A glance
at the woman, a second glance at Dumont, his
flushed, insolent face now turned full front—and


126 THE COST
she knew this unfamiliar and hitherto-only-hinted
Jack.
The omnibus was caught in a jam of cars and
carriages; there were several moments of con-
fusion and excitement. When the Fanshaw
party was finally able to descend, she saw that
Jack and his companion were gone—the danger
of a scene was over for the moment. She
lingered and made the others linger, wishing to
give him time to get to his seats. When they
entered the theater it was dark and the curtain
was up. But her eyes, searching the few boxes
visible from the rear aisle, found the woman, or,
at least, enough of her for recognition—the huge
black hat with its vast pale blue feather. Pauline
drew a long breath of relief when the Fanshaws'
box proved to be almost directly beneath the box.
If she had been a few years older, she would
have given its proper significance to the curious
fact that this sudden revelation of the truth about
her husband did not start a tempest of anger or
jealousy, but set her instantly to sacrificing at
the shrine of the great god Appearances. It is
notorious that of all the household gods he alone
erects his altar only upon the hearth where the
ashes are cold.


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 127
As she sat there through the two acts, she
seemed to be watching the stage and taking part
in the conversation of the Fanshaws and their
friends; yet afterward she could not recall a
single thing that had occurred, a single word that
had been said. At the end of the last act she
again made them linger so that they were the
last to emerge into the passage. In the outside
doorway, she saw the woman—just a glimpse of
a pretty, empty, laughing face with a mouth
made to utter impertinences and eyes that invited
them.
Mrs. Fanshaw was speaking—"You're very
tired, aren't you?"
"Very," replied Pauline, with a struggle to
smile.
"What a child you look! It seems absurd that
you are a married woman. Why, you haven't
your full growth yet." And on an impulse of
intuitive sympathy Mrs. Fanshaw pressed her
arm, and Pauline was suddenly filled with grati-
tude, and liked her from that moment.
Alone in her sitting-room at the hotel, she went
up to the mirror over the mantel, and, staring
absently at herself, put her hands up mechanically
to take out her hat-pins. "No, I'll keep my hat


128 THE COST
on," she thought, without knowing why. And
she sat, hat and wrap on, and looked at a book.
Half an hour, and she took off her hat and wrap,
put them in a chair near where she was sitting.
The watched hands of the clock crawled wearily
round to half-past one, to two, to half-past two,
to three—each half-hour an interminable stage.
She wandered to the window and looked down
into empty Fifth Avenue. When she felt that
at least an hour had passed, she turned to look
at the clock again—twenty-five minutes to four.
Her eyes were heavy.
"He is not coming," she said aloud, and, leav-
ing the lights on in the sitting-room, locked
herself in the bedroom.
At five o'clock she started up and seized the
dressing-gown on the chair near the head of the
bed. She listened—heard him muttering in the
sitting-room. She knew now that a crash of
some kind had roused her. Several minutes of
profound silence, then through the door came a
steady, heavy snore.
The dressing-gown dropped from her hand.
She slid from the bed, slowly crossed the room,
softly opened the door, looked into the sitting-
room. A table and a chair lay upset in the


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 129
middle of the floor. He was on a sofa, sprawl-
ing, disheveled, snoring.
Slowly she advanced toward him—she was
barefooted, and the white nightgown clinging to
her slender figure and the long braid down her
back made her look as young as her soul—the
soul that gazed from her fixed, fascinated eyes,
the soul of a girl of eighteen, full as much child
as woman still. She sat down before him in a
low chair, her elbows on her knees, her chin
supported by her hands, her eyes never leaving
his swollen, dark red, brutish face-—a cigar stump,
much chewed, lay upon his cheek near his open
mouth. He was as absurd and as repulsive as a
gorged pig asleep in a wallow.
The dawn burst into broad day, but she sat
on motionless until the clock struck the half-hour
after six. Then she returned to the bedroom and
locked herself in again.
Toward noon she dressed and went into the
sitting-room. He was gone and it had been put
to rights. When he came, at twenty minutes to
one, she was standing at the window, but she
did not turn.
"Did you get my note?" he asked, in
a carefully careless tone. He went on to. an-


130 THE COST
swer himself: "No, there it is on the floor just
where I put it, under the bedroom door. No
matter—it was only to say I had to go out but
would be back to lunch. Sorry I was kept so
late last night. Glad you didn't wait up for me—
but you might have left the bedroom door open—,
it'd have been perfectly safe." He laughed good-
naturedly. "As it was, I was so kind-hearted
that I didn't disturb you, but slept on the sofa."
As he advanced toward her with the obvious
intention of kissing her, she slowly turned and
faced him. Their eyes met and he stopped short
—her look was like the eternal ice that guards
the pole.
"I saw you at the theater last night," she said
evenly. "And this morning, I sat and watched
you as you lay on the sofa over there."
He was taken completely off his guard. With
a gasp that was a kind of groan he dropped into
a chair, the surface of his mind strewn with the
wreckage of the lying excuses he had got ready.
"Please don't try to explain," she went on in
the same even tone. "I understand now about—
about Paris and—everything. I know that—
father was right."
He gave her a terrified glance—no tears, no


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 131
trace of excitement, only calmness and all the
strength he knew was in her nature and, in addi-
tion, a strength he had not dreamed was there.
"What do you intend to do?" he asked after a
long silence.
She did not answer immediately. When she
did, she was not looking at him.
"When I married you—across the river from
Battle Field," she said, "I committed a crime
against my father and mother. This is—my pun-
ishment—the beginning of it. And now—there'll
be the—the—baby—" A pause, then: "I must
bear the consequences—if I can. But I shall not
be your wife—never—never again. If you wish
me to stay on that condition, I'll try. If not—"
"You must stay, Pauline," he interrupted. "I
don't care what terms you make, you must stay.
It's no use for me to try to defend myself when
you're in this mood. You wouldn't listen. But
you're right about not going. If you did, it'd
break your father's and mother's hearts. I admit
I did drink too much last night, and made a fool
of myself. But if you were more experienced,
you'd—"
He thought he had worked his courage up to
the point where he could meet her eyes. He tried


132 THE COST
it. Her look froze his flow of words. "I know
that you were false from the beginning," she said.
"The man I thought you were never existed—
and I know it. We won't speak of this—ever—
after now. Surely you can't wish me to stay?"
And into her voice surged all her longing to go,
all her hope that he would reject the only terms
on which self-respect would let her stay.
"Wish you to stay?" he repeated. And he
faced her, looking at her, his chest heaving under
the tempest of hate and passion that was raging
in him—hate because she was defying and dic-
tating to him, passion because she was so beautiful
as she stood there, like a delicate, fine hot-house
rose poised on a long, graceful stem. "No wonder
I love you!" he exclaimed between his clenched
teeth.
A bright spot burned in each of her cheeks and
her look made him redden and lower his eyes.
"Now that I understand these last five months,"
she said, "that from you is an insult."
His veins and muscles swelled with the fury he
dared not show; for he saw and felt how -dan-
gerous her mood was.
"I'll agree to whatever you like, Pauline," he
said humbly. "Only, we mustn't have a flare-up


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 133
and a scandal. I'll never speak to you again about
—about anything you don't want to hear."
She went into her bedroom. When, after half
an hour, she reappeared, she was ready to go down
to lunch. In the elevator he stole a glance at her
—there was no color in her face, not even in her
lips. His rage had subsided; he was ashamed of
himself—before her. But he felt triumphant too.
"I thought she'd go, sure, in spite of her fear
of hurting her father and mother," he said to him-
self. "A mighty close squeak. I was stepping
round in a powder magazine, with every word a
lit match."
* * * *
In January she sank into a profound lassitude.
Nothing interested her, everything wearied her.
As the time drew near, her mother came to stay
with her; and day after day the two women sat
silent, Mrs. Gardiner knitting, Pauline motionless,
hands idle in her lap, mind vacant. If she had
any emotion, it was a hope that she would die and
take her child with her.
"That would settle everything, settle it right,"
she reflected, with youth's morbid fondness for
finalities.
When it was all over and she came out from


134 THE COST
under the opiate, she lay for a while, open-eyed
but unseeing, too inert to grope for the lost thread
of memory. She felt a stirring in the bed beside
her, the movement of some living thing. She
looked and there, squeezed into the edge of the
pillow was a miniature head of a little old man
—wrinkled, copperish. Yet the face was fat—
ludicrously fat. A painfully homely face with
tears running from the closed eyes, with an open
mouth that driveled and drooled.
"What is it?" she thought, looking with faint
curiosity. "And why is it here?"
Two small fists now rose aimlessly in the air
above the face and flapped about; and a very
tempest of noise issued from the sagging mouth.
"A baby," she reflected. Then memory came
—"My baby!"
She put her finger in the way of the wandering
fists. First one of them, then the other, awk-
wardly unclosed and as awkwardly closed upon
it. She smiled. The grip tightened and tight-
ened and tightened until she wondered how hands
so small and new could cling so close and hard.
Then that electric clasp suddenly tightened about
her heart. She burst into tears and drew the child
against her breast. The pulse of its current of life


MRS. JOHN DUMONT 135
was beating against her own—and she felt it.
She sobbed, laughed softly, sobbed again.
Her mother was bending anxiously over her.
"What's the matter, dearest?" she asked.
"What do you wish?"
"Nothing!" Pauline was smiling through her
tears. "Oh, mother, I am so happy!" she mur-
mured.
And her happiness lasted with not a break, with
hardly a pause, all that spring and all that sum-
mer—or, so long as her baby's helplessness ab-
sorbed the whole of her time and thought.


XL
YOUNG AMERICA.
When Pierson, laggard as usual, returned to
Battle Field a week after the end of the long vaca-
tion, he found Scarborough just establishing him-
self. He had taken two small and severely plain
rooms in a quaint old frame cottage, one story
high, but perched importantly upon a bank at the
intersection of two much-traveled streets.
"What luck?" asked Pierson, lounging in on
him.
"A hundred days' campaign; a thousand dol-
lars net," replied the book agent. "And I'm hard
as oak from tramping those roads, and I've
learned—you ought to have been along, Pierson.
I know people as I never could have come to know
them by any other means—what they think, what
they want, how they can be reached."
There was still much of the boy in Pierson's
face. But Scarborough looked the man, devel-
oped, ready.
Pierson wandered into the bedroom to com-
plete his survey. "I see you're going to live by
136


YOUNG AMERICA 137
the clock," he called out presently. He had found,
pasted to the wall, Scarborough's schedule of the
daily division of his time; just above it, upon a
shelf, was a new alarm clock, the bell so big that it
overhung like a canopy. "You don't mean you're
going to get up at four?"
"Every morning—all winter," replied Scar-
borough, without stopping his unpacking. "You
see, I'm going to finish this year—take the two
years in one. Then I've registered in a law office
—Judge Holcombe's. And there's my speaking—
I must practise that every day."
Pierson came back to the sitting-room and col-
lapsed into a chair. "I see you allow yourself five
hours for sleep," he said. "It's too much, old
man. You're self-indulgent."
"That's a mistake," replied Scarborough.
"Since making out the schedule I've decided to
cut sleep down to four hours and a half."
"That's more like it!"
"We all sleep too much," he continued. "And
as I shan't smoke, or drink, or worry, I'll need
even less than the average man. I'm going to do
nothing but work. A man doesn't need much rest
from mere work."
"What! No play?"


138 THE COST
"Play all the time. I've simply changed my
playthings."
Pierson seated himself at the table and stared
gloomily at his friend.
"Look here, old man. For heaven's sake, don't
let Olivia find out about this program."
But Olivia did hear of it, and Pierson was com-
pelled to leave his luxury in the main street and
to take the two remaining available rooms at Scar-
borough's place. His bed was against the wall
of Scarborough's bedroom—the wall where the
alarm clock was. At four o'clock on his first
morning he started from a profound sleep.
"My bed must be moved into my sitting-room
to-day," he said to himself as soon as the clamor
of Scarborough's gong died away and he could
collect his thoughts. But at four o'clock the next
morning the gong penetrated the two walls as if
they had not been there. "I see my finish," he
groaned, sitting up and tearing at his hair.
He tried to sleep again, but the joint pressure
of Olivia's memory-mirrored gray eyes and of
disordered nerves from the racking gong forced
him to make an effort to bestir himself. Groaning
and muttering, he rose and in the starlight looked
from his window. Scarborough was going up the



'I SEE MY FINISH, HE GROANED





YOUNG AMERICA 139
deserted street on his way to the woods for his
morning exercise. His head was thrown back
and his chest extended, and his long legs were
covering four feet at a stride. "You old devil!"
said Pierson, his tone suggesting admiration and
affection rather than anger. "But I'll outwit
you."
By a subterfuge in which a sympathetic doctor
was the main factor, he had himself permanently
excused from chapel. Then he said to Scar-
borough: "You get up too late, old man. My
grandfather used to say that only a drone lies
abed after two in the morning, wasting the best
part of the day. You ought to turn in, say, at half-
past nine and rise in time to get your hardest work
out of the way before the college day begins."
"That sounds reasonable," replied Scarborough,
after a moment's consideration. "I'll try it."
And so it came to pass that Pierson went to bed
at the sound of Scarborough's two-o'clock rising
gong and pieced out his sleep with an occasional
nap in recitations and lectures and for an hour
or two late in the afternoon. He was able once
more to play poker as late as he liked, and often
had time for reading before the gong sounded.
And Scarborough was equally delighted with the


140 THE COST
new plan. "I gain at least one hour a day, per-
haps two," he said. "Your grandfather was a
wise man."
Toward spring, Mills, western manager of the
publishing house for which Scarborough had sold
Peaks of Progress through Michigan, came to
Battle Field to see him.
"You were far and away the best man we had
out last year," said he. "You're a born book
agent."
"Thank you," said Scarborough, sincerely. He
appreciated that a man can pay no higher com-
pliment than to say that another is master of his
own trade.
"We got about fifty orders from people who
thought it over after you'd tried to land them and
failed—that shows the impression you made. And
you sold as many books as our best agent in our
best field."
"I'll never go as agent again," said Scar-
borough. "The experience was invaluable—but
sufficient."
"We don't want you to go as agent. Our
proposition is for much easier and more dignified
work."
At the word dignified, Scarborough could not


YOUNG AMERICA 141
restrain a smile. "I've practically made my plans
for the summer," he said.
"I think we've got something worth your while,
Mr. Scarborough. Our idea is for you to select
about a hundred of the young fellows who're
working their way through here, and train them
in your methods of approaching people. Then
you'll take them to Wisconsin and Minnesota and
send them out, each man to a district you select
for him. In that way you'll help a hundred young
men to earn a year at college and you'll make a
good sum for yourself—two or three times what
you made last summer."
Scarborough had intended to get admitted to
the bar in June, to spend the summer at an ap-
prenticeship in a law office and to set up for him-
self in the fall. But this plan was most attractive
—it would give him a new kind of experience and
would put him in funds for the wait for clients.
The next day he signed an advantageous contract
—his expenses for the summer and a guaranty
of not less than three thousand dollars clear.
He selected a hundred young men and twelve
young women, the most intelligent of the five hun-
dred self-supporting students at Battle Field.
Pierson, having promised to behave himself, was


142 THE COST
permitted to attend the first lesson. The scholars
at the Scarborough School for Book Agents filled
his quarters and overflowed in swarms without
the windows and the door. The weather was still
cool; but all must hear, and the rooms would hold
barely half the brigade.
"I assume that you've read the book," began
Scarborough. He was standing at the table with
the paraphernalia of a book agent spread upon
it. "But you must read it again and again, until
you know what's on every page, until you have
by heart the passages I'll point out to you." He
looked at Drexel—a freshman of twenty-two,
with earnest, sleepless eyes and a lofty forehead;
in the past winter he had become acquainted with
hunger and with that cold which creeps into the
room, crawls through the thin covers and closes
in, icy as death, about the heart. "What do you
think of the book, Drexel?"
The young man—he is high in the national
administration to-day—flushed and looked un-
easy.
"Speak frankly. I want your candid opinion."
"Well, I must say, Mr. Scarborough, I think
it's pretty bad."
"Thank you," said Scarborough; and he


YOUNG AMERICA 143.
glanced round. "Does anybody disagree with
Mr. Drexel?"
There was not a murmur. Pierson covered his
face to hide his smile at this "jolt" for his friend.
In the group round one of the windows a laugh
started and spread everywhere except to seven of
the twelve young women and to those near Scar-
borough—they looked frightened.
"I expected Mr. Drexel's answer," began Scar-
borough. "Before you can sell Peaks of Progress
each of you must be convinced that it's a book he
himself would buy. And I see you've not even
read it. You've at most glanced at it with un-
friendly eyes. This book is not literature, gentle-
men. It is a storehouse of facts. It is an educa-
tional work so simply written and so brilliantly
illustrated that the very children will hang over its
pages with delight. If you attend to your train-
ing in our coming three months of preliminary
work you'll find during the summer that the
book's power to attract the children is its strongest
point. I made nearly half my sales last summer
by turning from the parents to the children and
stirring their interest."
Pierson was now no more inclined to smile than
were the pupils.


144 THE COST
"When I started out," continued Scarborough,
"I, too, had just glanced at the book and had
learned a few facts from the prospectus. And I
failed to sell, except to an occasional fool whom
I was able to overpower. Every one instinctively
felt the estimate I myself placed upon my goods.
But as I went on the book gradually forced itself
upon me. And, long before the summer was
over, I felt that I was an ambassador of education
to those eager people. And I'm proud that I sold
as many books as I did. Each book, I know, is a
radiating center of pleasure, of thought, of as-
piration to higher things. No, ladies and gentle-
men, you must first learn that these eight hundred
pages crowded with facts of history, these six
hundred illustrations taken from the best sources
and flooding the text with light, together consti-
tute a work that should be in all humble house-
holds."
Scarborough had his audience with him now.
"Never sneer," he said in conclusion. "Sneering
will accomplish nothing. Learn your business.
Put yourself, your best self, into it. And then
you may hope to succeed at it."
He divided his pupils into six classes of about
twenty each and dismissed them, asking the


YOUNG AMERICA 145
first class to come at three the next afternoon.
The young men and young women went thought-
fully away; they were revolving their initial
lesson in the cardinal principle of success—en-
thusiasm. When the two friends were alone Pier-
son said: "Do you know, I'm beginning to get
a glimpse of you. And I see there isn't anything
beyond your reach. You'll get whatever you
want."
Scarborough's reply was a sudden look of de-
jection, an impatient shrug. Then he straightened
himself, lifted his head with a lion-like toss that
shook back the obstinate lock of hair from his
forehead. He laid his hand on his friend's
shoulder. "Yes," he said, "because I'm de-
termined to want whatever I get. Good fortune
and bad—everything shall be grist for this mill."
Pierson attended next day's class and after-
ward went to Olivia with an account of it.
"You ought to have seen him put those fellows
through, one at a time. I tell you, he'll teach them
more in the next three months than they'll learn
of the whole faculty. And this summer he'll get
every man and woman of them enough to pay
their way through college next year."
"What did he do to-day?" asked Olivia. Of the


146 THE COST
many qualities she loved in Pierson, the one she
loved most was his unbounded, unselfish admira-
tion for his friend.
"He took each man separately, the others
watching and listening. First he'd play the part
of book agent with his pupil as a reluctant cus-
tomer. Then he'd reverse, and the pupil as agent
would try to sell him the book, he pretending to
be an ignorant, obstinate, ill-natured, close-fisted
farmer or farmer's wife. It was a liberal educa-
tion in the art of persuasion. If his pupils had
his brains and his personality, Peaks of Progress
would be on the center-table in half the farm par-
lors of Wisconsin and Minnesota by September."
"If they had his personality, and if they had
his brains," said Olivia.
"Well, as it is, he'll make the dumbest ass in
the lot bray to some purpose."
In September, when Scarborough closed his
headquarters at Milwaukee and set out for Indian-
apolis, he found that the average earnings of his
agents were two hundred and seventy-five dollars,
and that he himself had made forty-three hun-
dred. Mills came and offered him a place in the
publishing house at ten thousand a year and a


YOUNG AMERICA 147
commission. He instantly rejected it. He had
already arranged to spend a year with one of the
best law firms in Indianapolis before opening an
office in Saint X, the largest town in the congres-
sional district in which his farm lay.
"But there's no hurry about deciding," said
Mills. "Remember—we'll make you rich in a few
years." ,
"My road happens not to lie in that direction,"
replied Scarborough, carelessly. "I've no desire
to be rich. It's too easy, if one will consent to
give money-making his exclusive attention."
Mills looked amused—had he not known Scar-
borough's ability, he would have felt derisive.
"Money's power," said he. "And there are
only two ambitions for a wide-awake man—
money and power."
"Money can't buy the kind of power I'd care
for," answered Scarborough. "If I were to seek
power, it'd be the power that comes through abil-
ity to persuade."
"Money talks," said Mills, laughing.
"Money bellows," retorted Scarborough, "and
bribes and browbeats, bully and coward that it
is. But it never persuades."


148 THE COST
"I'll admit it's a coward."
"And I hope I can always frighten enough of
it into my service to satisfy my needs. But I'm
not spending my life in its service—no, thank
you!"


XII.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS.
While Scarborough was serving his clerkship
at Indianapolis, Dumont was engaging in ever
larger and more daring speculations with New
York as his base. Thus it came about that when
Scarborough established himself at Saint X, Du-
mont and Pauline were living in New York, in a
big house in East Sixty-first Street.
And Pauline had welcomed the change. In
Saint X she was constantly on guard, always
afraid her father and mother would see below
that smiling surface of her domestic life which
made them happy. In New York she was free
from the crushing sense of peril and restraint, as
their delusions about her were secure. There, after
she and he found their living basis of "let alone,"
they got on smoothly, rarely meeting except in the
presence of servants or guesta, never inquiring
either into the other's life, carrying on all nego-
tiations about money and other household matters
through their secretaries. He thought her cold
by nature—therefore absolutely to be, trusted.
149


150 THE COST
And what other man with the pomp and circum-
stance of a great and growing fortune to main-
tain had so admirable an instrument? "An ideal
wife," he often said to himself. And he was not
the man to speculate as to what was going on in
her head. He had no interest in what others
thought; how they were filling the places
he had assigned them—that was his only concern.
In one of those days of pause which come now
and then in the busiest lives she chanced upon
his letters from Europe in her winter at Battle
Field. She took one of them from its envelope
and began to read—carelessly, with a languid
curiosity to measure thus exactly the change in
herself. But soon she was absorbed, her mind
groping through letter after letter for the clue to
a mystery. The Dumont she now knew stood
out so plainly in those letters that she could not
understand how she, inexperienced and infatuated
though she then was, had failed to see the perfect
full-length portrait. How had she read romance
and high-mindedness and intellect into the per-
sonality so frankly flaunting itself in all its narrow
sordidness, in all its poverty of real thought and
real feeling?
"And there was Hampden Scarborough to con-
>,


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 151
trast him with "With this thought the truth
suddenly stared at her, made her drop the letter
and visibly shrink. It was just because Scar-
borough was there that she had been tricked. The
slight surface resemblance between the two men,
hardly more than the "favor" found in all men
of the family of strong and tenacious will, had led
her on to deck the absent Dumont with the man-
hood of the present Scarborough. She had read
Scarborough into Dumont's letters. Yes, and—
the answers she addressed and mailed to Dumont
had really been written to Scarborough.
She tossed the letters back into the box from
which they had reappeared after four long years.
She seated herself on the white bear-skin before
the open fire; and with hands clasped round her
knees she rocked herself slowly to and fro like
one trying to ease an intolerable pain.
Until custom dulled the edge of that pain, the
days and the nights were the crudest in her ap-
prenticeship up to that time.
When her boy, Gardiner, was five years old, she
got her father and mother to keep him at Saint X
with them.
"New York's no place, I think, to bring up and
educate a boy in the right way," she explained.


152 THE COST
And it was the truth, though not the whole truth.
The concealed part was that she would have made
an open break with her husband had there been
no other way of safeguarding their all-seeing, all-
noting boy from his example.
Before Gardiner went to live with his grand-
parents she stayed in the East, making six or eight
brief visits "home" each year. When he went
she resolved to divide her year between her
pleasure as a mother and her obligation to her
son's father, to her parents' son-in-law—her de-
votions at the shrine of Appearances.
It was in the fall of the year she was twenty-
five—eight years and a half after she left Battle
Field—that Hampden Scarborough reappeared
upon the surface of her life.
On a September afternoon in that year Olivia,
descending from the train at Saint X, was almost
as much embarrassed as pleased by her changed
young cousin rushing at her with great energy—
"Dear, dear Olivia! And hardly any different—
how's the baby? No—not Fred, but Fred Junior,
I mean. In some ways you positively look
younger. You know, you were so serious at col-
lege!"
"But you—I don't quite understand how any


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 153
one can be so changed, yet—recognizable. I
guess it's the plumage. You're in a new edition—
an edition de luxe."
Pauline's dressmakers were bringing out
the full value of her height and slender, graceful
strength. Her eyes, full of the same old frank-
ness and courage, now had experience in them,
too. She was wearing her hair so that it fell from
her brow in two sweeping curves reflecting the
light in sparkles and flashes. Her manner was still
simple and genuine—the simplicity and genuine-
ness of knowledge now, not of innocence. Ex-
tremes meet—but they remain extremes. Her
"plumage" was a fashionable dress of pale blue
cloth, a big beplumed hat to match, a chiffon para-
sol like an azure cloud, at her throat a sapphire
pendant, about her neck and swinging far below
her waist a chain of sapphires.
"And the plumage just suits her," thought
Olivia. For it seemed to her that her cousin
had more than ever the quality she most admired
—the quality of individuality, of distinction.
Even in her way of looking clean and fresh she
was different, as if those prime feminine essen-
tials were in her not matters of frequent reac-


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 155
she, "but I didn't expect this. It's another proof
how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is. Every-
body advised him against coming here, but he
would come. And the town has grown, and at
the same time he's had a clear field to make a big
reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak
of the power he's got in politics."
"But wouldn't he have won no matter where
he was?" suggested Pauline.
"Sooner or later—but not so soon," replied
Olivia.
"No—a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among
a lot of bushes before it's noticed as it does in a
forest."
"And you've never seen him since Battle
Field?" As Olivia put this question she watched
her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.
"But," replied Pauline—and Olivia thought
that both her face and her tone were a shade off
the easy and the natural—"since he came I've
been living in New York and haven't stayed here
longer than a few days until this summer. And
he's been in Europe since April. No," she went
on, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's
been like a painting, finished and hanging on the


156 THE COST
wall one looks toward oftenest, and influencing
one's life every day."
They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and
girls they had known—how Thiebaud was dead
and Mollie Crittenden had married the man who
was governor of California; what Howe was not
doing, the novels Chamberlayne was writing; the
big women's college in Kansas that Grace Whar-
ton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson—in
the state senate and in a fair way to get to Con-
gress the next year. Then Scarborough again—
how he had distanced all the others; how he might
have the largest practice in the state if he would
take the sort of clients most lawyers courted assid-
uously; how strong he was in politics in spite of
the opposition of the professionals—strong be-
cause he had a genius for organization and also
had the ear and the confidence of the people and
the enthusiastic personal devotion of the young
men throughout the state. Olivia, more of a poli-
tician than Fred even, knew the whole story; and
Pauline listened appreciatively. Few indeed are
the homes in strenuously political Indiana where
politics is not the chief subject of conversation,
and Pauline had known about parties and cam-


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 157
paigns as early as she had known about dolls and
dresses.
"But you must have heard most of this," said
Olivia, "from people here in Saint X."
"Some of it—from father and mother," Pauline
answered. "They're the only people I've seen
really to talk to on my little visits. They know
him very well indeed. I think mother admires
him almost as much as you do. Here's our place,"
she added, the warmth fading from her face as
from a spring landscape when the shadow of the
dusk begins to creep over it.
They were in the grounds of the Eyrie:—the
elder Dumont was just completing it when he
died early in the previous spring. His widow
went abroad to live with her daughter and her
sister in Paris; so her son and his wife had taken
it. It was a great rambling stone house that hung
upon and in a lofty bluff. From its windows and
verandas and balconies could be seen the pano-
rama of Saint Christopher. To the left lay the
town, its ugly part—its factories and railway
yards—hidden by the jut of a hill. Beneath and be-
yond to the right, the shining river wound among
fields brown where the harvests had been gathered,
green and white where myriads of graceful


158 THE COST
tassels waved above acres on acres of Indian corn.
And the broad leaves sent up through the murmur
of the river a rhythmic rustling like a sigh of con-
tent. Once in a while a passing steamboat made
the sonorous cry of its whistle and the melodious
beat of its paddles echo from hill to hill. Between
the house and the hilltop highway lay several hun-
dred acres of lawn and garden and wood.
The rooms of the Eyrie and its well-screened
verandas were in a cool twilight, though the Sep-
tember sun was hot.
"They're all out, or asleep," said Pauline, as she
and Olivia entered the wide reception hall. "Let's
have tea on the east veranda. Its view isn't so
good, but we'll be cooler. You'd like to go to
your room first?"
Olivia said she was comfortable as she was and
needed the tea. So they went on through the
splendidly-furnished drawing-room and were go-
ing through the library when Olivia paused before
a portrait—"Your husband, isn't it?"
"Yes," replied Pauline, standing behind her
cousin. "We each had one done in Paris."
"What a masterful face!" said Olivia. "I've
never seen a better forehead." And she thought,
"



"YOUR HUSBAND, ISN'T IT?''


1


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 159
"He's of the same type as Scarborough, except—
what is it I dislike in his expression?"
"Do you notice a resemblance to any one you
know?" asked Pauline.
"Ye-e-s," replied Olivia, coloring. "I
think"
"Scarborough, isn't it?"
"Yes," admitted Olivia.
After a pause Pauline said ambiguously: "The
resemblance is stronger there than in life."
Olivia glanced at her and was made vaguely
uneasy by the look she was directing at the face
of the portrait. But though Pauline must have
seen that she was observed, she did not change
expression. They went out upon the east veranda
and Olivia stood at the railing. She hardly noted
the view in the press of thoughts roused by the
hints of what was behind the richly embroidered
curtain of her cousin's life.
All along the bluff, some exposed, some half
hid by dense foliage, were the pretentious houses
of the thirty or forty families who had grown rich
through the industries developed within the past
ten years. Two foreign-looking servants in for-
eign-looking house-liveries were bringing a table
on which was an enormous silver tray with a tea-


160 THE COST
service of antique silver and artistic china. As
Olivia turned to seat herself a young man and
a woman of perhaps forty, obviously from the
East, came through the doors at the far end of the
long porch. Both were in white, carefully dressed
and groomed; both suggested a mode of life whose
leisure had never been interrupted.
"Who are coming?" asked Olivia. She wished
she had gone to her room before tea. These people
made her feel dowdy and mussy.
Pauline glanced round, smiled and nodded,
turned back to her cousin.
"Mrs. Herron and Mr. Langdon. She's the
wife of a New York lawyer, and she takes Mr.
Langdon everywhere with her to amuse her, and
he goes to amuse himself. He's a socialist, or
something like that. He thinks up and says things
to shock conservative, conventional people. He's
rich and never has worked—couldn't if he would,
probably. But he denounces leisure classes and
large fortunes and advocates manual labor every
day for everybody. He's clever in a queer, cynical
way."
A Mrs. Fanshaw, also of New York, came from
the library in a tea-gown of chiffon and real lace.
All were made acquainted and Pauline poured the


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 161
tea. As Olivia felt shy and was hungry, she ate
the little sandwiches and looked and listened and
thought—looked and thought rather than listened.
These were certainly well-bred people, yet she did
not like them.
"They're in earnest about trifles," she said to
herself, "and trifle about earnest things." Yet
it irritated her to feel that, though they would
care not at all for her low opinion of them, she
did care a great deal because they would fail to
appreciate her.
"They ought to be jailed," Langdon was drawl-
ing with considerable emphasis.
"Who, Mr. Langdon?" inquired Mrs. Fanshaw
—she had been as abstracted as Olivia. "You've
been filling the jails rapidly to-day, and hanging
not a few."
Mrs. Herron laughed. "He says your husband
and Mrs. Dumont's and mine should be locked up
as conspirators."
"Precisely," said Langdon, tranquilly. "They'll
sign a few papers, and when they're done, what'll
have happened? Not one more sheep'll be raised.
Not one more pound of wool will be shorn. Not
one more laborer'll be employed. Not a single
improvement in any process of manufacture. But,


162 THE COST
on the other hand, the farmer'll have to sell his
wool cheaper, the consumer'll have to pay a big-
ger price for blankets and all kinds of clothes, for
carpets—for everything wool goes into. And
these few men will have trebled their fortunes
and at least trebled their incomes. Does any-
body deny that such a performance is a crime?
Why, in comparison, a burglar is honorable and
courageous. He risks liberty and life."
"Dreadful! Dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Fan-
shaw, in mock horror. "You must go at once,
Mowbray, and lead the police in a raid on Jack's
office."
"Thanks—it's more comfortable here." Lang-
don took a piece of a curious-looking kind of hot
bread. "Extraordinary good stuff this is," he
interjected; then went on: "And I've done my
duty when I've stated the facts. Also, I'm taking
a little stock in the new trust. But I don't pose
as a 'captain of industry' or 'promoter of civiliza-
tion.' I admit I'm a robber. My point is the
rotten hypocrisy of my fellow bandits—no, pick-
pockets, by gad!"
Olivia looked at him with disapproving interest.
It was the first time she had been present at a
game of battledore and shuttlecock with what she


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 163
regarded as fundamental morals. Langdon noted
her expression and said to Pauline in a tone of
contrition that did not conceal his amusement:
"I've shocked your cousin, Mrs. Dumont."
"I hope so," replied Pauline. "I'm sure we all
ought to be shocked—and should be, if it weren't
you who are trying to do the shocking. She'll
soon get used to you."
"Then it was a jest?" said Olivia to Langdon.
"A jest?" He looked serious. "Not at all, my
dear Mrs. Pierson. Every word I said was true,
and worse. They"
"Stop your nonsense, Mowbray," interrupted
Mrs. Herron, who appreciated that Olivia was an
"outsider." "Certainly he was jesting, Mrs. Pier-
son. Mr. Langdon pretends to have eccentric
ideas—one of them is that everybody with brains
should be put under the feet of the numskulls;
another is that anybody who has anything should
be locked up and his property given to those who
have nothing."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Langdon. And he took
out a gold cigarette case and lighted a large, ex-
pensive-looking cigarette with a match from a
gold safe. "Go on, dear lady! Herron should
get you to write our prospectus when we're ready


164 THE COST
to unload on the public. The dear public! How
it does yearn for a share in any piratical enterprise
that flies the snowy flag of respectability." He
rose. "Who'll play English billiards?"
"All right," said Mrs. Herron, rising.
"And I, too," said Mrs. Fanshaw.
"Give me one of your cigarettes, Mowbray,"
said Mrs. Herron. "I left my case in my room."
Pauline, answering Olivia's expression, said as
soon as the three had disappeared:
"Why not? Is it any worse for a woman than
for a man?"
"I don't know why not," replied Olivia. "There
must be another reason than because I don't do it,
and didn't think ladies did. But that's the only
reason I can give just now."
"What do you think of Langdon?" asked
Pauline.
"I guess my sense of humor's defective. I don't
like the sort of jest he seems to excel in."
"I fancy it wasn't altogether a jest," said
Pauline. "I don't inquire into those matters any
more. I used to, but—the more I saw, the worse
it was. Tricks and traps and squeezes and—oh,
business is all vulgar and low. It's necessary, I
suppose, but it's repulsive to me." She paused,
"


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 165
then added carelessly, yet with a certain deliber-
ateness, "I never meddle with Mr. Dumont, nor
he with me."
Olivia wished to protest against Pauline's view
of business. But—how could she without seem-
ing to attack, indeed, without attacking, her
cousin's husband?
Dumont brought Fanshaw up in his automobile,
Herron remaining at the offices for half an hour
to give the newspapers a carefully considered ac-
count of the much-discussed "merger" of the man-
ufacturers of low-grade woolens. Herron had
objected to any statement. "It's our private
business," he said. "Let them howl. The
fewer facts they have, the sooner they'll
stop howling." But Dumont held firm for
publicity. "There's no such thing as a private
business nowadays," he replied. "Besides, don't
we want the public to take part of our stock?
.What's the use of acting shady—you've avoided
the legal obstacles, haven't you? Let's tell the
public frankly all we want it to know, and it'll
think it knows all there is to know."
The whole party met in the drawing-room at
a quarter-past eight, Langdon the last to come
down—Olivia was uncertain whether or not she


166 THE COST
was unjust to him when she suspected design in
his late entrance, the handsomest and the best-
dressed man of the company.
He looked cynically at Dumont. "Well, fellow
pirate: how go our plans for a merry winter for
the poor?"
"Ass!" muttered Herron to Olivia, who hap-
pened to be nearest him. "He fancies impudence
is wit. He's devoid of moral sense or even of
decency. He's a traitor to his class and shouldn't
be tolerated in it."
Dumont was laughingly answering Langdon
in his own vein.
"Splendidly," he replied, "thanks to our worthy
chaplain, Herron, who secures us the blessing and
protection of the law."
"That gives me an appetite!" exclaimed Lang-
don. "I feared something might miscarry in these
last hours of our months of plotting. Heaven be
praised, the people won't have so much to waste
hereafter. I'm proud to be in one of the many
noble bands that are struggling to save them from
themselves."
But Dumont had turned away from him; so
he dropped into Mrs. Herron's discussion with
Mrs. Fanshaw on their proposed trip to the Medi-


AFTER EIGHT YEARS 167
terranean. Dinner was announced and he was put
between Mrs. Herron and Olivia, with Dumont on
her right. It was a round table and Olivia's eyes
lingered upon its details—the embroidered cloth
with real lace in the center, the graceful antique
silver candlesticks, the tall vases filled with enor-
mous roses—everything exquisitely simple and
tasteful.
Langdon talked with her until Mrs. Herron,
impatient at his neglect, caught his eye and com-
pelled his attention. Dumont, seeing that Olivia
was free, drew her into his conversation with
Mrs. Fanshaw; and then Mrs. Fanshaw began
to talk with Mr. Herron, who was eating furi-
ously because he had just overheard Langdon
say: "That was a great day for pirates when they
thought of taking aboard the lawyers as chap-
lains."
All the men were in high spirits; Dumont was
boyish in his exuberance. When he left home
that morning he was four times a millionaire; now
he was at least twelve times a millionaire, through
the magic of the "merger." True, eight of the
twelve millions were on paper; but it was paper
that would certainly pay dividends, paper that
would presently sell at or near its face value. And


168 THE COST
this success had come when he was only thirty-
four. His mind was already projecting greater
triumphs in this modern necromancy by which
millionaires evoke and materialize millions from
the empty air—apparently. He was bubbling
over with happiness—in the victory won, in vic-
tories to be won.
Olivia tried him on several subjects, but the
conversation dragged. Of Pauline he would not
talk; of Europe, he was interested only in the
comfort of hotels and railway trains, in the com-
parative merits of the cooking and the wines in
London and Paris. But his face—alert, shrewd,
aggressive—and his mode of expression made her
feel that he was uninteresting because he was
thinking of something which he did not care to
expose to her and could not take his mind from.
And this was the truth. It was not until she ad-
ventured upon his business that he became talk-
ative. And soon she had him telling her about
his "combine"—frankly, boastfully, his- face more
and more flushed, for as he talked he drank.
"But," he said presently, "this little matter to-
day is only a fair beginning. It seemed big until
it was about accomplished. Then I saw it was
pmly a suggestion for a scheme that'd be really


170 THE COST
"It'll take you years and years," she said to him,
because she must say something.
"Not at all." He waved his hand—Olivia
thought it looked as much like a claw as like a
hand. "It's a sky-scraper, but we build sky-
scrapers overnight. Time and space used to be
the big elements. We practically disregard them."
He followed this with a self-satisfied laugh and
an emptying of his champagne glass at a gulp.
The women were rising to withdraw. After
half an hour Langdon and Herron joined them.
Dumont and Fanshaw did not come until eleven
o'clock. Then Dumont was so abrupt and surly
that every one was grateful to Mrs. Fanshaw for
taking him away to the west veranda. At mid-
night all went to their rooms, Pauline going with
Olivia, "to make sure you haven't been neglected."
She lingered until after one, and when they
kissed each the other good night, she said: "It's
done me a world of good to see you, 'Livia—more
even than I hoped. I knew you'd be sympathetic
with me where you understood. Now, I feel that
you're sympathetic where you don't understand,
too. And it's there that one really needs sym-
pathy."
"That's what friendship means—and—love,"
said Olivia.


XIII.
"MY SISTER-IN-LAW, GLADYS."
The following afternoon Dumont took the Her-
rons, the Fanshaws and Langdon back to New
York in his private car, and for three days Olivia
and Pauline had the Eyrie to themselves. Olivia
was about to write to Scarborough, asking him to
call, when she saw in the News-Bulletin that he
had gone to Denver to speak. A week after she
left, Dumont returned, bringing his sister Gladys,
just arrived from Europe, and Langdon. He
stayed four days, took Langdon away with him
and left Gladys.
Thus it came about that Scarborough, riding
into Colonel Gardiner's grounds one hot after-
noon in mid September, saw a phaeton-victoria
with two women in it coming toward him on its
way out. He drew his horse aside to make room.
He was conscious that there were two women;
he saw only one—she who was all in white except
the scarlet poppies against the brim of her big
white hat.
171


172 THE COST
As he bowed the carriage stopped and Pauline
said cordially: "Why, how d'ye do?"
He drew his horse close to the carriage and they
shook hands. She introduced the other woman
,—"My sister-in-law, Gladys Dumont"—then went
on: "We've been lunching and spending the
afternoon with father and mother. They told us
you returned this morning."
"I supposed you were in the East," said Scar-
borough—the first words he had spoken.
"Oh—I'm living here now—Gladys and I.
Father says you never go anywhere, but I hope
you'll make an exception for us."
"Thank you—I'll be glad to call."
"Why not dine with us—day after to-morrow
night?"
"I'd like that—certainly, I'll come."
"We dine at half-past eight—at least we're sup-
posed to."
Scarborough lifted his hat.
The carriage drove on.
"Why, he's not a bit as I expected," Gladys
began at once. "He's much younger. Isn't he
handsome! That's the way a man ought to look.
He's not married?"
"No," replied Pauline.


"MY SISTER-IN-LAW, GLADYS" 173
"Why did you look so queer when you first
caught sight of him?"
"Did I?" Pauline replied tranquilly. "Probably
it was because he very suddenly and vividly
brought Battle Field back to me—that was the
happiest time of my life. But I was too young
or too foolish, or both, to know it till long after-
ward. At seventeen one takes happiness for
granted."
"Did he look then as he does now?"
"No—and yes," said Pauline. "He was just
from the farm and dressed badly and was awk-
ward at times. But—really he was the same per-
son. I guess it was the little change in him that
startled me." And she became absorbed in her
thoughts.
"I hope you'll send him in to dinner with me,"
said Gladys, presently.
"What did you say?" asked Pauline, absently.
"I was talking of Mr. Scarborough. I asked if
you wouldn't send him in to dinner with me—un-
less you want to discuss old times with him."
"Yes—certainly—if you wish."
And Pauline gave Scarborough to Gladys and
did her duty as hostess by taking in the dullest
man in the party—Newnham. While Newnham


1WS THE COST
droned and prosed, she watched Gladys lay herself
out to please the distinguished Mr. Scarborough,
successful as a lawyer, famous as an orator, de-
ferred to because of his influence with the rank
and file of his party in the middle West.
Gladys had blue-black hair which she wore
pulled out into a sort of halo about her small, deli-
cate face. There were points of light in her dark
irises, giving them the look of black quartz in the
sunshine. She was not tall, but her figure was
perfect, and she had her dresses fitted immedi-
ately to it. Her appeal was frankly to the senses,
the edge taken from its audacity by its artistic
effectiveness and by her ingenuous, almost inno-
cent, expression.
Seeing Pauline looking at her, she tilted her
head to a graceful angle and sent a radiant glance
between two blossom-laden branches of the green
and white bush that towered and spread in the
center of the table. "Mr. Scarborough says,"
she called out, "character isn't a development, it's
a disclosure. He thinks one is born a certain kind
of person and that one's life simply either gives
it a chance to show or fails to give it a chance.
He says the boy isn't father to the man, but the


"MY SISTER-IN-LAW, GLADYS" 175
miniature of the man. What do you think,
Pauline?"
"I haven't thought of it," replied Pauline. "But
I'm certain it's true. I used to dispute Mr. Scar-
borough's ideas sometimes, but I learned better."
As she realized the implications of her careless
remark, their eyes met squarely for the first time
since Battle Field. Both hastily glanced away,
and neither looked at the other again. When the
men came up to the drawing-room to join the
women, Gladys adroitly intercepted him. When
he went to Pauline to take leave, their manner
each toward the other was formal, strained and
even distant.
Dumont came again just after the November
election. It had been an unexpected victory for
the party which Scarborough advocated, and
everywhere the talk was that he had been the chief
factor—his skill in defining issues, his eloquence
in presenting them, the public confidence in his
party through the dominance of a man so obvi-
ously free from self-seeking or political trickery
of any kind. Dumont, to whom control in both
party machines and in the state government was
a business necessity, told his political agent, Mer-


176 THE COST
riweather, that they had "let Scarborough go
about far enough," unless he could be brought
into their camp.
"I can't make out what he's looking for," said
Merriweather. "One thing's certain—he'll do us
no good. There's no way we can get our hooks
in him. He don't give a damn for money. And
as for power—he can get more of that by fighting
us than by falling in line. We ain't exactly popu-
lar."
This seemed to Dumont rank ingratitude. Had
he not just divided a million dollars among chari-
ties and educational institutions in the districts
where opposition to his "merger" was strongest?
"Well, we'll see," he said. "If he isn't careful
we'll have to kill him off in convention and make
the committees stop his mouth."
"The trouble is he's been building up a follow-
ing of his own—the sort of following that can't
be honeyfugled," replied Merriweather. "The
committees are afraid of him." Merriweather
always took the gloomy view of everything, be-
cause he thus discounted his failures in advance
and doubled the effect of his successes.
"I'll see—I'll see," said Dumont, impatiently.
And he thought he was beginning to "see" when
X


"MY SISTER-IN-LAW, GLADYS" 177
Gladys expanded to him upon the subject of
Scarborough—his good looks, his wit, his "dis-
tinction." •
Scarborough came to dinner a few evenings
later and Dumont was particularly cordial to him;
and Gladys made the most of the opportunity
which Pauline again gave her. That night, when
the others had left or had gone to bed, Gladys fol-
lowed her brother into the smoke-room adjoin-
ing the library. They sat in silence drinking a
"night-cap." In the dreaminess of her eyes, in
the absent smile drifting round the corners of her
full red lips, Gladys showed that her thoughts
were pleasant and sentimental.
"What do you think of Scarborough?" her
brother asked suddenly.
She started but did not flush—in her long
European experience she had gained control of
that signal of surprise. "How do you mean?"
she asked. She rarely answered a question im-
mediately, no matter how simple it was, but
usually put another question in reply. Thus she
insured herself time to think if time should be
necessary.
"I mean, do you like him?"


178 THE COST
"Why, certainly. But I've seen him only a few
times."
"He's* an uncommon man," continued her
brother. "He'd make a mighty satisfactory hus-
band for an ambitious woman, especially one
with the money to push him fast."
Gladys slowly lifted and slowly lowered her
smooth, slender shoulders.
"That sort of thing doesn't interest a woman
in a man, unless she's married to him and has
got over thinking more about him than about
herself."
"It ought to," replied her brother. "A clever
woman can always slosh round in sentimental
slop with her head above it and cool. If I were
a girl I'd make a dead set for that chap."
"If you were a girl," said Gladys, "you'd do
nothing of the sort. You'd compel him to make
a dead set for you." And as she put down her
glass she gave his hair an affectionate pull—which
was her way of thanking him for saying what
she most wished to hear on the subject she most
wished to hear about


XIV.
STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS.
Gladys was now twenty-four and was even
more anxious to marry than is the average un-
married person. She had been eleven years a
wanderer; she was tired of it. She had no
home; and she wanted a home.
Her aunt—her mother's widowed sister—had
taken her abroad when she was thirteen. John
was able to defy or to deceive their mother. But
she could and did enforce upon Gladys the rigid
rules which her fanatical nature had evolved—a
minute and crushing tyranny. Therefore Gladys
preferred any place to her home. For ten years
she had been roaming western Europe, nominally
watched by her lazy, selfish, and physically and
mentally near-sighted aunt. Actually her only
guardian had been her own precocious, curiously
prudent, curiously reckless self. She had been
free to do as she pleased; and she had pleased to
do very free indeed. She had learned all that
her intense and catholic curiosity craved to know,
had learned it of masters of her own selecting—
179


180 THE COST
the men and women who would naturally attract
a lively young person, eager to rejoice in an escape
from slavery. Her eyes had peered far into the
human heart, farthest into the corrupted human
heart; yet, with her innocence she had not lost
her honesty or her preference for the things she
had been brought up to think clean.
But she had at last wearied of a novelty which
lay only in changes of scene and of names, with-
out any important change in characters or plot.
She began to be bored with the game of baffling
the hopes inspired by her beauty and encouraged
by her seeming simplicity. And when her
mother came—as she said to Pauline, "The only
bearable view of mother is a distant view. I
had forgot there were such people left on earth—
I had thought they'd all gone to their own kind
of heaven." So she fled to America, to her
brother and his wife.
Dumont stayed eight days at the Eyrie on that
trip, then went back to his congenial life in New
York—to his business and his dissipation. He
tempered his indulgence in both nowadays with
some exercise—his stomach, his heart, his nerves
and his doctor had together given him a bad


STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS 181
fright. The evening before he left he saw Pauline
and Gladys sitting apart and joined them.
"Why not invite Scarborough to spend a week
up here?" he asked, just glancing at his wife.
He never ventured to look at her when there was
any danger of their eyes meeting.
Her lips tightened and the color swiftly left
her cheeks and swiftly returned.
"Wouldn't you like it, Gladys?" he went on.
"Oh, do ask him, Pauline," said Gladys, with
enthusiasm. Like her brother, she always went
straight to the point—she was in the habit of
deciding for herself, of thinking what she did was
above criticism, and of not especially caring if it
was criticised. "Please do!"
Pauline waited long—it seemed to her long
enough for time to wrinkle her heart—before
answering: "We'll need another man. I'll ask
him—if you wish."
Gladys pressed her hand gratefully—she was
fond of Pauline, and Pauline was liking her again
as she had when they were children and play-
mates and partners in the woes of John Dumont's
raids upon their games. Just then Langdon's
sister, Mrs. Barrow, called Gladys to the other end


182 THE COST
of the drawing-room. Dumont's glance followed
her.
"I think it'd be a good match," he said reflect-
ively.
Pauline's heart missed a beat and a suffocating
choke contracted her throat.
"What?" she succeeded in saying.
"Gladys and Scarborough," replied Dumont.
"She ought to marry—she's got no place to go.
And it'd be good business for her—and for him,
too, for that matter, if she could land him. Don't
you think she's attractive to men?"
"Very," said Pauline, lifelessly.
"Don't you think it would be a good match?"
he went on.
"Very," she said, looking round wildly, as her
breath came more and more quickly.
Langdon strolled up.
"Am I interrupting a family council?" he asked.
"Oh, no," Dumont replied, rising. "Take my
chair." And he was gone.
"This room is too warm," said Pauline. "No,
don't open the window. Excuse me a moment."
She went into the hall, threw a golf cape round
her shoulders and stepped out on the veranda,
closing the door-window behind her. It was a


STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS 183
moonless, winter night—stars thronging the blue-
black sky; the steady lamp of a planet set in the
southern horizon.
When she had been walking there for a quarter
of an hour the door-window opened and Langdon
looked out. "Oh—there you are!" he said.
"Won't you join me?" Her tone assured him
that he would not be intruding. He got a hat
and overcoat and they walked up and down to-
gether.
"Those stars irritate me," he said after a while.
"They make me appreciate that this world's a
tiny grain of sand adrift in infinity, and that I'm
there's nothing little enough to express
the human atom where the earth's only a grain.
And then they go on to taunt me with how short-
lived I am and how it'll soon be all over for me—
for ever. A futile little insect, buzzing about,
waiting to be crushed under the heel of the Great
Executioner."
"Sometimes I feel that," answered Pauline.
"But again—often, as a child—and since,
when everything has looked dark and ugly for
me, I've gone where I could see them. And they
seemed to draw all the fever and the fear out of
r


184 THE COST
me, and to put there instead a sort of—not hap-
piness, not even content, but—courage."
They were near the rail now, she gazing into
the southern sky, he studying her face. It
seemed to him that he had not seen any one so
beautiful. She was all in black with a diamond
star glittering in her hair high above her fore-
head. She looked like a splendid plume dropped
from the starry wing of night.
"The stars make you feel that way," he said,
in the light tone that disguises a compliment
as a bit of raillery, "because you're of their
family. And I feel as I do because I'm a
blood-relation of the earthworms."
Her face changed. "Oh, but so am I!" she
exclaimed, with a passion he had never seen or
suspected in her before. She drew a long breath,
closed her eyes and opened them very wide.
"You don't know, you can't imagine, how I long
to live! And / know what 'to live' means."
"Then why don't you?" he asked—he liked to
catch people in their confidential moods and to
peer into the hidden places in their hearts, not
impudently but with a sort of scientific curiosity.
"Because I'm a daughter—that's anchor num-
ber one. Because I'm a mother—that's anchor


STRAINING AT THE ANCHORS 185
number two. Because I'm a wife—that's anchor
number three. And anchor number four—be-
cause I'm under the spell of inherited instincts
that rule me though I don't in the least believe
in them. Tied, hands and feet!"
"Inherited instinct." He shook his head sadly.
"That's the skeleton at life's banquet. It takes
away my appetite."
She laughed without mirth, then sighed with
some self-mockery. "It frightens me away from
the table."


XV.
GRADUATED PEARLS.
But Scarborough declined her invitation. How-
ever, he did come to dinner ten days later; and
Gladys, who had no lack of confidence in her
power to charm when and whom she chose, was
elated by his friendliness then and when she met
him at other houses.
"He's not a bit sentimental," she told Pauline,
whose silence whenever she tried to discuss him
did not discourage her. "But if he ever does care
for a woman he'll care in the same tremendous
way that he sweeps things before him in his
career. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," said Pauline.
She had now lingered at Saint X two months
beyond the time she originally set. She told her-
self she had reached the limit of endurance, that
she must fly from the spectacle of Gladys' grow-
ing intimacy with Scarborough; she told Gladys
it was impossible for her longer to neglect the
new house in Fifth Avenue. With an effort she
,\
186


GRADUATED PEARLS 187
added: "You'd rather stay on here, wouldn't
you?"
"I detest New York," replied Gladys. "And
I've never enjoyed myself in my whole life as
I'm enjoying it here."
So she went East alone, went direct to Dawn
Hill, their country place at Manhasset, Long
Island, which Dumont never visited. She invited
Leonora Fanshaw down to stand between her
thoughts and herself. Only the society of a
human being, one who was light-hearted and
amusing, could tide her back to any sort of
peace in the old life—her books and her dogs,
her horseback and her drawing and her
gardening. A life so full of events, so empty of
event. It left her hardly time for proper sleep,
yet it had not a single one of those vivid threads
of intense and continuous interest—and one of
them is enough to make bright the dullest pattern
that issues from the Loom.
In her "splendor" her nearest approach to an
intimacy had been with Leonora.
She had no illusions about the company she
was keeping in the East. To her these "friends"
seemed in no proper sense either her friends or
one another's. Drawn together from all parts of


188 THE COST
America, indeed of the world, by the magnetism
of millions, they had known one another not at
all or only slightly in the period of life when
thorough friendships are made; even where they
had been associates as children, the association
had rarely been of the kind that creates friend-
ship's democratic intimacy. They had no com-
mon traditions, no real class-feeling, no common
enthusiasms—unless the passion for keeping rich,
for getting richer, for enjoying and displaying
riches, could be called enthusiasm. They were
mere intimate acquaintances, making small pre-
tense of friendship, having small conception of
it or desire for it beyond that surface politeness
which enables people whose selfish interests lie in
the same direction to get on comfortably together.
She divided them into two classes. There were
those who, like herself, kept up great establish-
ments and entertained lavishly and engaged in
the courteous but fierce rivalry of fashionable
ostentation. Then there were those who hung
about the courts of the rich, invited because they
filled in the large backgrounds and contributed
conversation or ideas for new amusements, ac-
cepting because they loved the atmosphere of


GRADUATED PEARLS 189
luxury which they could not afford to create for
themselves.
Leonora was undeniably in the latter class.
But she was associated in Pauline's mind with
the period before her splendor. She had been
friendly when Dumont was unknown beyond
Saint X. The others sought her—well, for the
same reasons of desire for distraction and dread
of boredom which made her welcome them. But
Leonora, she more than half believed, liked her
to a certain extent for herself—"likes me better
than I like her." And at times she was self-
reproachful for being thus exceeded in self-giving.
Leonora, for example, told her her most intimate
secrets, some of them far from creditable to her.
Pauline told nothing in return. She sometimes
longed for a confidant, or, rather, for some person
who would understand without being told, some
one like Olivia; but her imagination refused to
picture Leonora as that kind of friend. Even
more pronounced than her frankness, and she was
frank to her own hurt, was her biting cynicism—
it was undeniably amusing; it did not exactly
inspire distrust, but it put Pauline vaguely on
guard. Also, she was candidly mercenary, and,
in some moods, rapaciously envious. "But no


190 THE COST
worse," thought Pauline, "than so many of the
others here, once one gets below their surface.
Besides, it's in a good-natured, good-hearted
way."
She wished Fanshaw were as rich as Leonora
longed for him to be. She was glad Dumont
seemed to be putting him in the way of making
a fortune. He was distasteful to her, because
she saw that he was an ill-tempered sycophant
under a pretense of manliness thick enough to
shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world
of men and women greedy of flattery and busy
each with himself or herself. But for Leonora's
sake she invited him. And Leonora was appre-
ciative, was witty, never monotonous or common-
place, most helpful in getting up entertainments,
and good to look at—always beautifully dressed
and as fresh as if just from a bath; sparkling
green eyes, usually with good-humored mockery
in them; hard, smooth, glistening shoulders and
arms; lips a crimson line, at once cold and
sensuous.
On a Friday in December Pauline came up
from Dawn Hill and, after two hours at the new
house, went to the jeweler's to buy a wedding
present for Aurora Galloway. As she was pass-



/ v
GOOD TO LOOK AT, AND AS FRESH AS IF JUST FROM A BATH





192 THE COST
the superintendent. I beg you, Mrs. Dumont,
don't tell him I showed it to you. I've made
some sort of a mistake. You'll ruin me if you
speak of it to any one. I never thought it might
be intended as a surprise to you. Indeed, I
wasn't supposed to know anything about it.
Maybe I was mistaken"
His look and voice were so pitiful that Pauline
replied reassuringly: "I, understand—I'll say
nothing. Please show me those," and she pointed
to a tray of unset rubies in the show-case.
And when the superintendent, bowing obse-
quiously, came up himself to take charge of this
important customer, she was deep in the rubies
which the assistant was showing her with hands
that shook and fingers that blundered.
She did not permit her feelings to appear until
she was in her carriage again and secure from
observation. The clerk's theory she could not
entertain for an instant, contradicted as it was
by the facts of eight years. She knew she had
surprised Dumont. She had learned nothing
new; but it forced her to stare straight into the
face of that which she had been ignoring, that
which she must continue to ignore if she was to
meet the ever heavier and crueler exactions of


GRADUATED PEARLS 193
the debt she had incurred when she betrayed her
father and mother and herself. At a time when
her mind was filled with bitter contrasts between
what was and what might have been, it brought
bluntly to her the precise kind of life she was
leading, the precise kind of surroundings she was
tolerating.
"Whom can he be giving such a gift?" she
wondered. And she had an impulse to confide
in Leonora to the extent of encouraging her to
hint who it was. "She would certainly know.
No doubt everybody knows, except me."
She called for her, as she had promised, and
took her to lunch at Sherry's. But the impulse
to confide died as Leonora talked—of money, of
ways of spending money; of people who had
money, and those who hadn't money; of people
who were spending too much money, of those who
weren't spending enough money; of what she
would do if she had money, of what many did to
get money. Money, money, money—it was all
of the web and most of the woof of her talk.
Now it ran boldly on the surface of the pattern;
now it was half hid under something about art
or books or plays or schemes for patronizing the


194 THE COST
poor and undermining, their self-respect—but it
was always there.
For the first time Leonora jarred upon her
fiercely—unendurably. She listened until the
sound grew indistinct, became mingled with the
chatter of that money-flaunting throng. And
presently the chatter seemed to her to be a mad-
dening repetition of one word, money—the central
idea in all the thought and all the action of these
people. "I must get away," she thought, "or I
shall cry out." And she left abruptly, alleging
that she must hurry to catch her train.
Money-mad! her thoughts ran on. The only
test of honor—money, and ability and willingness
to spend it. They must have money or they're
nobodies. And if they have money, who cares
where it came from? No one asks where the
men get it—why should any one ask where the
women get it?


XVI.
CHOICE AMONG EVILS.
A few days afterward—it was a Wednesday—
Pauline came up to town early in the afternoon,
as she had an appointment with the dressmaker
and was going to the opera in the evening. At
the dressmaker's, while she waited for a fitter to
return from the workroom, she glanced at a news-
paper spread upon the table so that its entire front
page was in view. It was filled with an account
of how the Woolens Monopoly had, in that bitter
winter, advanced prices twenty to thirty-five per
cent. all along the line. From the center of the
page stared a picture of John Dumont—its ex-
pression peculiarly arrogant and sinister.
She read the head-lines only, then turned from
the table. But on the drive up-town she stopped
the carriage at the Savoy and sent the footman
to the news-stand to get the paper. She read the
article through—parts of it several times.
She had Langdon and Honoria Longview at
dinner that night; by indirect questioning she
drew him on to confirm the article, to describe
195


196 THE COST
how the Woolens Monopoly was "giving the
country an old-fashioned winter." On the way
to the opera she was ashamed of her ermine wrap
enfolding her from the slightest sense of the icy
air. She did not hear the singers, was hardly
conscious of her surroundings. As they left the
Metropolitan she threw back her wrap and sat
with her neck bared to the intense cold.
"I say, don't do that!" protested Langdon.
She reluctantly drew the fur about her. But
when she had dropped him and then Honoria and
was driving on up the avenue alone, she bared
her shoulders and arms again—"like a silly child,"
she said. But it gave her a certain satisfaction, for
she felt like one who has a secret store of food in
time of famine and feasts upon it. And she sat
unprotected.
"Is Mr. Dumont in?" she asked the butler as
he closed the door of their palace behind her.
"I think he is, ma'am."
"Please tell him I'd like to see him—in the
library."
She had to wait only three or four minutes
before he came—in smoking jacket and slippers.
It was long since she had looked at him so care-
fully as she did then; and she noted how much


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 197
grosser he was, the puffs under his eyes, the lines
of cruelty that were corning out strongly with
autocratic power and the custom of receiving
meek obedience. And her heart sank. "Use-
less," she said to herself. "Utterly useless!"
And the incident of the necklace and its reminders
of all she had suffered from him and through him
came trooping into her mind; and it seemed to
her that she could not speak, could not even re-
main in the room with him.
He dropped into a chair before the open fire.
"Horribly cold, isn't it?"
She moved uneasily. . He slowly lighted a cigar
and began to smoke it, his attitude one of waiting.
"I've been thinking," she began at last—she was
looking reflectively into the fire—"about your
great talent for business and finance. You
'formed your big combination, and because you
understand everything about wool you employ
more men, you pay higher wages, and you make
the goods better than ever, and at less cost."
"Between a third and a half cheaper," he said.
"We employ thirty thousand more men, and since
we settled the last strike"—a grim smile that
would have meant a great deal to her had she
known the history of that strike and how hard


198 THE COST,
he had fought before he gave in—"we've paid
thirty per cent. higher wages. Yet the profits are
—well, you can imagine."
"And you've made millions for yourself and
for those in with you."
"I haven't developed my ideas for nothing."
She paused again. It was several minutes be-
fore she went on:
"When a doctor or a man of science or a phil-
osopher makes a discovery that'll be a benefit to
the world"—she looked at him suddenly, earnest,
appealing—"he gives it freely. And he gets
honor and fame. Why shouldn't you do that,
John?" She had forgotten herself in her subject.
He smiled into the fire:—hardly a day passed
that he did not have presented to him some scheme
for relieving him of the burden of his riches;
here was another, and from such an unexpected
quarter!
"You could be rich, too. We spend twenty,
fifty times as much as we can possibly enjoy;
and you have more than we could possibly spend.
Why shouldn't a man with financial genius be
like men with other kinds of genius? Why
should he be the only one to stay down on the


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 199
level with dull, money-grubbing, sordid kinds of
people? Why shouldn't he have ideals?"
He made no reply. Indeed, so earnest was she
that she did not give him time, but immediately
went on:
"Just think, JohnT Instead of giving out in
these charities and philanthropies—I never did
believe in them—they're bound to be more or less
degrading to the people that take, and when it's
so hard to help a friend with money without
harming him, how much harder it must be to
help strangers. Instead of those things, why not
be really great? Just think, John, how the world
would honor you and how you would feel, if you
used your genius to make the necessaries cheap
for all these fellow-beings of ours who have such
a hard time getting on. That would be real
superiority—and our life now is so vain, so
empty. It's brutal, John."
"What do you propose?" he asked, curious as
always when a new idea was presented to him.
And this was certainly new—apparently, philan-
thropy without expense.
"You are master. You can do as you please.
Why not put your great combine on such a basis
that it would bring an honest, just return to you


200 THE COST
and the others, and would pay the highest pos-
sible wages, and would give the people the benefit
of what your genius for manufacturing and for
finance has made possible? I think we who are
so comfortable and never have to think of the
necessaries of life forget how much a few cents
here and there mean to most people. And the
things you control mean all the difference be-
tween warmth and cold, between life and death,
John!"
As she talked he settled back into his chair,
and his face hardened into its unyielding expres-
sion. A preposterous project! Just like a good,
sentimental woman. Not philanthropy without
expense, but philanthropy at the expense both of
his fortune and of his position as a master. To
use his brain and his life for those ungrateful
people who derided his benefactions as either
contributions to "the conscience fund" or as in-
direct attempts at public bribery! He could not
conceal his impatience—though he did not venture
to put it into words.
"If we—if you and I, John," she hurried on,
leaning toward him in her earnestness, "had some-
thing like that to live for, it might come to be
very different with us—and—I'm thinking of
>


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 201
Gardiner most of all. This'll ruin him some day.
No one, no one, can lead this kind of life without
being dragged down, without becoming selfish
and sordid and cruel."
"You don't understand," he said curtly, with-
out looking at her. "I never heard of such—
such sentimentalism."
She winced and was silent, sat watching his
bold, strong profile. Presently she said in a
changed, strange, strained voice: "What I asked
to see you for was—John, won't you put the
prices—at least where they were at the beginning
of this dreadful winter?"
"Oh—I see!" he exclaimed. "You've been
listening to the lies about me."
"Reading," she said, her eyes flashing at the
insult in the accusation that she had let people
attack him to her.
"Well, reading then," he went on, wondering
what he had said that angered her. And he made
an elaborate explanation—about "the necessity of
meeting fixed charges" which he himself had
fixed, about "fair share of prosperity," "every-
thing more expensive," "the country better able
to pay," "every one doing as we are," and so on.
She listened closely; she had not come ignorant


THE COST

',
*
1 -
'


fa-ht before he gave in-"we've paid
, r«nt higher wages. Yet the profits are
'30a can imagine."
v ,,-ve nude millions for yourself and
. in with you." . „
',-t developed my ideas for nothing.
e paused again. It was several minutes 1*-
A»*ewenton:
^T«n. doctor or. man of same or^.
-"he gives it treeiy.
dfome. Why shouldn't]
She had forgotten herself i
,he fire-hardly
-ented to him s
burden of
i such an i

We
.w

n*


CHOICE AMONG EV
201
level with dull, money-grubbin?
people? Why shouldn't he be
He made no reply. Indeed
that she did not give him tr
went on:
"Just think, Johnf Ins«
these charities and philar
believe in them—they're V
degrading to the people
so hard to help a frfc
harming him, hovjj
help strangers,
be really great?
would honor youi
used your genius
for all these fellow-
a hard time gettir
-iority—and «
It's brute
1o you
him some day.
of life without
xoming selfish
id curtly, with-
^eard of such—
I
:at watching his
fr she said in a
ji "What I asked
n't you put the
at the beginning
You've been
at the
let people




THE COST
of the subject, and she penetrated his sophistries.
When he saw her expression, saw he had failed
to convince her, into his eyes came the look she
understood well—the look that told her she would
only infuriate him and bruise herself by flinging
herself against the iron of his resolve.
"You must let me attend to my own business,"
he ended, his tone good-natured, his eyes hard.
She sat staring into the fire for several minutes
—from her eyes looked a will as strong as his.
Then she rose and, her voice lower than before
but vibrating, said: "All round us—here in New
York—all over this country—away off in Europe
—I can see them—I can feel them—suffering!
As you yourself said, it's horribly cold!" She
drew herself up and faced him, a light in her eyes
before which he visibly shrank. "Yes, it's your
business. But it shan't be mine or my boy's!"
And she left the room. In the morning she
returned to Dawn Hill and arranged her affairs
so that she would be free to go. Not since the
spring day, nearly nine years before, when she
began that Vergil lesson which ended in a lesson
in the pitilessness of consequences that was not
yet finished, had her heart been so light, so hope-
ful. In vain she reminded herself that the doing


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 203
of this larger duty, so imperative, nevertheless
endangered her father and mother. "They will
be proud that I'm doing it," she assured herself.
"For Gardiner's sake, as well as for mine, they'll
be glad I separated him and myself from this
debased life. They will—they must, since it is
right!" And already she felt the easing of the
bonds that had never failed to cut deeper into the
living flesh whenever she had ventured to hope
that she was at last growing used to them.
"Free!" she said to herself exultantly. She
dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to
herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which
the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep
down in her, as the first warmth makes the life
toss in its slumber in the planted seed.
On Friday she came up to New York late in
the afternoon, and in the evening went to the
opera—for a last look round. As the lights were
lowering for the rise of the curtain on the second
act, Leonora and her husband entered the box.
She had forgotten inviting them. She gave Leo-
nora the chair in front and took the one behind—
Millicent Rowland, whom she herself brought,
had the other front seat. As her chair was mid-
way between the two, she was seeing across


204 THE COST
Leonora's shoulders. Presently Dumont came in
and took the chair behind Leonora's and leaned
forward, his chin almost touching the slope of
her neck as he talked to her in an undertone, she
greatly amused or pretending to be.
The light from the stage fell across Leonora's
bosom, fell upon a magnificent string of gradu-
ated pearls clasped with a huge solitaire—beyond
question the string the jeweler's clerk had blun-
deringly shown her. And there was Dumont's
heavy, coarse profile outlined against Leonora's
cheek and throat, her cynical, sensuous profile
showing just beyond.
Open sprang a hundred doors of memory; into
Pauline's mind was discharged avalanche after
avalanche of dreadful thoughts. "No! No!" she
protested. "How infamous to think such things
of my best friend!" But she tried in vain to
thrust suspicions, accusations, proofs, back into
the closets. Instead, she sank under the flood of
them—sick and certain.
When the lights went up she said: "I'm feel-
ing badly all at once. I'm afraid I'll have to take
you home, Milly."
"Are you ill, dear?" asked Leonora.
"Oh, no—just faint," she replied, in a voice


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 205
which she succeeded in making fairly natural.
"Please don't move. Stay on—you really must."
The other man—Shenstone—helped her and
Millicent with their wraps and accompanied them
to their carriage. When she had set Millicent
down she drew a long breath of relief. For the
first time in seven years her course lay straight
before her. "I must be free!" she said. "I must
be entirely free—free before the whole world—
I and my boy."
The next morning, in the midst of her prepara-
tions to take the ten-o'clock limited for the West,
her maid brought a note to her—a copy of a
National Woolens Company circular to the trade,
setting forth that "owing to a gratifying easing
in the prices for raw wool, the Company are able
to announce and take great pleasure in announc-
ing a ten per cent. reduction." On the margin
Dumont had scrawled "To go out to-morrow and
to be followed in ten days by fifteen per cent. more.
Couldn't resist your appeal." Thus by the sheer
luck that had so often supplemented his skill and
mitigated his mistakes, he had yielded to her plea
just in time to confuse the issue between her and
him.


206 THE COST
She read the circular and the scrawl with a
sinking heart. "Nevertheless, I shall go!" she
tried to protest. "True, he won't send out this
circular if I do. But what does it matter, one
infamy more or less in him? Besides, he will
accomplish his purpose in some other way of
which I shall not. know." But this was only the
beginning of the battle. Punishment on punish-
ment for an act which seemed right at the time
had made ber morbid, distrustful of herself. And
she could not conquer the dread lest her longing
to be free was blinding her, was luring her on to
fresh calamities, involving all whom she cared
for, all who cared for her. Whichever way she
looked she could see only a choice between wrongs.
To stay under the same roof with him or at
Dawn Hill—self-respect put that out of the ques-
tion. To free herself—how could she, when it
meant sacrificing her parents and also the thou-
sands shivering under the extortions of his
monopoly?
In the end she chose the course that seemed to
combine the least evil with the most good. She
would go to the Eyrie, and the world and her
father and mother would think she was absenting
herself from her husband to attend to the bring-


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 207
ing up of her boy. She would see even less of
Scarborough than she saw when she was last at
Saint X.
That afternoon she wrote to Dumont:
Since we had our talk I have found out
about Leonora. It is impossible for me to
stay here. I shall go West to-morrow. But
I shall not go to my father's; because of
your circular I shall go to the Eyrie, instead
—at least for the present.
Pauline Dumont.
Two weeks after she was again settled at the
Eyrie, Langdon appeared in Saint X, alleging
business at the National Woolens' factories there.
He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and
devoted himself to Gladys, who took up her
flirtation with him precisely where she had
dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-
mournful good-by five months before. They were
so realistic that Pauline came to the satisfying con-
clusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest
with Langdon or not in earnest with anybody.
If she had not been avoiding Scarborough, she
would probably have seen Gladys' real game—
to use Langdon as a stalking horse for him.


CHOICE AMONG EVILS 209
other night? 'If a stone, on its way from the
sling through the air, could speak, it would say,
"How free I am!"' Is that the way you feel?"
There came into Pauline's eyes a look of pain
so intense that he glanced away.
"We choose a path blindfold," she said, her
tone as light as her look was dark, "and we must
go where it goes—there's no other ever after-
ward."
"But if it leads down?"
"All the paths lead up," she replied with a sad
smile. "It's the precipices that lead down."
Gladys joined them and Langdon said to her:
"Well, good-by, Miss Dumont—don't get mar-
ried till you see me." He patted the boy on
the shoulder. "Good-by, Gardiner—remember,
we men must always be brave, and gentle with
the ladies. Good-by, Mrs. Dumont—keep away
from the precipices. And if you should want to
come back to us you'll have no trouble in finding
us. We're a lot of slow old rotters, and we'll
be just where you left us—yawning, and shying
at new people and at all new ideas except about
clothes, and gossiping about each other." And
he was in the auto and off for the station.


XVII
TWO AND THE BARRIER.
Scarborough often rode with Gladys and
Pauline, sometimes with Gladys alone. One
afternoon in August he came expecting to go
out with both. But Gladys was not well that
day. She had examined her pale face and deeply
circled eyes in her glass; she had counseled with
her maid—a discreetly and soothingly frank
French woman. Too late to telephone him, she
had overruled her longing to see him and had
decided that at what she hoped was his "critical
stage" it would be wiser not to show herself to
him thus—even in her most becoming tea-gown,
which compelled the eyes of the beholder to a
fascinating game of hide and seek with her neck
and arms and the lines of her figure.
"And Mrs. Dumont?" inquired Scarborough
of the servant who brought Gladys' message
and note.
"She's out walking, sir."
Scarborough rode away, taking the long drive
through the grounds of the Eyrie, as it would
210


TWO AND THE BARRIER 211
save him a mile of dusty and not well-shaded
highway. A few hundred yards and he was pass-
ing the sloping meadows that lay golden bronze
in the sun, beyond the narrow fringe of wood
skirting and shielding the drive. The grass and
clover had been cut. Part of it was spread where
it had fallen, part had been raked into little hil-
locks ready for the wagons. At the edge of one
of these hillocks far down the slope he saw the
tail of a pale blue skirt, a white parasol cast upon
the stubble beside it. He reined in his horse,
hesitated, dismounted, tied his bridle round a
sapling. He strode across the field toward the
hillock that had betrayed its secret to him.
"Do I interrupt?" he called when he was still
far enough away not to be taking her by surprise.
There was no answer. He paused, debating
whether to call again or to turn back.
But soon she was rising—the lower part of her
tall narrow figure hid by the hillock, the upper
part revealing to him the strong stamp of that
vivid individuality of hers which separated her
at once from no matter what company. She had
on a big garden hat, trimmed just a little with
summer flowers, a blouse of some soft white ma-
terial, with even softer lace on the shoulders and


212 THE COST
in the long, loose sleeves. She gave a friendly
nod and glance in his direction, and said: "Oh,
no—not at all. I'm glad to have help in enjoying
this."
She was looking out toward the mists of the
horizon hills. The heat of the day had passed;
the woods, the hillocks of hay were casting long
shadows on the pale-bronze fields. A breeze had
sprung up and was lifting from the dried and
drying grass and clover a keen, sweet, intoxicat-
ing perfume—like the odor which classic zephyrs
used to shake from the flowing hair of woodland
nymphs.
He stood beside her without speaking, looking
intently at her. It was the first time he had been
alone with her since the afternoon at Battle Field
when she confessed her marriage and he his love.
"Bandit was lame," she said when it seemed
necessary to say something.
She rode a thoroughbred, Bandit, who would
let no one else mount him; whenever she got a
new saddle she herself had to help put it on, so
alert was he for schemes to entrap him to some
other's service. He obeyed her in the haughty,
nervous way characteristic of thoroughbreds—
obeyed because he felt that she was without fear,


TWO AND THE BARRIER 213
and because she had the firm but gentle hand that
does not fret a horse yet does not let him think
for an instant that he is or can be free. Then,
too, he had his share of the universal, fundamental
vanity we should probably find swelling the oyster
did we but know how to interpret it; and he
must have appreciated what an altogether har-
monious spectacle it was when he swept along
with his mistress upon his back as light and free
as a Valkyr.
"I was sorry to miss the ride," Pauline went
on after another pause—to her, riding was the
keenest of the many physical delights that are for
those who have vigorous and courageous bodies
and sensitive nerves. Whenever it was possible
she fought out her battles with herself on horse-
back, usually finding herself able there to drown
mental distress in the surge of physical exultation.
As he still did not speak she looked at him—
and could not look away. She had not seen that
expression since their final hour together at Battle
Field, though in these few last months she had
been remembering it so exactly, had been wonder-
ing, doubting whether she could not bring it to
his face again, had been forbidding herself to
long to see it. And there it was, unchanged like


214 THE COST
all the inflexible purposes that made his character
and his career. And back to her came, as it had
come many and many a time in those years, the
story he had told her of his father and mother,
of his father's love for his mother—how it had
enfolded her from the harshness and peril of
pioneer life, had enfolded her in age no less than
in youth, had gone down into and through the
Valley of the Shadow with her, had not left her
even at the gates of Death, but had taken him
on with her into the Beyond. And Pauline trem-
bled, an enormous joy thrilling through and
through her.
"Don't!" she said uncertainly. "Don't look
at me like that, please!"
"You were crying," he said abruptly. He
stood before her, obviously one who had con-
quered the respect of the world in fair, open
battle, and has the courage that is for those only
who have tested their strength and know it will
not fail them. And the sight of him, the look
of him, filled her not with the mere belief, but
with the absolute conviction that no malign power
in all the world or in the mystery round the world
could come past him to her to harass or harm her.
The doubts, the sense of desolation that had so


216 THE COST
the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir
of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful,
careless "Bob White!" from the rail fence edging
the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among a
cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the
mower had spared. And the breeze tossed up
and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of
the young man and the young woman, great bil-
lows of that perfume which is the combined
essence of all nature's love philters.
Pauline sank on the hay, and Scarborough
stretched himself on the ground at her feet. "For
a long time it's been getting darker and darker
for me," she began, in the tone of one who is
talking of some past sorrow which casts a re-
treating shadow over present joy to make it the
brighter by contrast. "To-day—this afternoon
it seemed as if the light were just about to go
out—for good and all. And I came here. I
found myself lying on the ground—on the bosom
of this old cruel-kind mother of ours. And—"
She did not finish—he would know the rest.
Besides, what did it matter—now?
He said: "If only there were some way in
which I could help."
"It isn't the people who appear at the crises of
^


TWO AND THE BARRIER 217
one's life, like the hero on the stage, that really
help. I'm afraid the crises, the real crises of real
life, must always be met alone."
"Alone," he said in an undertone. The sky
was blue now—cloudless blue; but in that word
alone he could hear the rumble of storms below
the horizon, storms past, storms to come
"The real helpers," she went on, "are those
who strengthen us day by day, hour by hour.
And when no physical presence would do any
good, when no outside aid is possible—they—
it's like finding a wall at one's back when one's
in dread of being surrounded. I suppose you
don't realize how much it means to—to how many
people—to watch a man who goes straight and
strong on his way—without blustering, without
trampling anybody, without taking any mean
advantage. You don't mind my saying these
things?"
She felt the look which she did not venture to
face as he answered: "I needed to hear them
to-day. For it seemed to me that I, too, had got
to the limit of my strength."
"But you hadn't." She said this confidently.
"No—I suppose not. I've thought so before;
but somehow I've always managed to gather my-


£18 THE COST
self together. This time it was the work of
years apparently undone—hopelessly undone.
They"—she understood that "they" meant the
leaders of the two corrupt rings whose rule of
the state his power with the people menaced—
"they have bought away some of my best men—
bought them with those 'favors' that are so much
more disreputable than money because they're
respectable. Then they came to me"—he
laughed unpleasantly—"and took me up into a
high mountain and showed me all the kingdoms
of the earth, as it were. I could be governor,
senator, they said, could probably have the nomi-
nation for president even,—not if I would fall
down and worship them, but if I would let them
alone. I could accomplish nearly all that I've
worked so long to accomplish if I would only
concede a few things to them. I could be almost
free. Almost—that is, not free at all."
She said: "And they knew you no better than
that!"
"Now," he continued, "it looks as if I'll have
to build all over again."
"I think not," she replied. "If they weren't
still afraid of you they'd never have come to you.
But what does it matter? You don't fight for
^s






TWO AND THE BARRIER 219
victory, you fight for the fight's sake. And so"—
she looked at him proudly—"you can't lose."
"Thank you. Thank you," he said in a low
voice.
She sighed. "How I envy you! You live. I
can simply be alive. Sometimes I feel as if I
were sitting in a railway station waiting to begin
my journey—waiting for a train that's late—
nobody knows how late. Simply alive—that's
all."
"That's a great deal," he said. He was look-
ing round at the sky, at the horizon, at the fields
far and near, at her. "A great deal," he repeated.
"You feel that, too?" She smiled. "I sup-
pose I should live on through anything and every-
thing, because, away down under the surface,
where even the worst storms can't reach, there's
always a sort of tremendous joy—the sense of
being alive—just alive." She drew a long breath.
"Often when I've been—anything but happy—a
little while ago, for instance—I suddenly have a
feeling of ecstasy. I say to myself: Yes, I'm
unhappy, but—I'm alive!"
He made a sudden impulsive movement toward
her, then restrained himself, pressed his lips to-
gether and fell back on his elbow.


220 THE COST
"I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself,"
she added.
"You mustn't say that." He was sitting up,
was speaking with .all his energy. "All that you
were telling me a while ago to encourage me
applies to you, too—and more—more. You do
live. You are what you long to be. That ideal
you're always trying to grasp—don't you know
why you can't grasp it, Pauline? Because it's
your own self, your own image reflected as in a
mirror."
He broke off abruptly, acutely conscious that
he was leaning far over the barrier between them.
There was a distant shout, from vigorous, boyish
lungs. Gardiner, mad with the joy of healthy
seven, came running and jumping across the field
to land with a leap astride the hillock, scattering
wisps of hay over his mother and Scarborough.
Pauline turned without getting up, caught her
boy by the arms and with mock violence shook
and thrust him deep down into the damaged
hillock. She seemed to be making an outlet for
some happiness too great to be contained. He
laughed and shouted and struggled, pushed and
pulled her. Her hat fell off, her hair loosened
and the sun showered gold of many shades upon
V


TWO AND THE BARRIER 221
it. She released him and stood up, straightening
and smoothing her hair and breathing quickly,
the color high in her cheeks.
Scarborough was already standing, watching
her with an expression of great cheerfulness.
"Good-by," he now said. "The caravan"—his
tone was half-jesting, half-serious—"has been
spending the heat and dust of the day on the
oasis. It makes night journeys only. It must
push on."
"Night journeys only," repeated Pauline.
"That sounds gloomy."
"But there are the stars—and the moon."
She laughed. "And other oases ahead. Good-
by—and thank you!"
The boy, close to his mother and facing Scar-
borough, was looking from her to him and back
again—curiously, it almost seemed suspiciously.
Both noticed it; both flushed slightly. Scarbor-
ough shook hands with her, bowed to the little
boy with a formality and constraint that might
have seemed ludicrous to an onlooker. He went
toward his horse; Gardiner and his mother took
the course at right angles across the field in the
direction in which the towers of the Eyrie could
be seen above the tree-tops. Suddenly the boy


222 THE COST
said, as if it were the conclusion of a long internal
argument: "I like Mr. Scarborough."
"Why not?" asked his mother, amused.
"I—I don't know," replied the boy. "Anyhow,
I like him. I wish he'd come and stay with us
and Aunt Gladys."
Gladys! The reminder made her uncomfort-
able, made her feel that she ought to be remorse-
ful. But she hastened on to defend herself.
What reason had she to believe that Gladys cared
for him, except as she always cared for difficult
conquest? Hadn't Gladys again and again gone
out of her way to explain that she wasn't in love
with him? Hadn't she said, only two days be-
fore: "I don't believe I could fall in love with
any man. Certainly I couldn't unless he had
made it very clear to me that he was in love with
me.
Pauline had latterly been suspecting that these
elaborations of superfluous protestation were
Gladys' efforts to curtain herself. Now she dwelt
upon them with eager pleasure, and assured and
reassured herself that she had been supersensitive
and that Gladys had really been frank and truth-
ful with her.



XVIII.
ON THE FARM.
On his way down the bluffs to town Scarbor-
ough felt as calm and peaceful as that tranquil
evening. He had a sense of the end of a long
strain of which he had until then been uncon-
scious. "Now I can go away and rest," he said
to himself. And at sundown he set out for his
farm.
He arrived at ten o'clock, by moonlight, amid
a baying of dogs so energetic that it roused every
living thing in the barnyard to protest in a peevish
chorus of clucking and grunting and quacking
and squealing.
"What on airth!" exclaimed Mrs. Gabbard, his
farmer's wife, standing at the back door, in calico
skirt and big shawl. When she saw who it was,
her irritated voice changed to welcome. "Why,
howdy, Mr. Scarborough! I thought it was old
John Lovel among the chickens or at the granary.
I might 'a' knowed he wouldn't come in the full
of the moon and no clouds."
"Go straight back to bed, Mrs. Gabbard, and


ON THE FARM 325
ened him. It was only a little after five, but he
felt refreshed. He got himself into farm work-
ing clothes and went down to the summer dining-
room—a shed against the back of the house with
three of its walls latticed. In the adjoining kitchen
Mrs. Gabbard and her daughters, Sally and
Bertha, were washing the breakfast dishes—Gab-
bard and his two sons and the three "hands" had
just started for the meadows with the hay
wagons.
"Good morning," said Scarborough, looking in
on the three women.
They stopped work and smiled at him, and the
girls dried their hands and shook hands with him
—all with an absolute absence of embarrassment
that, to one familiar with the awkward shyness
of country people, would have told almost the
whole story of Scarborough's character. "I'll
get you some breakfast in the dining-room," said
Mrs. Gabbard.
"No—just a little—on the corner of the table
out here," replied Scarborough.
Mrs. Gabbard and Sally bustled about while he
stood in the doorway of the shed, looking out
into the yard and watching the hens make their
careful early morning tour of the inclosure to


226 THE COST
glean whatever might be there before scattering
for the day's excursions and depredations. He
had not long to wait and he did not linger over
what was served.
"You've et in a manner nothing," complained
Mrs. Gabbard.
"I haven't earned an appetite yet," he replied.
"Just wait till this evening."
As soon as he was out of view he gave a great
shout and started to run. "What folly to bother
with a foolish, trouble-breeding thinking appara-
tus in a world like this!" he thought, as the
tremendous currents of vitality surged through
him. And he vaulted a six-rail fence and ran
on. Down the hollow drenched with dew, across
the brook which was really wjde enough to be
called a creek, up the steep slope of the opposite
hill at a slower pace, and he was at the edge of
the meadows. The sun was clear of the horizon
now, and the two wagons, piled high with hay
and "poled down" to keep the loads steady, were
about to move off to the barn.
"Bring back a fork for me, Bill!" he called to
the driver of the nearer wagon—Bill was stand-
ing on the lofty top of his load, which projected
forward and rear so far that, forward, the horses


228 THE COST
up and through him. "Why don't I do this
oftener?" Scarborough was saying to himself. "I
must—and I shall, now that my mind's more at
ease."
A long afternoon of the toil that tires and vexes
not, and at sundown he was glad to ride home on
top of the last wagon instead of walking as he
had intended. The supper-table was ready—was
spread in the dining-shed. They washed their
hands and sunburnt arms and soused their heads
in cold water from the well, and sat, Scarborough
at one end, Gabbard at the other, the strapping
sons and the "hands" down either side. The
whole meal was before them—huge platters of
fried chicken, great dishes full of beans and corn
and potatoes; plates piled high with hot corn
bread, other plates of "salt-rising"; Mrs. Gabbard's
miraculous apple pies, and honey for which the
plundered flowers might still be mourning. Yes-
terday it would have seemed to Scarborough
dinner enough for a regiment. To-day—he
thought he could probably eat it all, and wished
that he might try. To drink, there were coffee .
and cider and two kinds of milk. He tried the
buttermilk and kept on with it.
"You must 'a' had a busy summer," said
S*~


230 THE COST
in my head all day," he said to himself with
drowsy delight.
Four days of this, and on the fifth came the
outside world in the form of Burdick, chairman
of the county committee of his party in the county
in which his farm lay. They sat on the fence
under the big maple, out of earshot of the others.
"Larkin's come out for John Frankfort for the
nomination for governor," said Burdick.
Scarborough smiled. "Even Larkin couldn't
get it for Frankfort—he's too notorious."
"He don't want to get it for him," replied
Burdick. "His real man's Judge Graney."
Scarborough stopped fanning himself with his
wide-brimmed straw. Judge Graney was the most
adroit and dangerous of John Dumont's tools.
He had given invaluable aid from the bench at
several of the National Woolens Company's most
critical moments. Yet he had retained and in-
creased his popularity and his reputation by de-
ciding against his secret master with a brave show
of virtue when he knew the higher courts must
reverse him. For several years Scarborough had
been looking forward to the inevitable open con-
flict between the forces of honesty in his party


ON THE FARM 231
and the forces of the machine as ruled by the
half-dozen big corporations who also ruled the
machine of the opposition party. He had
known that the contest must come, and that he
must take part in it; and he had been getting
ready. But he had not wished to give battle until
he was strong enough to give a battle which, even
if he lost it, would not strengthen the hold of the
corruptionists.
After he rejected Larkin's dazzling offers,
conditioned upon his aloofness rather than
frank subservience, he had thought the whole
situation over, and, as he hinted to Pauline, had
realized how apparently hopeless a fight against
the machine would be just then, with the people
prosperous and therefore quiescent. And he had
decided to stand aside for the time. He now saw
that reluctance to attack Dumont had been at least
a factor in this decision; and he also saw that
he could not delay, as he had hoped. There was
no escape—either he must let his work of years
be undermined and destroyed or he must give
battle with all his strength and skill. He remem-
bered what Pauline had said: "You can't lose!"
"No, one can't lose in this sort of fight," he
thought. "Either we win or there'll be no vie-


232 THE COST
tory." He sprang from the fence to the ground.
"Let's go to the house," he said to Burdick.
"What you going to do?" asked Burdick, as
they walked toward the gate, where his horse and
buggy were hitched.
"Fight, of course," said Scarborough. "Fight
Larkin and his gang in the open. I'll get ex-
Governor Bowen to let us use his name and
canvass the state for him."
Burdick shook his head sadly.
"It ain't politics," he said. "You'll split the
party; then the party'll turn and split you." And
later, as they were separating, Scarborough to
drive to Saint X, Burdick to go back to Marshal-
town, he said: "I'll help all I can in a quiet way.
But—I hope you've got your cyclone cellar dug."
Scarborough laughed. "I haven't been dig-
ging a cyclone cellar. I've been trying to manu-
facture a cyclone."
There were thirty-three clear days before the
meeting of the convention. He wasted not an
hour of them on the manufacturing towns; he
went to the country—to the farmers and the vil-
lagers, the men who lived each man in his own
house, on his own soil from which he earned his
ftwn living. Up and down and across the state


ON THE FARM 233
he went, speaking, organizing, planning, inspir-
ing—he and the coterie of young men who looked
up to him as their leader and followed him in this
desperate assault as courageously as if victory
were assured.
Not long before the convention he paused at
ex-Judge Bowen's country place and spent two
hours with him in his great, quiet, cool library.
"Isn't it inspiring," Scarborough said, "to see
so many young men in arms for a principle?"
The old man slowly shook his magnificent white
head and smiled at the young man. "Principles
without leaders go begging," he replied. "Men
rally to the standard only when the right voice
calls. The right voice at the right time." He
laid his hand on Scarborough's shoulder with
affection and pride. "If the moment should come
for you to think of it, do not forget that the
leader is the principle, and that in this fight the
leader is not I—but you."


XIX.
PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS.
Larkin decided that the state convention should
be held at Saint X because his machine was most
perfect there. The National Woolens Company,
the Consolidated Pipe and Wire Company and
the Indiana Oil and Gas Corporation—the three
principal political corporations in the state—had
their main plants there and were in complete
political control. While Larkin had no fear of
the Scarborough movement, regarding it as a
sentimental outburst in the rank and file of the
party that would die away when its fomenter had
been "read out of the party" at the convention
by the regular organization, still he had been in
the game too long to take unnecessary chances.
He felt that it would be wise to have the delegates
assemble where all the surroundings would be
favorable and where his ablest and confidential
men could do their work in peace and quiet.
The convention was to meet on the last Thurs-
day in September. On the preceding Monday
morning, Culver—Dumont's small, thin, stealthy
234


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 235
private secretary—arrived at Saint X and, after
making an appointment with Merriweather for
half-past twelve, went out to the Eyrie to go
through a lot of accumulated domestic business
with Mrs. Dumont. When she in a most formal
and unencouraging manner invited him to stop
there, he eagerly accepted. "Thank you so
much," he said effusively. "To be perfectly
frank, I've been tempted to invite myself. I have
some valuables with me that I don't feel at all
easy about. If I should be robbed, it would be
a very serious matter. Would it be asking too
much of you to ask you to put a package in your
jewel safe?"
"I'll be glad to do it for you," replied Pauline.
"There's plenty of room—the safe's almost empty
and it's ridiculously large."
"My package isn't small," said Culver. "And
on my mind it weighs tons." He reached into
his large bag—at sight of it Pauline had wondered
why he had brought such a bag up from the hotel
when his papers for her inspection were so few.
He lifted out an oblong, bulky package.
"If you'll just touch that button," said she,
"James will come and show you how to get to the
safe."


236 THE COST
Culver hesitated nervously. Finally he said:
"I'm making a nuisance of myself, Mrs. Dumont,
but would you mind going to the safe with me?
I'd much rather none of the servants knew about
this."
Pauline smiled and bade him follow her. They
went to her private sitting-room and she showed
him the safe, in a small closet built into the lower
part of the book-case. "You have the combina-
tion?" asked Culver, as he put the package away.
"I see that you don't lock this door often."
"How fortunate you spoke of it!" said she.
"The combination is on a bit of paper in one of
the little drawers."
Culver found it in the first drawer he opened,
and handed it to her without looking at it.
"You mustn't let me know it," said he. "I'll
just fix the time lock so that it won't interfere."
And when he had done so, he closed the safe. As
he left, he said, "I shall only bother you to let
me sleep in the house. I'll be very busy all day
each day I'm here." When she thought he had
gone he returned to add: "Perhaps I'd better
explain to you that there's forty-five thousand
dollars in cash in the package. That's why I was
so anxious for no one to know."
S


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 237
"I'll say nothing about it," Pauline assured him.
Larkin came down from Indianapolis the next
day and registered at the Palace Hotel. As soon
as he could escape from the politicians and news-
paper correspondents in the hotel office, he went
by a devious route to a room on the floor below
his own and, knocking, was admitted to Culver
and Merriweather. He nodded to Dumont's po-
litical agent, then said to Culver: "You've got
the dough?"
"Yes," Culver answered, in his best imitation
of the tone of the man of large affairs. "In
twenties, fifties and hundreds."
"I hope, mighty few hundreds," said Larkin.
"The boys are kind o' shy about changing hun-
dred-dollar bills. It seems to attract attention
to them." He had large, dreamy, almost senti-
mental, brown eyes that absurdly misrepresented
his character, or, at least, his dominant character-
istics. His long, slightly bent nose and sharp chin
and thin, tight mouth were more truthful.
"How do things look, Joe?" asked Merri-
weather.
"Yes, Mr. Dumont asked me to telegraph him
after I'd talked with you," said Culver. "Has
Scarborough made much headway?"


238 THE COST
"I must say, he's raised a darn sight more hell
than I thought he would," Larkin answered.
"The people seem to be in a nasty mood about
corruption. Darn their fool souls, as if they
wouldn't be in the rottenest kind of a fix, with
no property and no jobs, if we didn't keep the
ignorant vote under control and head off such
firebrands as this fellow Scarborough."
"Got any figgers?" demanded Merriweather,
who had listened to this tirade with an expression
suggesting cynicism. He thought, and he knew
Joe Larkin thought, politics a mere game of
chance—you won or you didn't win; and prin-
ciples and oratory and likes and dislikes and
resentments were so much "hot air." If the "oil
can" had been with Scarborough, Merriweather
would have served him as cheerfully and as loy-
ally as—well, as would Joe Larkin in those cir-
cumstances.
Larkin wrenched a big bunch of letters and
papers from the sagged inside pocket of his
slouchy sack coat; after some fumbling and sort-
ing, he paused upon the back of a dirty envelope.
"Here's how the convention stands, to a man,"
he said. "Sure, two hundred and sixty-seven—
by 'sure' I mean the fellows we own outright.
"


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 239
Safe, two hundred and forty-five—by 'safe' I
mean those that'll stand by the organization, thick
and thin. Insurgents, two hundred and ninety-
five—those are the chaps that've gone clean crazy
with Scarborough. Doubtful, three hundred and
eighty-six—some of 'em can be bought; most of
'em are waiting to see which way the cat jumps,
so as to jump with her."
"Then we've got five hundred and twelve, and
it takes five hundred and ninety-seven to elect,"
said Merriweather, the instant the last word was
out of Larkin's mouth. Merriweather was a mite
of a man, could hardly have weighed more than
a hundred pounds, had a bulging forehead, was
bald and gray at the temples, eyes brown as
walnut juice and quick and keen as a rat-terrier's.
His expression was the gambler's—calm, watch-
ful, indifferent, pallid, as from years of nights
under the gas-light in close, hot rooms, with the
cards sliding from the faro box hour after hour.
"Eighty-five short — that's right," assented
Larkin. Then, with a look at Culver: "And
some of 'em'll come mighty high."
"Where are you going to do business with
them?" inquired Merriweather. "Here?"
"Right here in this room, where I've done it


240 THE COST
many's the time before," replied Larkin. "To-
morrow night Conkey Sedgwick and my boy
Tom'll begin steerin' 'em in one at a time about
eight o'clock."
"Then I'll turn the money over to you at seven
to-morrow night," said Culver. "I've got it in
a safe place."
"Not one of the banks, I hope," said Merri-
weather.
"We noted your suggestions on that point, and
on all the others," Culver answered with gracious
condescension. "That's why I brought cash in
small denominations and didn't go near anybody
with it;'
Larkin rose. "I've got to get to work. See
you here to-morrow night at seven, Mr. Culver—
seven sharp. I guess it'll be Judge Graney on
the third ballot. On the first ballot the organi-
zation'll vote solid for Graney, and my fellows'll
vote for John Frankfort. On the second ballot
half my Frankfort crowd'll switch over to Gra-
ney. Oh the third I'll put the rest of 'em over,
and that'll be enough to elect—probably the
Scarborough crowd'll see it's no use and let us
make it unanimous. The losers are always hot
for harmony."
S
^


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 241
"That sounds well," said Merriweather—his
was a voice that left his hearers doubtful whether
he meant what his words said or the reverse.
Culver looked with secret admiration from one
man to the other, and continued to think of them
and to admire, after they had gone. He felt
important, sitting in and by proxy directing the
councils of these powerful men, these holders
and manipulators of the secret strings whereto
were attached puppet peoples and puppet politi-
cians. Seven years behind the scenes with Du-
mont's most private affairs had given him a
thoroughgoing contempt for the mass of mankind.
Did he not sit beside the master, at the innermost
wheels, deep at the very heart of the intricate
mechanism? Did not that position make him a
sort of master, at any rate far superior to the
princeliest puppet?
At five the next afternoon—the afternoon of
the day before the convention-—he was at the
Eyrie, and sent a servant to say to Mrs. Dumont
that he would like to see her. She came down
to him in the library.
"I'm only troubling you for a moment," he said.
"I'll relieve you of my package."
"Very well," said Pauline. "I haven't thought


242 THE COST
of it since day before yesterday. I'll bring it
down to you."
She left him in the library and went up the
stairs—she had been reading everything that was
published about the coming convention, and the
evident surprise of all the politicians at the
strength Scarborough was mustering for ex-
Governor Bowen had put her in high good humor.
She cautioned herself that he could not carry the
convention; but his showing was a moral victory
—and what a superb personal triumph! With
everything against him—money and the machine
and the skilful confusing of the issues by his
crafty opponents—he had rallied about him almost
all that was really intelligent in his party; and
he had demonstrated that he had on his side a
mass of the voters large out of all proportion to
the number of delegates he had wrested away
from the machine—nearly three hundred, when
everybody had supposed the machine would retain
all but a handful.
Money! Her lips curled scornfully—out here,
in her own home, among these simple people, the
brutal power of money was master just as in
New York, among a people crazed by the passion
for luxury and display.



HKK EXPRESSION PUT HIM IN A PANIC


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 243
She was kneeling before the safe, was working
the combination, paper in hand. The knob
clicked as the rings fell into place; she turned the
bolt and swung the door open. She reached into
the safe. Suddenly she drew her hand back and
sat up on the floor, looking at the package. "Why,
it's for use in the convention!" she exclaimed.
She did not move for several minutes; when
she did, it was to examine the time lock, to reset
it, to close the door and bolt it and throw the lock
off the combination. Then she rose and slowly
descended to the library. As she reappeared,
empty-handed, Culver started violently and scru-
tinized her face. Its expression put him in a
panic. "Mrs. Dumont!" he exclaimed wildly.
"Has it been stolen?"
She shook her head. "No," she said. "It's
there."
Trembling from weakness in the reaction, he
leaned against the table, wiping his sweating brow
with sweating hands.
"But," she went on, "it must stay there."
He looked open-mouthed at her.
"You have brought the money out here for use
in the convention," she went on with perfect calm-
ness. "You have tried to make me a partner in


244 THE COST
that vile business. And—I refuse to play the
part assigned me. I shall keep the money until
the convention is over."
He looked round like a terror-stricken drown-
ing man, about to sink for the last time.
"I'm ruined! I'm ruined!" he almost screamed.
"No," she said, still calm. "You will not be
ruined, though you deserve to be. But I under-
stand why you have become callous to the com-
monplace decencies of life, and I shall see to it
that no harm comes to you."
"Mr. Dumont will—destroy me! You don't
realize, Mrs. Dumont. Vast property interests
are at stake on the result of this convention—
that's our cause. And you are imperiling it!"
"Imperiling a cause that needs lies and bribes
to save it?" she said ironically. "Please calm
yourself, Mr. Culver. You certainly can't
be blamed for putting your money in a safe place.
I take the responsibility for the rest. And when
you tell Mr. Dumont exactly what happened, you
will not be blamed or injured in any way."
"I shall telegraph him at once," he warned her.
"Certainly," said Pauline. "He might blame
you severely for failing to do that."
He paused in his pacing up and down the room.


PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS 247
program that put all three at work within fifteen
minutes. They met again at seven. Culver had
twenty-six hundred dollars, Larkin thirty-one
hundred, Merriweather, who had kept for himself
the most difficult task, had only twelve hundred.
"Sixty-nine hundred," said Merriweather, eying
the heap of paper in packages and silver in bags.
"Better than nothing," suggested Culver, with
a pitiful attempt to be hopeful.
Merriweather shrugged his shoulders. "Let's
get some supper," he said to Culver. Then to
Larkin: "Well, Joe, you'll have to try promises.
Will you keep this cash or shall I?"
"You might as well keep it," replied Larkin,
with a string of oaths. "It'd be ruination to pay
one without paying all. Perhaps you can use
some of it between ballots to-morrow." Then,
sharply to Culver: "You've telegraphed Mr. Du-
mont?"
"Of course," said Culver. "And it took some
time as I had to put the whole story into cipher."
As Culver and Merriweather were seated, with
the dinner before them which Culver did not
touch, and which Merriweather ate placidly, Cul-
ver asked him whether there was "any hope
at all."


248 THE COST
"There's always hope," replied Merriweather.
"Promises, especially from Joe Larkin, will go a
long way, though they don't rouse the white hot
enthusiasm that cold cash in the pocket does.
We'll pull through all right." He ate for a while
in silence. Then: "This Mrs. Dumont must be
an uncommon woman." A few more mouthfuls
and with his small, icy, mirthless laugh, he added:
"I've got one something like her at home. I keep
her there."
Culver decided to spend the night at the hotel.
He hung round the hotel office until two in the
morning, expecting and dreading Dumont's reply
to his telegram. But nothing came either for him
or for Merriweather. "Queer we don't get word
of some sort, isn't it?" said he to Merriweather
the next morning, as the latter was leaving for the
convention.
Merriweather made no reply beyond a smile
so faint that Culver barely saw it.
"She was right, after all," thought Culver, less
despondent. "I'll get the money just before I
leave and take it back. And I'll not open this
subject with Dumont. Maybe he'll never speak
of it to me."
And Dumont never did.


XX.
A MAN IN HIS MIGHT.
Olivia came to attend the convention as Fred
was a delegate from Marion County. Pauline and
Gladys accepted her invitation and shared her box
—the convention was held in the Saint X Grand
Opera House, the second largest auditorium in
the state. Pauline, in the most retired corner,
could not see the Marion County delegation into
which Scarborough went by substitution. But
she had had a glimpse of him as she came in—he
was sitting beside Fred Pierson and was gazing
straight ahead, as if lost in thought. He looked
tired and worn, but not cast down.
"You should have been here, Polly, when Scar-
borough came in," said Olivia, who was just in
front of her. "They almost tore the roof off.
He's got the audience with him, even if the dele-
gates aren't. A good many of the delegates
applauded, too," she added—but in a significantly
depressed tone.
"Why isn't he a candidate, Mrs. Pierson?"
asked Gladys.
249


250 THE COST
"They wanted him to be, of course," replied
Olivia, "and I think it was a mistake that he
didn't consent. But he wouldn't hear of it. He
said it simply wouldn't do for him to make the
fight to carry the convention for himself. He said
that, even if he were nominated, the other side
would use it against him."
"That seems reasonable," said Gladys.
"But it isn't," replied Olivia. "He may not
know it but he can lead men where they wouldn't
go for his merely sending them."
"I suppose it was his modesty," suggested
Gladys.
"Modesty's a good deal of a vice, especially in a
leader," replied Olivia.
There was an hour of dullness—routine busi-
ness, reports of committees, wearisome speeches.
But, like every one of those five thousand people,
Pauline was in a fever of anticipation. For, while
it was generally assumed that Scarborough and
his friends had no chance and while Larkin was
apparently carrying everything through according
to program, still it was impossible to conceive of
such a man as Scarborough accepting defeat on
test votes tamely taken. He would surely chal-
lenge. Larkin watched him uneasily, wondering


A MAN IN HIS MIGHT 251
at what point in the proceedings the gage would
be flung down. Even Merriweather could not
keep still, but flitted about, his nervousness of
body contrasting strangely with his calmness of
face; himself the most unquiet man in the hall,
he diffused quiet wherever he paused.
At last came the call for nominations. When
the secretary of the convention read Cass from
the roll of counties, a Larkin henchman rose and
spoke floridly for twenty minutes on the virtues
of John Frankfort, put up as the Larkin "draw-
fire," the pretended candidate whose prearranged
defeat was to be used on the stump as proof that
Boss Larkin and his gang had been downed. At
the call of Hancock County, another—a secret—
Larkin henchman rose to eulogize"that stanch foe
of corporate corruption and aggression, Hancock
County's favorite son, the people's judge, Judge
Edward Howel Graney!" Then the roll-call pro-
ceeded amid steadily rising excitement which
abruptly died into silence as the clerk shouted,
with impressive emphasis, "Wayne!" That was
the home county of the Scarborough candidate.
A Wayne delegate rose and in a single sentence
put ex-Governor Bowen in nomination. There
was a faint ripple of applause which was instantly


252 THE COST
checked. A silence of several seconds and—
"Mr. Chairman, and gentle—"
It was the voice Pauline knew so well. She
could not see him, but that voice seemed to make
him visible to her. She caught her breath and
her heart beat wildly. He got no further into
seconding Bowen's nomination than the middle of
the fourth word. There may have been ears
offended by the thunder-clap which burst in that
theater, but those ears were not Pauline's, were
not in Olivia Pierson's box. And then came tum-
bling and roaring, huge waves of adulation, with
his name shouted in voices hoarse and voices shrill
like hissing foam on the triumphant crests of
billows. And Pauline felt as if she were lifted
from her bodily self, were tossing in a delirium of
ecstasy on a sea of sheer delight.
And now he was on the platform, borne there
above the shoulders of a hundred men. He
was standing pale and straight and mighty. He
stretched out his hand, so large and strong, and
somehow as honest as his eyes; the tempest stilled.
He was speaking—what did he say? She hardly
heard, though she knew that it was of and for
right and justice—what else could that voice utter
or the brain behind those proud features think?
^ >


A MAN IN HIS MIGHT 253
With her, and with all there, far more than his
words it was his voice, like music, like magic,
rising and falling in thrilling inflections as it
wove its spell of gold and fire. Whenever he
paused there would be an instant of applause—a
huge, hoarse thunder, the call of that mysterious
and awful and splendid soul of the mass—an in-
stant full of that one great, deep, throbbing note,
then silence to hear him again.
Scarborough had measured his task—to lift that
convention from the slough of sordidness to which
the wiles and bribes of Dumont and his clique
had lured it; to set it in the highroad of what
he believed with all his intensity to be the high-
road of right. Usually he spoke with feeling
strongly repressed; but he knew that if he was to
win that day against such odds he must take those
delegates by surprise and by storm, must win in
a suddenly descended whirlwind of passion that
would engulf calculation and craft, sordidness and
cynicism. He made few gestures; he did not
move from the position he had first taken. He
staked all upon his voice; into it he poured all
his energy, all his fire, all his white-hot passion
for right and justice, all his scorn of the base
and the low.


A MAN IN HIS MIGHT 255
with the pronouncing of that name, the tempest
really burst. She sprang to her feet, obeying
the imperious inward command which made
every one in that audience and most of the dele-
gates leap up. And for ten long minutes, for six
hundred cyclonic seconds, the people poured out
their passionate adoration. At first Scarborough
flung out his arms, and all could see that he was
shouting some sort of protest. But they would
not hear him now. He had told them what to do.
He must let them say how to do it.
Pauline looked out at those flaming thousands
with the maddest emotions streaming like light-
ning from their faces. But she looked without
fear. They—she—all were beside themselves; but
it was no frenzy for blood or for the sordid things.
It was the divine madness of the soldier of the
right, battling for the cause, in utter forgetfulness
of self and selfishness. "Beautiful! Beautiful!"
she murmured, every nerve tingling. "I never
knew before how beautiful human beings are!"
Finally the roll-call could proceed. Long be-
fore it was ended the necessary votes had been cast
for Scarborough, and Larkin rose to move that
the nomination be made unanimous—Larkin,
beaten down in the open, was not the man to die


A MAN IN HIS MIGHT 257
talking of Scarborough. "A demagogue!"
sneered one.
"A demi-god," retorted the other. And Pauline
turned suddenly and gave him a look that aston-
ished and dazzled him.


A COYOTE AT BAY 259
solute in the Northwest; the second item in Cul-
ver's budget was also a cipher telegram—from
Merriweather. It had been filed at four o'clock—
several hours later than the newspaper despatches.
It said that Scarborough's friends conceded his
defeat, that the Legislature was safely Dumont's
way in both houses. Culver always sorted out to
present first the agreeable part of the morning's
budget; never had he been more successful.
At the office Dumont found another cipher tele-
gram from Merriweather: "Later returns show
Scarborough elected by a narrow majority. But
he will be powerless as Legislature and all other
state offices are with us."
Dumont crushed the telegram in his hand.
"Powerless—hell!" he muttered. "Does he think
I'm a fool?" He had spent three hundred thou-
sand dollars to "protect" his monopoly in its
home; for it was under Indiana laws, as inter-
preted by Dumont's agents in public office, that
the main or holding corporation of his group was
organized. And he knew that, in spite of his
judges and his attorney-general and his legisla-
tive lobby and his resourceful lawyers and his
subsidized newspapers, a governor of Scar-
borough's courage and sagacity could harass him,


A COYOTE AT BAY 261
Turk what noteworthy distinction is there be-
tween vizier and sandal-strapper?
"Send him in—quick,—you, as soon as he
comes," he shouted in conclusion. If he had not
paid generously, if his lieutenants had not been
coining huge dividends out of his brains and
commercial audacity, if his magnetic, confidence-
inspiring personality had not created in the minds
of all about him visions of golden rivers widen-
ing into golden oceans, he would have been de-
serted and execrated. As it was, his service was
eagerly sought; and his servants endured its
mental and moral hardships as the prospector en-
dures the physical cruelties of the mountain fast-
nesses.
He was closing his private door when the door-
boy from the outermost of that maze of handsome
offices came up to him with a card.
"Not here," he growled, and shut himself in.
Half an hour later the sounds of an angry
tumult in the clerks' room made him fling his door
open. "What the—" he began, his heavy face
purple, then stopped amazed.
The outside doorkeeper, the watchman and sev-
eral clerks were engaged in a struggle with Fan-


263 THE COST
shaw. His hat was off, his hair wild, his neck-
tie, shirt and coat awry.
"There you are now—I knew you were in," he
shouted, as he caught sight of Dumont. "Call
these curs off, Jack!"
"Let him alone," snarled Dumont.
Fanshaw was released. He advanced into Du-
mont's office, straightening his clothing and pant-
ing with exertion, excitement and anger. Dumont
closed the door. "Well," he said surlily. "What
d' you want?"
"I'll have to go to the wall at half-past ten if
you don't help me out," said Fanshaw. "The
Montana election went against my crowd—I'm in
the copper deal. There's a slump, but the stock's
dead sure to go up within a week."
"In trouble again?" sneered Dumont. "It's
been only three months since I pulled you
through."
"You didn't lose anything by it, did you?" re-
torted Fanshaw—he had recovered himself and
was eying Dumont with the cool, steady, signifi-
cant stare of one rascal at another whom he thinks
he has in his power.
Before that look Dumont flushed an angrier



'NOT A CENT!" HE SAID WITH VICIOUS EMPHASIS





A COYOTE AT BAY 263
red. "I won't do it again!" and he brought his
fist down with a bang.
"All I want is five hundred thousand to carry
my copper for a week at the outside. If I get it
I'll clear a million. If I don't"—Fanshaw
shrugged his shoulders—"I'll be cleaned out."
He looked with narrowed, shifting eyes at Du-
mont. "My wife has all she's got in this," he
went on, "even her jewels." •
Dumont's look shot straight into Fanshaw's.
"Not a cent!" he said with vicious emphasis. "Not
a red!"
Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm
a desperate man. I'm ruined. Leonora—"
Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in
his forehead and neck. The last strand of his
self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this!
She has no claim on me now—and you never
had."
Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet,
all in a blaze. "You scoundrel!" he shouted,
shaking his fist under Dumont's nose.
"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you
thrown out," said Dumont. He was cool and
watchful now.
Fanshaw folded his arms and looked down at


264 THE COST
him with the dignified fury of the betrayed and
outraged. "So!" he exclaimed. "I see it all!"
Dumont pressed an electric button, then lean-
ed back in his revolving chair and surveyed Fan-
shaw tranquilly. "Not a cent!" he repeated, a
cruel smile in his eyes and round his mouth. The
boy came and Dumont said to him: "Send the
watchman."
Fanshaw drew himself up. "I shall punish
you," he said. "Your wealth will not save you."
And he stalked past the gaping office boy.
He stood in front of the Edison Building, look-
ing aimlessly up and down the street as he pulled
his long, narrow, brown-gray mustache. Gloom
was in his face and hate in his heart—not hate for
Dumont alone but hate for all who were what
he longed to be, all rich and "successful" men.
And the towering steel and stone palaces of pros-
perity sneered down on him with crushing
mockery.
"Damn them all!" he muttered. "The cold-
hearted thieves!"
From his entry into that district he had played
a gambling game, had played it dishonestly in a
small way. Again and again he had sneakingly
violated Wall Street's code of morality—that cur-


A COYOTE AT BAY 265
ious code with its quaint, unexpected incorpora-
tions of parts of the decalogue and its quainter,
though not so unexpected, infringements thereof
and amendments thereto. Now by "pull," now
by trickery, he had evaded punishment. But ap-
parently at last he was to be brought to bar,
branded and banished.
"Damn them all!" he repeated. "They're a
pack of wolves. They've got me down and they're
going to eat me."
He blamed Dumont and he blamed his wife for
his plight—and there was some justice in both
accusations. Twenty years before, he had come
down to "the Street" a frank-looking boy, of an
old and distinguished New York family that had
become too aristocratic for business and had
therefore lost its hold upon its once great fortune.
He was neither a good boy nor a bad. But he was
weak, and had the extravagant tastes and cynical
morals to which he had been bred; and his intelli-
gent brain was of the kind that goes with weak-
ness—shrewd and sly, preferring to slink along
the byways of craft even when the highway of
courage lies straight and easy. But he had physi-
cal bravery and the self-confidence that is based
upon an assured social position in a community


366 THE COST
where social position is worshiped; so, he passed
for manly and proud when he was in reality nei-
ther. Family vanity he had; personal pride he
had not.
In many environments his weakness would
have remained hidden even from himself, and he
would have lived and died in the odor and com-
placence of respectability. But not in the strain
and stress of Wall Street. There he had natural-
ly developed not into a lion, not even into a wolf,
but into a coyote.
Wall Street found him out in ten years—about
one year after it began to take note of him and
his skulking ways and his habit of- prowling in
the wake of the pack. Only his adroit use of his
family connections and social position saved him
from being trampled to death by the wolves and
eaten by his brother coyotes. Thereafter he lived
precariously, but on the whole sumptuously, upon
carcasses of one kind and another. He partici-
pated in "strike" suits against big corporations—
he would set on a pack of coyotes to dog the lions
and to raise discordant howls that inopportunely
centered public attention upon leonine, lawless
doings; the lions would pay him well to call off
the pack. He assisted sometimes wolves and


A COYOTE AT BAY 267
sometimes coyotes in flotations of worthless, or
almost worthless, stocks and bonds from gold
and mahogany offices and upon a sea of glitter-
ing prospectuses. He had a hand in ail manner
of small, shady transactions of lawful, or almost
lawful, swindling that were tolerated by lions and
wolves, because at bottom there is a feeling of fel-
lowship among creatures of prey as against crea-
tures preyed upon.
There were days when he came home haggard
and blue in the lips to tell Leonora that he must
fly. There were days when he returned from the
chase, or rather from the skulk, elated, youthful,
his pockets full of money and his imagination
afire with hopes of substantial wealth. But his
course was steadily downward, his methods stead-
ily farther and farther 'from the line of the law.
Dumont came just in time to save him, came to
build him up from the most shunned of coyotes
into a deceptive imitation of a wolf with aspira-
tions toward the lion class.
Leonora knew that he was small, but she
thought all men small—she had supreme contempt
for her own sex; and it seemed to her that men
must be even less worthy of respect since they
were under the influence of women and lavished


268 THE COST
time and money on them. Thus she was deceived
into cherishing the hope that her husband, small
and timid though he was, would expand into a
multi-millionaire and would help her to possess
the splendors she now enjoyed at the expense of
her associates whom she despised. She was
always thinking how far more impressive than
their splendor her magnificence would be, if their
money were added to her brains and beauty.
Dumont had helped Fanshaw as much as he
could. He immediately detected the coyote. He
knew it was impossible to make a lion or even a
wolf out of one who was both small and crooked.
He used him only in minor matters, chiefly in
doing queer, dark things on the market with Na-
tional Woolens, things he indirectly ordered done
but refused to know the details of beyond the one
important detail—the record of checks for the
profits in his bank account. For such matters
Fanshaw did as well as another. But as Dumont
became less of a wolf and more of a lion, less of
a speculator and more of a financier, he had less
and less work of the kind Fanshaw could do.
But Leonora, unaware of her husband's worth-
lessness and desperate in her calamities, sneered
and jeered and lashed him on—to ruin. The


A COYOTE AT BAY 269
coyote could put on the airs of a lion so long as
the lion was his friend and protector; when he
kept on in kingly ways after the lion had cast him
off, he speedily came to grief.
As he stood looking helplessly up and down
Broad Street he was debating what move to
make. There were about even measures of truth
and falsehood in his statement to Dumont—he
did need two hundred thousand dollars; and he
must have it before a quarter past two that day
or go into a bankruptcy from which he could not
hope to save a shred of reputation or to secrete
more than fifty thousand dollars.
"To the New York Life Building," he finally
said to the driver as he got into his hansom. Then
to himself: "I'll have a go at old Herron."
He knew that Dumont and Herron had quar-
reled, and that Herron had sold out of the Na-
tional Woolens Company. But he did not know
that Herron was a man with a fixed idea, hatred
of Dumont, and a fixed purpose, to damage him at
every opportunity that offered or could be creat-
ed, to ruin him if possible.
When the National Woolens Company was ex-
panded into the huge conglomerate it now was—
a hundred millions common, a hundred millions


270 THE COST
preferred, and twenty millions of bonds—Herron
had devised and directed the intricate and highly
perilous course among the rocks of law and pub-
lic opinion in many states and in the nation. It
was a splendid exhibition of legal piloting, and
he was bitterly dissatisfied with the modest re-
ward of ten millions of the preferred stock which
Dumont apportioned to him. He felt that that
would have been about his just share in the new
concern merely in exchange for his stock in the
old. When he found Dumont obdurate, and grew
frank and spoke such words as "dishonor" and
"dishonesty" and got into the first syllable of
"swindling," Dumont cut him off with—
"If you don't like it, get out! I can hire that
sort of work for half what I've paid you. You're
swollen with vanity. We ought to have a young
man in your position, anyhow."
Herron might have swallowed the insult to his
pride as a lawyer. But the insult to his pride in
his youth! He was fifty-seven and in dress and
in expression was stoutly insisting that he was
still a young man whom hard work had made
prematurely gray and somewhat wrinkled. Du-
mont's insinuation that he was old and stale set
a great fire of hate blazing; be, of course, told


A COYOTE AT BAY 271
himself and others that his wrath was stirred
solely because his sense of justice had been out-
raged by the "swindling."
Fanshaw entered Herron's office wearing the
jaunty air of arrogant prosperity, never so im-
portant as when prosperity has fled. But Her-
ron's shrewd, experienced eyes penetrated the
sham. He had intended to be cold. Scenting a
"hard-luck yarn" and a "touch" he lowered his
temperature to the point at which conversation is
ice-beset and confidences are frozen tight.
Fanshaw's nerve deserted him. "Herron,"
he said, dropping his prosperous pose, "I want to
get a divorce and I want to punish Dumont."
Herron's narrow, cold face lighted up. He
knew what everybody in their set knew of Fan-
shaw's domestic affairs, but like everybody else he
had pretended not to know. He changed his ex-
pression to one of shock and indignation.
"You astound me!" he exclaimed. "It is in-
credible!"
"He told me himself not an hour ago," said
Fanshaw. "I went to him as a friend to ask him
to help me out of a hole. And—" He rose
and theatrically paced the floor.
Herron prided himself upon his acute con-


A COYOTE AT BAY 273
scores of damning confirmations." He struck
his forehead with his open hand. "How blind
I've been!" he exclaimed.
Herron shook his head sympathetically and
hastened on to business.
"We can't handle your case," he said. "But
Best and Sharpless, on the floor above, are reliable.
And I'll be glad to help you with advice. I feel
that this is the beginning of Dumont's end. I
knew such insolent wickedness could not have a
long course."
Fanshaw drew Herron on to tell the story of
his wrongs—the "swindling." Before it was
ended Fanshaw saw that he had found a man who
hated Dumont malignantly and was thirsting for
vengeance. This encouraged him to unfold his
financial difficulties. Herron listened sympatheti-
cally, asked ingeniously illuminating questions,
and in the end agreed to tide him over. He had
assured himself that Fanshaw had simply under-
taken too large an enterprise; the advance would
be well secured; he would make the loan in such
a way that he would get a sure profit, and would
also bind Fanshaw firmly to him without binding
himself to Fanshaw. Besides—"It wouldn't do
for him to go to the wall just now."


274 THE COST
Arm in arm they went up to Best and Sharp-
less' to take the first steps in the suit. Together
they went down-town to relieve Fanshaw of the
pressure of the too heavy burden of copper stocks;
then up to their club where he assisted Fanshaw
in composing the breaking-off letter to Leonora.


XXII.
STORMS IN THE WEST.
While the Fanshaw-Herron storm was slowly
gathering in Dumont's eastern horizon, two others
equally black were lifting in the west.
In the two months between Scarborough's elec-
tion and his inauguration, the great monopolies
thriving under the protection of the state's cor-
rupted statute-book and corrupted officials fol-
lowed the lead of their leader, Dumont's National
Woolens Company, in making sweeping but
stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods
and even in their legal status. They hoped thus
to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scar-
borough's demand for a revision of the laws—
why revise when the cry of monopoly had been
shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue
to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to
aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough
had been thoroughly "exposed," business could be
resumed gradually.
But Scarborough had the better brain, and had
character as well. He easily upset their pro-
275


276 THE COST
gram and pressed their Legislature so hard
that it was kept in line only by pouring out
money like water. This became a public scandal
which made him stronger than ever and
also made it seem difficult or impossible for the
monopolies to get a corruptible Legislature at the
next election. At last the people had in their serv-
ice a lawyer equal in ability to the best the monop-
olies could buy, and one who understood human
nature and political machinery to boot.
Dumont began to respect Scarborough pro-
foundly—not for his character, which made him
impregnable with the people, but for his intellect,
which showed him how to convince the people of
his character and to keep them convinced. When
Merriweather came on "to take his beating"
from his employer he said among other things
deprecatory: "Scarborough's a dreamer. His
head's among the clouds." Dumont retorted:
"Yes, but his feet are on the ground—too damned
firmly to suit me." And after a moment's
thought, he added: "What a shame for such a
brain to go to waste! Why, he could make mil-
lions."
He felt that Gladys was probably his best re-
maining card. She had been in Indianapolis vis-


STORMS IN THE WEST 277
iting the whole of February, Scarborough's sec-
ond month as governor, and had gone on to her
brother in New York with a glowing report of
her progress with Scarborough's sister Arabella,
now a widow and at her own invitation living with
him in Indianapolis to relieve him of the social
duties of his office. She was a dozen years more
the Arabella who had roused her father's wrath
by her plans for educating her brother "like a
gentleman"; and Olivia and Fred were irritated
and even alarmed by her anything but helpful pe-
culiarities—though Scarborough seemed cheerful
and indifferent enough about them.
It was a temperamental impossibility for Du-
mont to believe that Scarborough could really be
sincere in a course which was obviously un-
profitable. Therefore he attached even more im-
portance to Arabella's cordiality than did Gladys
herself. And, when the Legislature adjourned
and Scarborough returned to Saint X for a brief
stay, Dumont sent Gladys post-haste back to the
Eyrie—that is, she instantly and eagerly acted
upon his hint.
A few evenings after her return, she and
Pauline were on the south veranda alone in the


278 THE COST
starlight. She was in low spirits and presently
began to rail against her lot.
"Don't be absurd," said Pauline. "You've
no right to complain. You have everything—
and you're—free!"
That word "free" was often on Pauline's lips
in those days. And a close observer might have
been struck by the tone in which she uttered
it. Not the careless tone of those who have
never had or have never lost freedom, but the
lingering, longing tone of those who have had
it, and have learned to value it through long
years without it.
"Yes—everything!" replied Gladys, bitterly.
"Everything except the one thing I want."
Pauline did not help her, but she was at the
stage of suppressed feeling where desire to confide
is stronger than pride.
"The one thing I want," she repeated. "Pau-
line, I used to think I'd never care much for
any man, except to like it for him to like me.
Men have always been a sort of amusement—
and the oftener the man changed, the better
the fun. I've known for several years that I
simply must marry, but I've refused to face it.
It seemed to me I was fated to wander the earth,


STORMS IN THE WEST 279
homeless, begging from door to door for leave
to come in and rest a while."
"You know perfectly well, Gladys, that this is
your home."
"Of course—in a sense. It's as much my
home as another woman's house could be. But"
—with a little sob—"I've seen my mate and I
want to begin my nest."
They were side by side on a wide, wicker sofa.
Pauline made an impulsive move to put her
arm round Gladys, then drew away and clasped
her hands tightly in her lap.
Gladys was crying, sobbing, brokenly apolo-
gizing for it—"I'm a little idiot—but I can't
help it—I haven't any pride left—a woman never
does have, really, when she's in love—oh,
Pauline, do you think he cares at all for me?"
And after a pause she went on, too absorbed
in herself to observe Pauline or to wonder at
her silence: "Sometimes I think he does. Again
I fear that—that- he doesn't. And lately—why
doesn't he come here any more?"
"You know how busy he is," said Pauline, in
a voice so strained that Gladys ought to have
noticed it.
"But it isn't that—I'm sure it isn't. No, it


STORMS IN THE WEST 281
"No, it isn't fair," said Pauline, to herself
rather than to Gladys.
"I suppose you don't sympathize with me,"
Gladys went on. "I know you don't like him.
I've noticed how strained and distant you are
toward each other. And you seem to avoid
each other. And he'll never talk of you to me.
Did you have some sort of misunderstanding
at college?"
"Yes," said Pauline, slowly. "A—a misun-
derstanding."
"And you both remember it, after all these
years?"
"Yes," said Pauline.
"How relentless you are," said Gladys, "and
how tenacious!" But she was too intent upon her
own affairs to pursue a subject which seemed to
lead away from them. Presently she rose.
"I'll be ashamed of having confessed when
I see you in daylight. But I don't care. I
shan't be sorry. I feel a little better. After
all, why should I be ashamed of any one know-
ing I care for him?" And she sighed,
laughed, went into the house, whistling softly
—sad, depressed, but hopeful, feeling deep down
r


THE COST
that she surely must win where she had never
known what it was to lose.
Pauline looked after her. "No, it isn't fair,"
she repeated. She stayed on the veranda, walk-
ing slowly to and fro—not to make up her mind,
for she had done that while Gladys was confess-
ing, but to decide how she could best accomplish
what she saw she must now no longer delay.
It was not until two hours later that she went
up to bed.
When Gladys came down at nine the next
morning Pauline had just gone out—"I think,
Miss Gladys, she told the coachman to drive to
her father's," said the butler.
Gladys set .out alone. Instead of keeping to
the paths and the woods along the edge of the
bluff she descended to the valley and the river
road. She walked rapidly, her face glowing, her
eyes sparkling—she was quick to respond to
impressions through the senses, and to-day she
felt so well physically that it reacted upon her
mind and forced her spirits up. At the turn
beyond Deer Creek bridge she met Scarborough
suddenly. He, too, was afoot and alone, and
."


STORMS IN THE WEST 283
his greeting was interpreted to her hopes by
her spirits.
"May I turn and walk with you?" he asked.
"I'm finding myself disagreeable company to-
day."
"You did look dull," she said, as they set out
together, "dull as a love-sick German. But I
supposed it was your executive pose."
"I was thinking that I'll be old before I know
it." His old-young face was shadowed for an
instant. "Old—that's an unpleasant thought,
isn't it?"
"Unpleasant for a man," said Gladys, with a
laugh, light as youth's dread of age. "For a
woman, ghastly! Old and alone—either one's
dreadful enough. But—the two together! I
often think of them. Don't laugh at me—really
I do. Don't you?"
"If you keep to that, our walk'll be a dismal
failure. It's a road I never take—if I can help
it."
"You don't look as though you were ever
gloomy." Gladys glanced up at him admiringly.
"I should have said you were one person the
blue devils wouldn't dare attack."


284 THE COST
"Yes, but they do. And sometimes they
throw me."
"And trample you?"
"And trample me," he answered absently.
"That's because you're alone too much," she
said with a look of tactful sympathy.
"Precisely," he replied. "But how am I to
prevent that?"
"Marry, of course," she retorted, smiling gaily
up at him, letting her heart just peep from her
eyes.
"Thank you! And it sounds so easy! May
I ask why you've refused to take your own
medicine—you who say you are so often blue?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I've always
suspected the men who asked me. They were
—" She did not finish what she feared might
be an unwise, repelling remark in the circum-
stances.
"They were after your money," he finished
for her.
She nodded. "They were Europeans," she
explained. "Europeans want money when they
marry."
"That's another of the curses of riches," he
said judicially. "And if you marry a rich man
"V


286 THE COST
your income equal to his—if you can stand liv-
ing economically."
"I could stand anything with or from any one
I cared for." Gladys was eager for the conversa-
tion to turn from the general to the particular.
She went on, forcing her voice to hide her inter-
est: "And you, why don't you cure your
blues?"
"Oh, I shall," he replied carelessly. "But not
with your medicine. Every one to his own pre-
scription."
"And what's yours for yourself?" said Gladys,
feeling tired and nervous from the strain of this
delayed happiness.
"Mine?" He laughed. "My dreams."
"You are a strange combination, aren't you?
In one way you're so very practical—with your
politics and all that. And in another way—I
suspect you of being sentimental—almost
romantic."
"You've plucked out the heart of my mystery.
My real name is Don Quixote de Saint X."
"And has your Dulcinea red hands and a flat
nose and freckles like the lady of Toboso?"
Gladys' hands were white, her nose notably fine,
her skin transparently clear.


STORMS IN THE WEST 287
"Being Don Quixote, I don't know it if she
has."
"And you prefer to worship afar, and to send
her news of your triumphs instead of going to
her yourself?"
"I dare not go." He was looking away, far
away. "There are wicked enchanters. I'm pow-
erless. She alone can break their spells."
They walked in silence, her heart beating so
loudly that she. thought he must be hearing it,
must be hearing what it was saying. Yes—
she must break the spells. But how—but how?
What must she say to make him see? Did he
expect her to ask him to marry her? She had
heard that rich women often were forced to
make this concession to the pride of the men
they wished to marry. On the other hand, was
there ever a man less likely than Scarborough
to let any obstacle stand between him and what
he wanted?
The first huge drops of a summer rain pat-
tered in big, round stains, brown upon the white
of the road. He glanced up—a cloud was roll-
ing from beyond the cliffs, was swiftly curtaining
the blue.
"Come," he commanded, and they darted into


288 THE COST
the underbrush, he guiding her by her arm. A
short dash among the trees and bushes and they
were at the base of the bluff, were shielded by
a shelf of rock.
"It'll be over soon," he assured her. "But
you must stand close or you'll be drenched."
A clap of thunder deafened them as a flame
and a force enswathed the sycamore tree a few
yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering its
branches, making it all in an instant a black-
ened and blasted wreck. Gladys gave a low
scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face
in his shoulder. She was trembling violently.
He put his arm round her—if he had not sup-
ported her she would have fallen. She leaned
against him, clinging to' him, so that he felt
the beat of her heart, the swell and fall of her
bosom, felt the rush of her young blood through
her veins, felt the thrill from her smooth, deli-
cate, olive skin. And he, too, was trembling—
shaken in all his nerves.
"Don't be afraid," he said—in his voice he
unconsciously betrayed the impulse that was
fighting for possession of him.
She drew herself closer to him with a long,
tremulous sigh.
"


STORMS IN THE WEST 289
"I'm a coward," she murmured. "I'm shak-
ing so that I can't stand." She tried to draw
herself away—or did she only make pretense
to him and to herself that she was trying?—
then relaxed again into his arms.
The thunder cracked and crashed; the light-
nings leaped in streaks and in sheets; the waters
gushed from the torn clouds and obscured the
light like a heavy veil. She looked up at him
in the dimness—she, too, was drunk with the
delirium of the storms raging without and within
them. His brain swam giddily. The points of
gold in her dark eyes were drawing him like
so many powerful magnets. Their lips met and
he caught her up in his arms. And for a mo-
ment all the fire of his intensely masculine na-
ture, so long repressed, raged over her lips, her
eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her chin.
A moment she lay, happy as a petrel, beaten
by a tempest; a moment her thirsty heart drank
in the ecstasy of the lightnings through her
lips and skin and hair.
She opened her eyes to find out why there
was a sudden calm. She saw him staring with
set, white face through the rain-veil. His arms
still held her, but where they had been like the


290 THE COST
clasp of life itself, they were now dead as the
arms of a statue. A feeling of cold chilled her
skin, trickled icily in and in. She released her-
self—he did not oppose her.
"It seems to me I'll never be able to look you
—or myself—in the face again," he said at last.
"I didn't know it was in me to—to take advan-
tage of a woman's helplessness."
"I wanted you to do what you did," she said
simply.
He shook his head. "You are generous," he
answered. "But I deserve nothing but your
contempt."
"I wanted you to do it," she repeated. She
was under the spell of her love and of his touch.
She was clutching to save what she could, was
desperately hoping it might not be so little as
she feared. "I had the—the same impulse that
you had." She looked at him timidly, with a
pleading smile. "And please don't say you're
sorry you did it, even if you feel so. You'll
think me very bold—I know it isn't proper for
young women to make such admissions. But
—don't reproach yourself—please!"
If she could have looked into his mind as
he stood there, crushed and degraded in his
"


STORMS IN THE WEST 291
own eyes, she would have been a little consoled
—for, in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate,
his nerves were tingling with the memory of that
delirium, and his brain was throbbing with the
surge of impulses long dormant, now imperious.
But she was not even looking toward him—
for, through her sense of shame, of wounded
pride, her love was clamoring to her to cry
out: "Take me in your arms again! I care
not on what terms, only take me and hold me
and kiss me."
The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it
had begun and they returned under the drip-
ping leaves to the highroad. She glanced
anxiously at him as they walked toward the
town, but he did not speak. She saw that if
the silence was to be broken, she must break it.
"What can I say to convince you?" she asked,
as if not he but she were the offender.
He did not answer.
"Won't you look at me, please?"
He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks,
his eyes unsteady.
"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer be-
cause you fancy you've wronged me. Isn't it


292 THE COST
ungallant of you to act 'this way after I've
humiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?"
"Thank you," he said humbly, and looked
away.
"You won't have it that I was in the least
responsible?" She was teasing him now—he
was plainly unaware of the meaning- of her yield-
ing. "He's so modest," she thought, and went
on: "You won't permit me to flatter myself I
was a temptation too strong even for your iron
heart, Don Quixote?"
He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the real-
ization of the truth set her eyes to flashing.
"It's before another woman he's abasing him-
self," she thought, "not before me. He isn't
even thinking of me." When she spoke her
tone was cold and sneering: "I hope she will
forgive you. She certainly would if she could
know what a paladin you are."
He winced, but did not answer. At the road
up the bluffs she paused and there was an em-
barrassed silence. Then he poured out abrupt
sentences:
"It was doubly base. I betrayed your friendly
trust, I was false to her. Don't misunderstand
—she's nothing to me. She's nothing to me,


STORMS IN THE WEST 293
yet everything. I began really to live when I
began to love her. And—every one must have
a—a pole-star. And she's mine—the star I sail
by, and always must. And—" He halted
altogether, then blundered on: "I shall not
forgive myself. But you—be merciful—forgive
me—forget it!"
"I shall do neither," she replied curtly, jeal-
ousy and vanity stamping down the generous
impulse that rose in response to his appeal. And
she went up her road. A few yards and she
paused, hoping to hear him coming after her.
A few yards more and she sat down on a big
boulder by the wayside. Until now all the wishes
of her life had been more or less material, had
been wishes which her wealth or the position
her wealth gave had enabled her instantly to
gratify. She buried her face in her arms and
sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cy-
clone of anger, and jealousy, and shame, and
love, and despair.
"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched
teeth. "I hate him, but— if he came and wanted
me, oh, how I would love him!"
Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.


294 THE COST
"He isn't down yet," said her mother. "You
know, he doesn't finish dressing nowadays until
he has read the papers and his mail. Then he
walks in the garden."
"I'll go there," said Pauline. "Won't you
bring him when he's ready?"
She never entered the garden that the ghosts
of her childhood—how far, far it seemed!—did
not join her, brushing against her, or rustling*
in tree and bush and leafy trellis. She paused
at the end of the long arbor and sat on the
rustic bench there. A few feet away was the bed
of lilies-of-the-valley. Every spring of her child-
hood she used to run from the house on the
first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her
glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon
the young grass and lower her head until her
long golden hair touched the black ground; and
the soil that had been hard and cold all winter
would be cracked open this way and that; and
from the cracks would issue an odor—the odor
of life. And as she would peer into each crack
in turn she would see, down, away down, the
pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting
slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with
joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently
"'


STORMS IN THE WEST 298
rise green above the black earth, would unfold,
would blossom, would bloom, would fling from
tremulous bells a perfumed proclamation of the
arrival of spring.
As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that
through the black earth of her life she could
see and feel the backward heralds of her spring
—"after the long winter," she said to herself.
She glanced up—her father coming toward
her. He was alone, was holding a folded let-
ter uncertainly in his hand. He looked at her,
his eyes full of pity and grief. "Pauline," he
began, "has everything been—been well—of late
between you and—your husband?"
She started. "No, father," she replied. Then,
looking at him with clear directness: "I've not.
been showing you and mother the truth about
John and me—not for a long time."
She saw that her answer relieved him. He
hesitated, held out the letter.
"The best way is for you to read it," he said.
It was a letter to him from Fanshaw. He was
writing, he explained, because the discharge of
a painful duty to himself would compel him "to
give pain to your daughter whom I esteem
highly," and he thought it only right "to pre-


296 THE COST
pare her and her family for what was coming, in
order that they might be ready to take the action
that would suggest itself." And he went on to
relate his domestic troubles and his impending
suit.
"Poor Leonora!" murmured Pauline, as she
finished and sat thinking of all that Fanshaw's
letter involved.
"Is it true, Polly?" asked her father.
She gave a great sigh of relief. How easy
this letter had made all that she had been
dreading! "Yes—it's true," she replied. "I've
known about—about it ever since the time I
came back from the East and didn't return."
The habitual pallor of her father's face
.changed to gray.
"I left him, father." She lifted her head, im-
patient of her stammering. A bright flush was
in her face as she went on rapidly: "And I
came to-day to tell you the whole story—to be
truthful and honest again. I'm sick of deception
and evasion. I can't stand it any longer—I
mustn't. I—you don't know how I've shrunk
from wounding mother and you. But I've no
choice now. Father, I must be free—free!"
"And you shall be," replied her father.


STORMS IN THE WEST 297
"He shall not wreck your life and Gardiner's."
Pauline stared at him. "Father!" she ex-
claimed.
He put his arm round her and drew her
gently to him.
"I know the idea is repellent," he said, as if
he were trying to persuade a child. "But it's
right, Pauline. There are cases in which not to
divorce would be a sin. I hope my daughter
sees that this is one."
"I don't understand," she said confusedly. "I
thought you and mother believed divorce was
dreadful—no matter what might happen."
"We did, Pauline. But we—that is, I—had
never had it brought home. A hint of this story
was published just after you came last year. I
thought it false, but it set me to thinking. 'If
your daughter's husband had turned out to be
as you once thought him, would it be right for
her to live on with him? To live a lie, to pretend
to keep her vows to love and honor him? Would
it be right to condemn Gardiner to be poisoned
by such a father?' And at last I saw the truth,
and your mother agreed with me. We had
been too narrow. We had been laying down
our own notions as God's great justice.,"


298 THE COST
Pauline drew away from her father so that she
could look at him. And at last she saw into his
heart. "If I had only known," she said, and sat
numb and stunned.
"When you were coming home from college,"
her father went on, "your mother and I talked
over what we should do. John had just con-
fessed your secret marriage—"
"You knew that!"
"Yes, and we understood, Polly. You were
so young—so headstrong—and you couldn't ap-
preciate our reasons."
Pauline's brain was reeling.
"Your mother and I talked it over before you
got home and thought it best to leave you en-
tirely free to choose. But when we saw you
overcome by joy—"
"Don't!" she interrupted, her voice a cry of
pain. "I can't bear it! Don't!" Years of false
self-sacrifice, of deceiving her parents and her
child, of self-suppression and self-degradation,
and this final cruelty to Gladys—all, all in vain,
all a heaping of folly upon folly, of wrong upon
wrong.
She rushed toward the house. She must fly
somewhere—anywhere—to escape the thoughts



STORMS IN THE WEST 299
that were picking with sharp beaks at her ach-
ing heart. Half-way up the walk she turned and
fled to a refuge she would not have thought of
half an hour before—to her father's arms.
"Oh, father," she cried. "If I had only known
you!"
Gladys, returning from her walk, went di-
rectly to Pauline's sitting-room.
"I'm off for New York and Europe to-mor-
row morning," she began abruptly, her voice
hard, her expression bitter and reckless.
"Where can she have heard about Leonora?"
thought Pauline. She said in a strained voice:
"I had hoped you would stay here to look after
the house."
"To look after the house? What do you
mean?" asked Gladys. But she was too full of
herself to be interested in the answer, and went
on: "I want you to forget what I said to you.
I've got over all that. I've come to my senses."
Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.
Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest
him," she went on. "We're very changeable,
we women, aren't we? I went out of this house
two hours ago loving him—to distraction. I


300 THE COST
came back hating him. And all that has hap-
pened in between is that I met him and he kissed
me a few times and stabbed my pride a few
times."
Pauline stopped turning her rings—she rose
slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.
"That is not true," she said calmly.
Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't
know the cold and haughty Governor Scarbor-
ough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel
the places on my face where it scorched. Can't
you see them?"
Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How
like John Dumont's sister!" she thought. And
she shut herself in her room and stayed there,
pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was
gone.


XXIII.
A SEA SURPRISE.
On the third day from New York, Gladys was
so far recovered from seasickness that she
dragged herself to the deck. The water was
fairly smooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was fall-
ing. A deck-steward put her steamer-chair in
a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess
swathed her in capes and rugs; she closed her
eyes and said: "Now leave me, please, and don't
come near me till I send for you."
She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt
better. Some one had drawn a chair beside
hers and was seated there—a man, for she
caught the faint odor of a pipe, though the wind
was the other way. She turned her head. It
was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she
went below a few hours after Sandy Hook dis-
appeared. Indeed, she had almost forgotten
that he was on board and that her brother had
asked him to look after her. He was staring at
her in an absent-minded way, his wonted expres-
301


302 THE COST
sion of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than
usual. In fact, his face was almost serious.
"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it
away."
He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon," he
said. "It was stupid of me. I was absorbed in
—in my book."
"What's the name of it?"
He turned it to glance at the cover, but she
went on: "No—don't tell me. I've no desire
to know. I asked merely to confirm my sus-
picion."
"You're right," he said. "I wasn't reading.
I was looking at you."
"That was impertinent. A man should not
look at a woman when she doesn't intend him
to look."
"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested
only in things not meant for my eyes. I might
even read letters not addressed to me if I didn't
know how dull letters are. No intelligent per-
son ever says anything in a letter nowadays.
They use the telegraph for ordinary correspon-
dence, and telepathy for the other kind. But it
was interesting—looking at you as you lay
asleep."


A SEA SURPRISE 303
"Was my mouth open?" .
"A little."
"Am I yellow?"
"Very."
"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"
"All that," he said, "and skin somewhat mot-
tled. But I was not so much interested in your
beauty as I was in trying to determine whether
you were well enough to stand two shocks."
"I need them," replied Gladys.
"One is rather unpleasant, the other—the
reverse—in fact a happiness."
"The unpleasant first, please."
"Certainly," he replied. "Always the medi-
cine first, then the candy." And he leaned back
and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling
himself for indefinite silence.
"Go on," she said impatiently. "What's the
medicine? A death?"
"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy
dies it's all joy. When a friend passes over to
eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we are
not so faithless and selfish as to let the momen-
tary separation distress us."
"But what is it? You're trying to gain time
by all this beating about the bush. You ought


306 THE COST
"How did you have the courage to speak
when I'm looking such a wreck?" she asked with
mock gravity.
"But you ain't—you're looking better now.
That first shock braced you up. Besides, this
isn't romance. It's no high flight with all the
longer drop and all the harder jolt at the land-
ing. It's a plain, practical proposition."
Gladys slowly sat up and studied him
curiously.
"Do you really mean it?" she asked. Each
was leaning on an elbow, gazing gravely into
the other's face.
"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject
as marriage. I'm far too timid for that. What
do you say, Gladys?"
She had never seen him look serious before,
and she was thinking that the expression became
him.
"He knows how to make himself attractive to
a woman when he cares to," she said to herself.
"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind.
Serious people bore one so after a while." By
"serious people" she meant one serious person
whom she had admired particularly for his
seriousness. But she was in another mood now,
1 v


A SEA SURPRISE 307
another atmosphere—the atmosphere she had
breathed since she was thirteen, except in the
brief period when her infatuation for Scarbor-
ough had swept her away from her world.
"No!" She shook her head with decision—
and felt decided. But to his practised ear there
was in her voice a hint that she might hear him
further on the subject.
They lay back in their chairs, he watching the
ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching
him. After a while he said: "Where are you
going when we reach the other side?"
"To join mother and auntie."
"And how long will you stay with them?"
"Not more than a week, I should say," she
answered with a grimace.
"And then—where?"
She did not reply for some time. Studying
her face, he saw an expression of lonesomeness
gather and strengthen and deepen until she
looked so forlorn that he felt as if he must take
her in his arms. When she spoke it was to say
dubiously: "Back to New York—to keep house
for my brother—perhaps."
"And when his wife frees herself and he mar-
ries again—where will you go?"


308 THE COST
Gladys lifted a fold of her cape and drew it
about her as if she were cold. But he noted
that it hid her face from him.
"You want—you need—a home? So do I,"
he went on tranquilly. "You are tired of wan-
dering? So am I. You are bored with parade
and parade-people? So am I. You wish free-
dom, not bondage, when you marry? I refuse
to be bound, and I don't wish to bind any one.
We have the same friends, the same tastes, have
had pretty much the same experiences. You
don't want to be married for your money. I'm
not likely to be suspected of doing that sort of
thing."
"Some one has said that rich men marry more
often for money than poor men," interrupted
Gladys. And then she colored as she recalled
who had said it.
Langdon noted her color as he noted every
point in any game he was playing; he shrewdly
guessed its origin. "When Scarborough told
you that," he replied calmly, "he told you a
great truth. But please remember, I merely said
I shouldn't be suspected of marrying you for
money. I didn't say I wasn't guilty."
"Is your list of reasons complete?"
S


A SEA SURPRISE 309
"Two more—the clinchers. You are disap-
pointed in love—so am I. You need consola-
tion—so do I. When one can't have the best
one takes the best one can get, if one is sensible.
It has been known to turn out not so badly."
They once more lay back watching the clouds.
An hour passed without either's speaking. The
deck-steward brought them tea and biscuits
which he declined and she accepted. She tried
the big, hard, tasteless disk between her strong
white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "You
pried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm
going to pry into yours. Who was she?"
"As the lady would have none of me, there's
no harm in confessing," replied Langdon, care-
lessly. "She was—and is—and—" he looked
at her—"ever shall be, world without end—
Gladys Dumont."
Gladys gasped and glanced at him with swift
suspicion that he was jesting. He returned her
glance in a calm, matter-of-fact way. She leaned
back in her chair and they watched the slippery
rail slide up and down against the background
of chilly, rainy sea and sky.
"Are you asleep?" he asked after a long
silence.


310 THE COST
"No," she replied. "I was thinking."
"Of my—proposition?"
"Yes."
"Doesn't it grow on you?"
"Yes."
He shifted himself to a sitting position with
much deliberateness. He put his hand in among
her rugs and wraps until it touched hers. "It
may turn out better than you anticipate," he
said, a little sentiment in his eyes and smile, a
little raillery in his voice.
"I doubt if it will," she answered, without
looking at him directly. "For—I—anticipate a
great deal."
N


XXIV.
DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT.
Fanshaw versus Fanshaw was heard privately
by a referee; and before Mrs. Fanshaw's lawyers
had a chance to ask that the referee's report be
sealed from publicity, the judge of his own mo-
tion ordered it. At the political club to which
he belonged, he had received an intimation
from the local "boss" that if Dumont's name
were anywhere printed in connection with the
case he would be held responsible. Thus it came
to pass that on the morning of the filing of the
decree the newspapers were grumbling over
their inability to give the eagerly-awaited details
of the great scandal. And Herron was Catoniz-
ing against "judicial corruption."
But Dumont was overswift in congratulating
himself on his escape and in preening himself on
his power.
For several days the popular newspapers were
alone in denouncing the judge for favoritism
and in pointing out that the judiciary were "be-
coming subservient to the rich and the power-
311


312 THE COST
ful in their rearrangements of their domestic re-
lations—a long first step toward complete sub-
servience." Herron happened to have among
his intimates the editor of an eminently respect-
able newspaper that prides itself upon never
publishing private scandals. He impressed his
friend with his own strong views as to the grav-
ity of this growing discrimination between
masses and classes; and the organ of independ-
ent conservatism was presently lifting up its sol-
emn voice in a stentorian jeremiad.
Without this reinforcement the "yellows"
might have shrieked in vain. It was assumed
that baffled sensationalism was by far a stronger
motive with them than justice, and the pub-
lic was amused rather than aroused by their
protests. But now soberer dailies and weeklies
took up the case and the discussion spread to
other cities, to the whole country. By his au-
dacity, by his arrogant frankness—he had lat-
terly treated public opinion with scantiest cour-
tesy—by his purchase of campaign committees,
and legislatures, and courts, Dumont had
made himself in the public mind an embodi-
ment of the "mighty and menacing plutocracy"
pf which the campaign orators talked so much.


DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT 313
And the various phases of the scandal gave the
press a multitude of texts for satirical, or pessi-
mistic, or fiery discourses upon the public and
private rottenness of "plutocrats."
But Dumont's name was never directly men-
tioned. Every one knew who was meant; no
newspaper dared to couple him in plain lan-
guage with the scandal. The nearest approach
to it was where one New York newspaper pub-
lished, without comment, in the center of a long
news article on the case, two photographs of Du-
mont side by side—one taken when he first
came to New York, clear-cut, handsome, cour-
ageous, apparently a type of progressive young
manhood; the other, taken within the year,
gross, lowering, tyrannical, obviously a type of
indulged, self-indulgent despot.
Herron had forced Fanshaw to abandon the
idea of suing Dumont for a money consolation.
He had been deeply impressed by his wife's
warnings against Fanshaw—"a lump of soot,
and sure to smutch you if you go near him."
He was reluctant to have Fanshaw give up the
part of the plan which insured the public dam-
nation of Dumont,but there was no other pru-
dent course. He assured himself that he knew


314 THE COST
Fanshaw to be an upright man; but he did not
go to so perilous a length in self-deception as
to fancy he could convince cynical and incred-
ulous New York. It was too eager to find ex-
cuses for successful and admired men like Du-
mont, too ready to laugh at and despise under-
dogs like Fanshaw. Herron never admitted it
to himself, but in fact it was he who put it into
Fanshaw's resourceless mind to compass the
revenge of publicity in another way.
Fanshaw was denouncing the judge for seal-
ing the divorce testimony, and the newspapers
for being so timid about libel laws and contempt
of court.
"If a newspaper should publish the testi-
mony," said Herron, "Judge Glassford would
never dare bring the editor before him for con-
tempt. His record's too bad. I happen to know
he was in the News-Record office no longer ago
than last month, begging for the suppression of
an article that might have caused his impeach-
ment, if published. So there's one paper that
wouldn't be afraid of him."
"Then why does it shield the scoundrel?"
"Perhaps," replied Herron, his hand on the
door of his office law-library, "it hasn't been able


316 THE COST
used to seeing extensive and highly unflattering
accounts of himself and his doings in print; but
theretofore every open attack had been on some
public matter where a newspaper "pounding"
might be attributed to politics or stock-jobbery.
Here—it was a verbatim official report, and of a
private scandal, more dangerous to his financial
standing than the fiercest assault upon his hon-
esty as a financier; for it tore away the founda-
tion of reputation—private character. A faith-
ful transcript throughout, it portrayed him
as a bag of slimy gold and gilded slime. He
hated his own face staring out at him from a
three-column cut in the center of the first
page—its heavy jaw, its cynical mouth, its im-
pudent eyes. "Do I look like that?" he thought.
He was like one who, walking along the streets,
catches sight of his own image in a show-win-
dow mirror and before he recognizes it, sees
himself as others see him. He flushed to his
temples at the contrast with the smaller cut
beside it—the face of Pauline, high and fine,
icily beautiful as always in her New York days
when her features were in repose.
Culver shifted from one weak leg to the other,
and the movement reminded Dumont of his


DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT 317.
existence. "That's all. Clear out!" he ex-
claimed, and fell back into his big chair and
closed his eyes. He thought he at last under-
stood publicity.
But he was mistaken.
He finished dressing and choked down a lit-
tle breakfast. As he advanced toward the front
door the servant there coughed uneasily and
said: "Beg pardon, sir, but I fear you won't be
able to get out."
"What's the matter?" he demanded, his
brows contracting and his lips beginning to slide
back in a snarl—it promised to be a sad morning
for human curs of all kinds who did not scurry
out of the lion's way.
"The crowd, sir," said the servant. And he
drew aside the curtain across the glass in one of
the inside pair of great double doors of the
palace entrance. . "It's quite safe to look, sir.
They can't see through the outside doors as far
as this."
Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork.
A closely packed mass of people was choking
the sidewalk and street—his brougham was like
an island in a troubled lake. He saw several
policemen—they were trying to move the crowd


318 THE COST
on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge
cameras, their operators under the black cloths,
their lenses pointed at the door—waiting for
him to appear. For the first time in his life he
completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity,
the paper—a lifeless sheet of print; but also
publicity, the public—with living eyes to peer
and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly,
appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick
the moment before.
"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a
voice without a trace of courage.
"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The
basement door wouldn't help very much, would
it?"
The basement door was in front also. "Idiot I
Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.
"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant,
perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagina-
tion, his mind made no picture of the great
captain of industry scrambling over back fences
like a stray cat flying from a brick.
Dumont turned back and into his first-floor
sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy
bottles, poured out an enormous drink and
gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his


DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT 319
head. He went to the window and looked out
—there must have been five hundred people in
the street, and vehicles were making their way
slowly and with difficulty, drivers, gaping at the
house and joking with the crowd; newsboys,
bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of
papers, were darting in and out, and even
through the thick plate glass he could hear:
"All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"
He went through to a rear window. No,
there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall.
A servant came and told him he was wanted at
the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a
voice that was striving in vain to be calm against
the pressure of some intense excitement: "You
are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"
"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word
out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.
"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on
us."
"Who's to do the raiding?"
"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith
and Cassell and Herron. It's a raid for control."
Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret.
We're all right. I'll be down soon." And he
hung up the receiver, muttering: "The ass! I


,

WITH A ROARING HOWL HE RELEASED HIS HOLD UPON
THE LADDER





322 THE COST
Giddings was apparently right. From a tower
of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease,
National Woolens, and the vast structure based
upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruc-
tion and a weakness. There is an abysmal dif-
ference between everybody knowing a thing pri-
vately and everybody knowing precisely the
same thing publicly. In that newspaper expos-
ure there was no fact of importance that was
not known to the entire Street, to his chief sup-
porters in his great syndicate of ranches, rail-
roads, factories, steamship lines and selling
agencies. But the tremendous blare of pub-
licity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. The
solid walls of his public reputation tottered, top-
pled, fell flat.
There had been a tight money-market for two
weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to
all the small and many of the large "industrials,"
belief in National Woolens and in the stability
of John Dumont had remained strong. But of
all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital,
the most craven is Confidence. At the deafen-
ing crash of the fall of Dumont's private char-
acter, Confidence girded its loins and tightened


324 THE COST
would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened
market that would surely result. They showed
a disposition to rally to the support of the Du-
mont stocks.
At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that
the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a
real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his
trump card.
The National Industrial Bank is the huge
barometer to which both speculative and invest-
ing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that
bank protects is as safe as was the medieval
fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanc-
tuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour
of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as
a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable.
Melville, president of the National Industrial,
was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a
nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral.
He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all
matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of
Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had
been working upon him. But so long as Du-
mont's share in the scandal was not publicly at-
tributed he remained obdurate—he never per-
mitted his up-town creed or code to interfere


DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT 325
with his down-town doings unless it became
necessary—that is, unless it could be done with-
out money loss. For up-town or down-town,
to make money was always and in all circum-
stances the highest morality, to lose money the
profoundest immorality.
At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and
the president of the other banks of his chain
oiled loans to Dumont and the Dumont sup-
porting group to the amount of three millions
and a quarter. Ten minutes later other banks
and trust companies whose loans to Dumont
and his allies either were on call or contained
provisions permitting a demand for increased
collateral, followed Melville's example and
aimed and sped their knives for Dumont's vitals.
Giddings found himself face to face with un-
expected and peremptory demands for eleven
millions in cash and thirteen millions in addi-
tional collateral securities. If he did not meet
these demands forthwith the banks and trust
companies, to protect themselves, would throw
upon the market at whatever price they could
get the thirty-odd millions of Woolens stocks
which they held as collateral for the loans.
"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he ex-


DUMONT BETRAYS DUMONT 327
held back wavering banks and trust companies,
persuading some that all was well, warning
others that if they pressed him they would lose
all. On the other side, he faced his powerful
foes and made them quake as they saw their
battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line
of battle only to break and disappear. At noon
National Woolens preferred was at fifty-eight,
the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was be-
ginning to hope.
At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked
out: "It is reported that John Dumont is
dying."
As that last word jerked letter by letter from
under the printing wheel the floor of the Stock
Exchange became the rapids of a human Niag-
ara. By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone,
holders of National Woolens and other indus-
trials, in the financial district, in all parts of the
country, across the sea, poured in their selling
orders upon the frenzied brokers. And all these
forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that
narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos of
contending demons. All stocks were caught
in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the ex-
plosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in


328 THE COST
a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic
tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac
contortions of faces, National Woolens and all
the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing
down, down, down, every one struggling to un-
load.
Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the
many galleons that day driven on the rocks and
wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most part
engulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends
reached the shore half-drowned and humbly ap-
plied at the wreckers' camp; they were hos-
pitably received and were made as comfortable
as their exhausted condition permitted.
John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert
Herron in his own company. If he lived he
would be president only until the next annual
meeting—less than two months away; and the
Herron crowd had won over enough of his
board of directors to make him meanwhile pow-
erless where he had been autocrat.


XXV.
THE FALLEN KING.
Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged
from the stupor into which Doctor Sackett's opi-
ate had plunged him. At once his mind began to
grope about for the broken clues of his business.
His valet appeared.
"The morning papers," said Dumont.
"Yes, sir," replied the valet, and disappeared.
After a few seconds Culver came and halted
just within the doorway. "I'm sorry, sir, but
Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were to
be quiet. Your life depends on it."
Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected
—the crowning touch in his most imperious ex-
pression. "The papers, all of 'em,—quick!" he
commanded.
Culver took a last look at the blue-white face
and bloodshot eyes to give him courage to stand
firm. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes,"
he said, bowed and went out.
Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang
for his valet and forced him to help him dress.


330 THE COST
He was so weak when he finished that only his
will kept him from fainting. He took a stiff
drink of the brandy—the odor was sickening to
him and he could hardly force it down. But
once down, it strengthened him.
"No, nothing to eat," he said thickly, and
with slow but fairly steady step left his room
and descended to the library. Culver was there
—sat agape at sight of his master. "But you—
you must not—" he began.
Dumont gave him an ugly grin. "But I will!"
he said, and again drank brandy. He turned
and went out and toward the front door, Culver
following with stammering protests which he
heeded not at all. On the sidewalk he hailed
a passing hansom. "To the Edison Building,"
he said and drove off, Culver, bareheaded at
the curb, looking dazedly after him. Before he
reached Fifty-ninth Street he was half-sitting,
half-reclining in the corner of the seat, his eyes
closed and his senses sinking into a stupor from
the fumes of the powerful doses of brandy. As
the hansom drove down the avenue many rec-
ognized him, wondered and pitied as they noted
his color, his collapsed body, head fallen on one
side, mouth open and lips greenish gray. As


THE FALLEN KING 331
the hansom slowly crossed the tracks at Twenty-
third Street the heavy jolt roused him.
"The newspapers," he muttered, and hurled
up through the trap in the roof an order to the
driver to stop. He leaned over the doors and
bought half a dozen newspapers of the woman at
the Flat-iron stand. As the hansom moved on
he glanced at the head-lines—they were big and
staring, but his blurred eyes could not read
them. He fell asleep again, his hands clasped
loosely about the huge proclamations of yes-
terday's battle and his rout.
The hansom was caught in a jam at Chambers
Street. The clamor of shouting, swearing drivers
roused him. The breeze from the open sea,
blowing straight up Broadway into his face,
braced him like the tonic that it is. He straight-
ened himself, recovered his train of thought,
stared at one of the newspapers and tried to
grasp the meaning of its head-lines. But they
made only a vague impression on him.
"It's all lies," he muttered. "Lies! How could
those fellows smash me!" And he flung the
newspapers out of the hansom into the faces of
two boys seated upon the tail of a truck.
"You're drunk early," yelled one of the boys.


332 THE COST
"That's no one-day jag," shouted the other.
"It's a hang-over."
He made a wild, threatening gesture and, as
his hansom drove on, muttered and mumbled to
himself, vague profanity aimed at nothing and
at everything. At the Edison Building he got
out.
"Wait!" he said to the driver. He did not see
the impudent smirk on the face of the elevator
boy nor the hesitating, sheepish salutation of
the door-man, uncertain how to greet the fallen
king. He went straight to his office, unlocked
his desk and, just in time to save himself from
fainting, seized and half-emptied a flask of
brandy he kept in a drawer. It had been there
—but untouched—ever since he came to New
York and took those offices; he never drank
in business hours.
His head was aching horribly and at every
throb of his pulse a pain tore through him. He
rang for his messenger.
"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him—you!"
he said, his teeth clenched and his eyes blazing—
he looked insane.
Giddings came. His conscience was clear—
he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing,


THE FALLEN KING 333
yet had stood by him until further fidelity would
have ruined himself, would not have saved Du-
mont, or prevented the Herron-Cassell raiders
from getting control. Now that he could afford
to look at his revenge-books he was deeply re-
senting the insults and indignities heaped upon
him in the past five years. But he was unable
to gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the phy-
sical and mental wreck in that chair which he
had always seen occupied by the most robust
of despots.
"Well," said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice,
without looking at him. "What's happened?"
Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning
but could find none. "They did us up—that's
all," he said funereally.
Dumont lifted himself into a momentary sem-
blance of his old look and manner. "You lie,
damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and
ragged as a hungry tiger's.
Giddings began to cringe, remembered the
changed conditions, bounded to his feet.
"I'll tolerate such language from no man!"
he exclaimed. "I wish you good morning, sir!"
And he was on his way to the door.
"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And


THE FALLEN KING 335
he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pity-
ingly.
"A sure enough dead one," he muttered, un-
consciously using the slang of the Street which
he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing
the door behind him.
After half an hour Dumont roused himself—
out of a stupor into a half-delirious dream.
"Must get cash," he mumbled, "and look after
the time loans." He lifted his head and pushed
back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stamp
on those curs yet!"
He took another drink—his hands were so un-
steady that he had to use both of them in lifting
it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket in-
stead of returning it to the drawer. No one
spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he
passed through the offices on his way to the ele-
vator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at
the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a
groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his
heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and
fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers,
newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed
as they looked at the man who had been for five


336 THE COST
years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought
of his dazzling catastrophe.
"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer,
apparently a tourist, edging his way into the out-
skirts of the crowd.
"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens
Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in
a low tone. "He was raided yesterday—woke up
in the morning worth a hundred millions, went
to bed worth—perhaps five, maybe nothing at
all."
At this exaggeration of the height and depth
of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense
in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to
nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions
—what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be
he who could fall so far. The driver peered
through the trap, wondering why his distin-
guished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He
saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand
and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as
Dumont straightened himself.
"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool,"
snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell
you?"
"Thank you, sir," said the driver—without sar-


THE FALLEN KING 337
casm, thinking steadfastly of his pay—and drove
swiftly away.
Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the Na-
tional Industrial Bank he had been received as
one king is received by another. Either eager and
obsequious high officers of King Melville had
escorted him directly to the presence, or King Mel-
ville, because he had a caller who could not be
summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically
to conduct King Dumont to another audience
chamber. That day the third assistant cashier
greeted him with politeness carefully graded to
the due of a man merely moderately rich and not
a factor in the game of high finance.
"Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to
a chair just inside the railing—a seat not un-
worthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic
hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll
see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged."
Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy
head was almost immediately resting upon his
shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier re-
turned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr.
Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles
will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-
president.



UK READ AT THE NEWSPAPER S ACCOUNT OF HIS OVERTHROW





THE FALLEN KING 339
the boy, with an impudent grin, balancing himself
for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"
The newspapers had made his face as familiar
as the details of his private life. He shrank and
quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!" he
said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were
not his own.
"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver.
Dumont shrank again and sat cowering in the
corner—the very calling him by his name, now a
synonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and con-
tempt, seemed a subtile insult.
With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes
he read at the newspaper's account of his over-
throw. And gradually there formed in his mind
a coherent notion of how it had come to pass,
of its extent; of why he found himself lying in
the depths, the victim of humiliations so frightful
that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and
crazed with drink and fever though he was. His
courage, his self-command were burnt up by the
brandy. His body had at last revolted, was hav-
ing its terrible revenge upon the mind that had
so long misused it in every kind of indulgence.
"I'm done for—done for," he repeated audibly
again and again, at each repetition looking round


340 THE COST
mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny
this assertion—but he cast about in vain. "Yes,
I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper
he settled back and ceased to try to think of his
affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his
blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks,
spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-
open mouth.
The hansom stopped before his brick and
marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped
him alight—not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he
were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said
and groped his way into the house and to the
elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his
floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He
waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb
me till I ring."
"The doctor—" began Mallow.
"Do as I tell you!"
When he was alone he poured out brandy and
gulped it down'—a drink that might have eaten
the lining straight out of a stomach less power-
ful than his. He went from door to door, lock-
ing them all. Then he seated himself in a loung-
ing-chair before the long mirror. He stared to-
ward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed


THE FALLEN KING 341
that he could see nothing but spinning black
disks. "Life's not such a good game even when
a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad
game when he's losing."
His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused
himself. "Wife gone—" The tears flooded
his eyes—tears of pity for himself, an injured
and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he re-
peated. "Friends gone—" He laughed sar-
donically. "No, never had friends, thank God,
or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such
thing as friends—a man gets what he can pay
for. Grip gone—luck gone! What's the use?"
He dozed off, presently to start into acute,
shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the
room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the
divan was a—a Thing! He could not define its
shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was
scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws;
that its color was green, that its purpose was hid-
eous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-
yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his
brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and
the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep
breath of relief.
He went to a case of drawers and stood before


342 THE COST
it, supporting himself by the handles of the sec-
ond drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's
in that drawer." He released the handles and
staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he mut-
tered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the
doctor."
In a moment he was up again, but instead of
going toward the bell he went to the drawers and
opened the second one. In a compartment lay a
pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his
hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away—the
steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the
drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly,
took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk
and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in
spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He
rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his
hands and stared at the revolver.
"But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dis-
missing a suggestion, "why should I shoot my-
self? I can smash 'em all—to powder—grind 'em
into the dirt."
He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use
of smashing 'em?" he said wearily. He felt tired
and sick, horribly sick.
He laid it down, "I'd better be careful," he



I HAVE COME TO STAY





XXVI.
A DESPERATE RALLY.
When he awoke again he felt that he should
get well rapidly. He was weak, but it seemed the
weakness of hunger rather than of illness. His
head was clear, his nerves tranquil; his mind was
as hungry for action as his body was for food.
"As soon as I've had something to eat," he said
to himself, "I'll be better than for years. I needed
this." And straightway he began to take hold
of the outside world.
"Are you there, Pauline?" he asked, after per-
haps half an hour during which his mind had
swiftly swept the whole surface of his affairs.
The nurse rose from the lounge across the foot
of the bed. "Your wife was worn out, Mr. Du-
mont," she began. "She has—"
"What day is it?" he interrupted.
"Thursday."
"Of the month, I mean."
"The seventeenth," she answered, smiling in
anticipation of his astonishment.
But he said without change of expression,
346


A DESPERATE RALLY 347
"Then I've been ill three weeks and three days.
Tell Mr. Culver I wish to see him at once."
"But the doctor—"
"Damn the doctor," replied Dumont, good-na-
turedly. "Don't irritate me by opposing. I
shan't talk with Culver a minute by the clock.
What I say will put my mind at rest. Then I'll
eat something and sleep for a day at least.".
The nurse hesitated, but his eyes fairly forced
her out of the room to fetch Culver. "Now re-
member, Mr. Dumont—less than a minute," she
said. "I'll come back in just sixty seconds."
"Come in forty," he replied. When she had
closed the door he said to Culver: "What are the
quotations on Woolens?"
"Preferred twenty-eight; Common seven," an-
swered Culver. "They've been about steady for
two weeks."
"Good. And what's Great Lakes and Gulf?"
Culver showed his surprise. "I'll have to con-
sult the paper," he said. "You never asked me
for that quotation before. I'd no idea you'd want
it." He went to the next room and immediately
returned. "G. L. and G. one hundred and two."
Dumont smiled with a satisfied expression/
"Now—go down-town—what time is it?"
r


348 THE COST
"Eight o'clock."
"Morning?"
"Yes, sir, morning."
"Go down-town at once and set expert account-
ants—'get Evarts and Schuman—set them at
work on my personal accounts with the Woolens
Company. Tell everybody I'm expected to die,
and know it, and am getting facts fon making
my will. And stay down-town yourself all day
—find out everything you can about National
Woolens and that raiding crowd and about Great
Lakes and Gulf. The better you succeed in this
mission the better it'll be for you. Thank you,
by the way, for keeping my accident quiet. Find
out how the Fanning-Smiths are carrying Na-
tional Woolens. Find out—"
The door opened and the plain, clean figure of
the nurse appeared. "The minute's up," she said.
"One second more, please. Close the door."
When she had obeyed he went on: "See Tavis-
tock—you know you must be careful not to let
any one at his office know that you're connected
with me. See him—ask him—no, telephone
Tavistock to come at once—and you find out all
you can independently—especially about the Fan-
ning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf."
--.


A DESPERATE RALLY 349
"Very well," said Culver.
"A great deal depends on your success," con-
tinued Dumont—"a great deal for me, a great
deal—a very great deal for you."
His look met Culver's and each seemed satis-
fied with what he saw. Then Culver went, say-
ing to himself: "What makes him think the
Fanning-Smiths were mixed up in the raid? And
what on earth has G. L. and G. got to do with
it? Gad, he's a wonder!" The longer Culver
lived in intimacy with Dumont the greater became
to him the mystery of his combination of bigness
and littleness, audacity and caution, devil and
man. "It gets me," he often reflected, "how a
man can plot to rob millions of people in one hour
and in the next plan endowments for hospitals
and colleges; despise public opinion one minute
and the next be courting it like an actor. But
that's the way with all these big fellows. And
I'll know how to do it when I get to be one of
em.
As the nurse reentered Dumont's bedroom he
called out, lively as a boy: "Something to eat!
Anything to eat! Everything to eat!"
The nurse at first flatly refused to admit Tavis-


A DESPERATE RALLY 351
"There aren't many big holders. Most of the
stock's in small lots in the middle West."
"So much the better."
"I'm pretty sure I can get you a fairly accurate
list."
Tavistock, Dumont's very private and personal
broker, had many curious ways of reaching into
the carefully guarded books and other business
secrets of brokers and of the enterprises listed on
the New York Stock Exchange. He and Dumont
had long worked together in the speculative parts
of Dumont's schemes. Dumont was the chief
source of his rapidly growing fortune, though no
one except Culver, not even Mrs. Tavistock, knew
that they had business relations. Dumont moved
through Tavistock secretly, and Tavistock in turn
moved through other agents secretly. But for
such precautions as these the great men of Wall
Street would be playing with all the cards ex-
posed for the very lambs to cock their ears at.
"I want it immediately," said Dumont. "Only
the larger holders, you understand."
"Haste always costs. I'll have to get hold of
a man who can get hold of some one high up in
the Great Lakes dividend department."


A DESPERATE RALLY 353
as sound and steady as Government bonds? That
means another fifty thousand shares out of the
way for our purposes. Which of these names
stand for the Fanning-Smiths?"
"I only recognize Scannell—James Fanning-
Smith's private secretary. But there must be
others, as he's down for only twenty-one thousand
shares."
"Then he's the only one," said Dumont, "for
the Fanning-Smiths have only twenty-one thou-
sand shares at the present time. I know that pos-
itively."
"What!" Tavistock showed that he was
astounded. "I knew James Fanning-Smith was
an ass, but I never suspected him of such folly
as that. So they are the ones that have been sell-
ing?"
"Yes—not only selling what they owned but
also— However, no matter. It's safe to say
there are less than a hundred and fifty thousand
shares for us to take care of. I want you to get
me—right away—options for fifteen days on as
many of these remaining big lots as possible.
Make the best terms you can—anything up to
one hundred and twenty-five—and offer five or
even ten dollars a share forfeit for the option.


354 THE COST
Make bigger offers—fifteen—where it's neces-
sary. Set your people to work at once. They've
got the rest of to-day, all day to-morrow, all day
Sunday. But I'd rather the whole thing were
closed up by Saturday night. I'll be satisfied
when you've got me control of a hundred thou-
sand shares—that'll be the outside of safety."
"Yes, you're reasonably sure to win, if you can
carry that and look after offerings of fifty thou-
sand in the market. The options on the hundred,
thousand shares oughtn't to cost you much more
than a million. The fifty thousand you'll have to
buy in the market may cost you six or seven mil-
lions." Tavistock recited these figures carelessly.
In reality he was watching Dumont shrewdly, for
he had believed that the National Woolens raid
had ruined him, had certainly put him out of the
large Wall Street moves.
"In that small drawer, to the left, in the desk
there," said Dumont, pointing. "Bring me the
Inter-State National check-book, and pen and
ink."
When he had the book he wrote eight checks,
the first for fifty thousand, the next five for one
hundred thousand each, the last two for two hun-
dred and fifty thousand each. "The first check,"


A DESPERATE RALLY 355
he said, "you may use whenever you like. The
others, except the last two, will be good after two
o'clock to-day. The last two can be used any
time after eleven to-morrow. And—don't for-
get! I'm supposed to be hopelessly ill—but then,
no one must know you've seen me or know any-
thing about me. Spread it as a rumor."
Tavistock went away convinced, enthusiastic.
There was that in Dumont which inspired men to
their strongest, most intelligent efforts. He was
harsh, he was tyrannical, treacherous even—in a
large way, often cynically ungrateful. But he
knew how to lead, knew how to make men forget
all but the passion for victory, and follow him
loyally. Tavistock had seen his financial brain
solve too many "unsolvable" problems not to have
confidence in it.
"I might have known!" he reflected. "Why,
those fellows apparently only scotched him. They
got the Woolens Company away from him. He
lets it go without a murmur when he sees he's
beaten, and he turns his mind to grabbing a big
railway as if Woolens had never existed."
Just after his elevated train passed Chatham
Square on the way down-town Tavistock sud-
denly slapped his leg with noisy energy and ex-


356 THE COST
claimed half-aloud, "By Jove, of course!" to the
amusement of those near him in the car. He
went on to himself: "Why didn't I see it be-
fore? Because it's so beautifully simple, like all
the things the big 'uns do. He's a wonder. So
thafs what he's up to? Gad, what a breeze
there'll be next week!"
At eleven o'clock Doctor Sackett came into
Dumont's bedroom, in arms against his patient.
"You're acting like a lunatic. No business, I
say—not for a week. Absolute quiet, Mr. Du-
mont, or I'll not answer for the consequences."
"I see you want to drive me back into the
fever," replied Dumont. "But I'm bent on get-
ting well. I need the medicine I've had this morn-
ing, and Culver's bringing me another dose. If
I'm not better when he leaves, I agree to try your
prescription of fret and fume."
"You are risking your life."
Dumont smiled. "Possibly. But I'm risking
it for what's more than life to me, my dear
Sackett."
"You'll excite yourself. You'll"
"On the contrary, I shall calm myself. I'm
never so calm and cheerful as when I'm fighting,
unless it's when I'm getting ready to fight.



358 THE COST
Dumont was in a peculiarly appreciative mood.
"Why, the fellow's got brains—good brains," was
his inward comment again and again as Culver
unfolded the information he had collected—clear,
accurate, non-essentials discarded, essentials given
in detail, hidden points brought to the surface.
It was proof positive of Dumont's profound
indifference to money that he listened without any
emotion either of anger or of regret to the first
part of Culver's tale, the survey of the wreck—-
what had been forty millions now reduced to a
dubious six.. Dumont had neither time nor
strength for emotion; he was using all his men-
tality in gaging what he had for the work in
hand—just how long and how efficient was the
broken sword with which he must face his ene-
mies in a struggle that meant utter ruin to him
if he failed. For he felt that if he should fail
he would never again be able to gather himself
together to renew the combat; either he would
die outright or he would abandon himself to the
appetite which had just shown itself dangerously
near to being the strongest of the several passions
ruling him.
When Culver passed to the Herron coterie and
the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf,
"


3T50 THE COST
brought him a cup of beef extract—"A very small
cup," he grumbled good-humoredly. "And a
very weak, watery mess in it.",
As he lay propped in his bed drinking it—
slowly to make it last the longer—Pauline sat
looking at him. His hands had been fat and
puffy; she was filled with pity as she watched the
almost scrawny hand holding the cup to his lips;
there were hollows between the tendons, and the
wrist was gaunt. Her gaze wandered to his face
and rested there, in sympathy and tenderness.
The ravages of the fever had been frightful—
hollows where the swollen, sensual cheeks had
been; the neck caved in behind and under the jaw-
bones; loose skin hanging in wattles, deeply-set
eyes, a pinched look about the nostrils and the
corners of the mouth. He was homely, ugly
even; except the noble curve of head and profile,
not a trace of his former good looks—but at least
that swinish, fleshy, fleshly expression was gone.
A physical wreck, battered, torn, dismantled
by the storm and fire of disease! It was hard for
her to keep back her tears.
Their eyes met and his instantly shifted. The
rest of the world saw the man of force bent upon
the possessions which mean fame and honor re*


A DESPERATE RALLY 363
beat down the impulse to snatch it away, let it lie
passive. He pressed his lips upon it.
"I haven't thanked you for coming back," he
said in a low voice, holding to her hand nervously.
"But you know it wasn't because I'm not grate-
ful, don't you? I can hardly believe yet that it
isn't a dream. I'd have said there wasn't a human
being on earth who'd have done it—except your
mother. No, not even you, only your mother."
At this tribute to her mother, unexpected, sin-
cere, tears dimmed Pauline's eyes and a sob chok-
ed up into her throat.
"It was your mother in you that made you
come," he went on. "But you came—and I'll not
forget it. You said you had come to stay—is
that so, Pauline?"
She bent her head in assent.
"When I'm well and on top again—but
there's nothing in words. All I'll say is, you're
giving me a chance, and I'll make the best of it
I've learned my lesson."
He slowly released her hand. She stood there
a moment, without speaking, without any definite
thought. Then she left to send Langdon.
"Yes," Dumont reflected, "it was her duty. It's
a woman's duty to be forgiving and gentle and


A DESPERATE RALLY 365
who carries so much color in her cheeks that you
know it couldn't have come from the inside."
"You're wrong about Giddings. He's honest
enough. Any other man would have done the
same in his place. He stayed until there was no
hope of saving the ship."
"All lost but his honor—Wall Street honor,
eh?"
"Precisely."
After a pause Langdon said: "I'd no idea you
held much of your own stock. I thought you con-
trolled through other people's proxies and made
your profits by forcing the stock up or down and
getting on the other side of the market."
"But, you see, I believe in Woolens," replied
Dumont. "And I believe in it still, Langdon!"
His eyes had in them the look of the fanatic.
"That concern is breath and blood and life to me,
and wife and children and parents and brothers
and sisters. I've put my whole self into it. I
conceived it. I brought it into the world. I
nursed it and brought it up. I made it big and
strong and great. It's mine, by heaven! Mine!
And no man shall take it from me!"
He was sitting up, his face flushed, his eyes
blazing. "Gad—he does look a wild beast!" said


366 THE COST
Langdon to himself. He would have said aloud,
had Dumont been well: "I'm precious glad I
ain't the creature those fangs are reaching for!"
He was about to caution him against exciting
himself when Dumont sank back with a cynical
smile at his own outburst.
"But to get down to business," he went on.
"I've eleven millions of the stock left—about a
hundred and twenty thousand shares. Gladys has
fifty thousand shares—how much have you got?"
"Less than ten thousand. And I'd have had
none at all if my mind hadn't been full of other
things as I was sailing. I forgot to tell my broker
to sell."
Dumont was reflecting. Presently he said:
"Those curs not only took most of my stock and
forced the sale of most of my other securities;
they've put me in such a light that outside stock-
holders wouldn't send me their proxies now. To
get back control I must smash them, and I must
also acquire pretty nearly half the shares, and
hold them till I'm firm in the saddle again."
"You'd better devote yourself for the present to
escaping the grave. Why bother about business?
You've got enough—too much, as it is. Take a
holiday—go away and amuse yourself."



A DESPERATE RALLY 367
Dumont smiled. "That's what I'm going to
do, what I'm doing—amusing myself. I couldn't
sleep, I couldn't live, if I didn't feel that I was
on my way back to power. Now—in the present
market I couldn't borrow on my Woolens stock.
I've two requests to make of you."
"Anything that's possible."
"The first is, I want you to lend me four mil-
lions, or, rather, negotiate the loan for me, as ifx
it were for yourself. I've got about that amount
in Governments, in several good railways and in
the property here. The place at Saint X is Pau-
line's, but the things I can put up would bring
four millions and a half at least at forced sale. So,
you'll be well secured. I'm asking you to do it
instead of doing it myself because, if I'm to win
out, the Herron crowd must think I'm done for
and nearly dead."
Langdon was silent several minutes. At last
he said: "What's your plan?"
Dumont looked irritated—he did not like to be
questioned, to take any one into his confidence.
But he restrained his temper and said: "I'm
going to make a counter-raid. I know where to
strike."
"Are you sure?"


368 THE COST
Dumont frowned. "Don't disturb yourself,"
he said coldly. "I can arrange the loan in another
way."
"I'm asking you only for your own sake, Jack,"
Langdon hastily interposed. "Of course you can
have the money, and I don't want your security."
"Then I'll not borrow through you." Dumont
never would accept a favor from any one. He
regarded favors as profitable investments but
ruinous debts.
"Oh—very well—I'll take the security," said
Langdon. "When do you want the money?"
"It must be covered into my account at the
Inter-State National—remember, not the National
Industrial, but the Inter-State National. A mil-
lion must be deposited to-day—the rest by ten
o'clock to-morrow at the latest."
"I'll attend to it. What's your other request?"
"Woolens'll take another big drop on Monday
and at least two hundred and fifty thousand
shares'll be thrown on the market at perhaps an
average price of eighteen—less rather than more.
I want you quietly to organize a syndicate to buy
what's offered. They must agree to sell it to me
for, say, two points advance on what they pay for
it. I'll put up—in your name—a million dollars


372 THE COST
was soon absorbed in mentally arranging the se-
curities to the best advantage for distribution
among the money-lenders as collateral for the
cash he purposed to stake in his game.
Such thought as he gave to the moral quality of
what he was doing with his sister's and his
mother's property without asking their consent
was altogether favorable to himself. His was a
well-trained, "practical" conscience. It often
anticipated his drafts upon it for moral support in
acts that might at first blush seem criminal, or
for soothing apologies for acts which were un-
deniably "not quite right." This particular act,
conscience assured him, was of the highest mor-
ality—under his own code. For the code enacted
by ordinary human beings to guide their foolish
little selves he had no more respect than a lion
would have for a moral code enacted by and for
sheep. The sheep might assert that their code
was for lions also; but why should that move the
lions to anything but amusement? He had made
his own code—not by special revelation from the
Almighty, as did some of his fellow practitioners
of high finance, but by especial command of his
imperial "destiny." And it was a strict code—
it had earned him his unblemished reputation for


374 THE COST
all," he hastened to explain, as much to himself
as to them. For, a something inside him had
echoed the wondering inquiry in the two women's
faces—a something that persisted in reverencing
the moral code which his new code had super-
seded.


XXVII.
THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT.
At eleven o'clock on Monday morning James,
head of the Fanning-Smith family, president of
Fanning-Smith and Company, and chairman of
the Great Lakes and Gulf railway—to note
his chief titles to eminence up-town and
down—was seated in his grandfather's office,
in his grandfather's chair, at his grand-
father's desk. Above his head hung his grand-
father's portrait; and he was a slightly modern-
ized reproduction of it. As he was thus in every
outward essential his grandfather over again, he
and his family and the social and business world
assumed that he was the reincarnation of the
crafty old fox who first saw the light of day
through the chinks in a farm-hand's cottage in
Maine and last saw it as it sifted through the
real-lace curtains of his gorgeous bedroom in his
great Madison Avenue mansion. But in fact
James was only physically and titularly the repre-
sentative of his grandfather. Actually he was
typical pf the present generation of Fanning-
375


376 THE COST
Smiths—a self-intoxicated, stupid and pretentious
generation; a polo-playing and racing and hunt-
ing, a yachting and palace-dwelling and money-
scattering generation; a business-despjsing and
business-neglecting, an old-world aristocracy-
imitating generation. He moved pompously
through his two worlds, fashion and business,
deceiving himself completely, every one else ex-
cept his wife more or less, her not at all—but
that was the one secret she kept.
James was the husband of Herron's daughter
by his first wife, and Herron had induced him to
finance the syndicate that had raided and cap-
tured National Woolens.
James was bred to conservatism. His timidity
was of that wholesome strength which so often
saves chuckle-heads from the legitimate conse-
quences of their vanity and folly. But the spec-
tacle of huge fortunes, risen overnight before
the wands of financial magicians whose abilities
he despised when he compared them with his own,
was too much for timidity. He had been born
with a large vanity, and it had been stuffed from
his babyhood by all around him until it was be-
come as abnormal as the liver of a Strasburg
goose—and as supersensitive. It suffered acutely


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 377
as these Jacks went climbing up their bean-stalk
wealth to heights of magnificence from which the
establishments and equipages of the Fanning-
Smiths must seem poor to shabbiness. He sneered
at them as "vulgar new-comers"; he professed
abhorrence of their ostentation. But he—and
Gertrude, his wife—envied them, talked of them
constantly, longed *to imitate, to surpass them.
In the fullness of time his temptation came. He
shivered, shrank, leaped headlong—his wife push-
ing.
About ten days before the raid on National
Woolens there had drifted in to Dumont through
one of his many subterranean sources of informa-
tion a rumor that the Fanning-Smiths had
stealthily reduced their holdings of Great Lakes
to twenty-one thousand shares and that the prop-
erty was not so good as it had once been. He
never permitted any Wall Street development to
pass unexplained—he thought it simple prudence
for a man with the care of a great financial and
commercial enterprise to look into every dark
corner of the Street and see what was hatching
there. Accordingly, he sent an inquiry back along
his secret avenue. Soon he learned that Great
Lakes was sound, but the Fanning-Smiths had


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 379
ed that as wise audacity. To use a firm-estab-
lished foothold in business as a means to gambling
—he regarded that as the acme of reckless folly.
Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the
dice for a great Wall Street game of "high fin-
ance," he did it with skill and intelligence; and
Fanning-Smith had neither.
When the banking-house of Fanning-Smith
and Company undertook to finance the raid on
National Woolens it was already deep in the
Great Lakes gamble. James was new to Wall
Street's green table; and he liked the sensations
and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and
the public—he did not call it by that homely
name, though he knew others would if they found
him out—was moving smoothly. Still very, very
deep down his self-confidence was underlaid with
quicksand. But Herron was adroit and convinc-
ing to the degree attainable only by those who
deceive themselves before trying to deceive others;
and James' cupidity and conceit were enormous.
He ended by persuading himself that his house,
directed and protected by his invincible self, could
carry with ease the burden of both loads. In-
deed, the Great Lakes gamble now seemed to him
a negligible trifle in the comparison—what were


380 THE COST
its profits of a few hundred thousands beside the
millions that would surely be his when the great
Woolens Monopoly, bought in for a small frac-
tion of its value, should be controlled by a group
of which he would be the dominant personality?
He ventured; he won. He was now secure—
was not Dumont dispossessed, despoiled, dying?
At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he
was seated upon his embossed leather throne,
under his grandfather's portrait, immersed in an
atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he
straightened himself, distended his chest, elevated
his chin and glanced round with an air of haughty
dignity, though there was none to witness and to
be impressed. In Wall Street there is a fatuity
which, always epidemic among the small fry,
infects wise and foolish, great and small, when-
ever a paretic dream of an enormous haul at a
single cast of the net happens to come true. This
paretic fatuity now had possession of James; in
imagination he was crowning and draping him-
self with multi-millions, power and fame. At in-
tervals he had been calling up on the telephone at
his elbow Zabriskie, the firm's representative on
'Change, and had been spurring him on to larger
and more frequent "sales" of Great Lakes.


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 385
pf Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating
with quotations of Great Lakes.
"Zabriskie is selling our Woolens," he thought.
Then, with a blinding flash the truth struck
through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a
sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full
length upon his desk, buried his face between
them and burst into tears.
"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his
shoulders, his whole body, shook like a child in a
paroxysm.
A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-
Smith, irritated by the insistent jingling so close
to his ear, lifted himself and answered—the tears
were guttering his swollen face; his lips and eye-
lids were twitching.
"Well?" he said feebly.
"We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in
Zabriskie's voice, jubilant now.
"Who?"
"Don't know who—whoever was trying to
squeeze us. I had to throw over some Woolens
—but I'll pick it up again—maybe to-day."
Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Ex-
change—wilder, fiercer than three hours before,
but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 389
declines and recoveries in Great Lakes, Tavistock
leading the Fanning-Smith crowd on to make
heavier and heavier plunges, Dumont could see in
imagination the battle-field—the floor of the Stock
Exchange—as plainly as if he were there.
The battle began with a languid cannonade
between the two seemingly opposed parts of Du-
mont's army. Under cover of this he captured
most of the available actual shares of Great Lakes
—valuable aids toward making his position, his
"corner," impregnable. But before he had accom-
plished his full purpose Zabriskie, nominal lieu-
tenant-commander, actual commander of the
Fanning-Smith forces, advanced to give battle.
Instead of becoming suspicious at the steadiness
of the price under his attacks upon it, Zabriskie
was lured on to sell more of those Great Lakes
shares which he did not have. And he beamed
from his masked position as he thought of the
batteries he was holding in reserve for his grand
movement to batter down the price of the stock
late in the day, and capture these backers of the
property that was supposed to be under the pro-
tection of the high and honorable Fanning-
Smiths.
He was still thinking along this line, as he stood


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 395
the mysterious cornerer, and at whatever price he
might choose to ask!
"If we've got to go down," he said to himself,
"I'll see that it's a tremendous smash anyhow,
and that we ain't alone in it." For he had in him
the stuff that makes a man lead a forlorn hope
with a certain joy in the very hopelessness of it.
The scene on the day of Dumont's downfall
was a calm in comparison with the scene which
Dumont, sitting alone among the piled-up coils
of ticker-tape, was reconstructing from its, to
him, vivid second-by-second sketchings.
The mysterious force which had produced a
succession of earthquakes moved horribly on, still
in mystery impenetrable, to produce a cataclysm.
In the midst of the chaos two vast whirlpools
formed—one where Great Lakes sucked down
men and fortunes, the other where Woolens drew
some down to destruction, flung others up to
wealth. • Then Rumor, released by Tavistock
- when Dumont saw that the crisis had arrived, ran
hot foot through the Exchange, screaming into
the ears of the brokers, shrieking through the
telephones, howling over the telegraph wires, "A
corner! A corner! Great Lakes is cornered!"
Thousands besides the Fanning-Smith coterie had


396 THE COST
been gambling in Great Lakes, had sold shares
they did not have. And now all knew that to get
them they must go to the unknown, but doubtless
merciless, master-gambler—unless they could save
themselves by instantly buying elsewhere before
the steel jaws of the corner closed and clinched.
Reason fled, and self-control. The veneer of
civilization was torn away to the last shred; and
men, turned brute again, gave themselves up to
the elemental passions of the brute.
In the quiet, beautiful room in upper Fifth
Avenue was Dumont in his wine-colored wadded
silk dressing-gown and white silk pajamas. The
floor near his lounge was littered with the snake-
like coils of ticker-tape. They rose almost to his
knees as he sat and through telephone and ticker
drank in the massacre of his making, glutted him-
self with the joy of the vengeance he was taking
—on his enemies, on his false or feeble friends,
on the fickle public that had trampled and spat
upon him. His wet hair was hanging in strings
upon his forehead. His face was flushed and his
green-gray eyes gleamed like a mad dog's. At
intervals a jeer or a grunt of gratified appetite
ripped from his mouth or nose. Like a great lean
spider he lay hid in the center of that vast net of


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 3911
electric wires, watching his prey writhe helpless.
Pauline, made uneasy by his long isolation,
opened his door and looked—glanced, rather.
As she closed it, in haste to shut from view that
spectacle of a hungry monster at its banquet of
living flesh, Culver saw her face. Such an ex-
pression an angel might have, did it chance to
glance down from the battlements of heaven and,
before it could turn away, catch a glimpse of some
orgy in hell.
But Dumont did not hear the door open and
close. He was at the climax of his feast.
Upon his two maelstroms, sucking in the
wreckage from a dozen other explosions as well
as from those he had directly caused, he
could see as well as if he were among the fas-
cinated, horrified spectators in the galleries of the
Exchange, the mangled flotsam whirling and de-
scending and ascending. The entire stock list,
the entire speculating public of the country was
involved. And expression of the emotions every-
where was by telegraph and telephone concen-
trated in the one hall, upon the faces and bodies
of those few hundred brokers. All the passions
which love of wealth and dread of want breed in
the human animal were there finding vent—all


THE COST
degrees and shades and modes of greed, of hate,
of fear, of despair. It was like a shipwreck where
the whole fleet is flung upon the reefs, and the
sailors, drunk and insane, struggle with death
each in his own awful way. It was like the rout
where frenzied victors ride after and among
frenzied vanquished to shoot and stab and saber.
And while this battle, precipitated by the pas-
sions of a few "captains of industry," raged in
Wall Street and filled the nation with the clamor
of ruined or triumphant gamblers, ten-score thou-
sand toilers in the two great enterprises directly
involved toiled tranquilly on—herding sheep and
shearing them, weaving cloths and dyeing them,
driving engines, handling freight, conducting
trains, usefully busy, adding to the sum of hu-
man happiness, subtracting from the sum of hu-
man misery.
At three o'clock Dumont sank back among his
cushions and pillows. His child, his other self,
his Woolens Monopoly, was again his own; his
enemies were under his heel, as much so as those
heaps and coils of tickerrtape he had been churn-
ing in his excitement. "I'm dead tired," he mut*


THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT 399
tered, his face ghastly, his body relaxed in utter
exhaustion.
He closed his eyes. "I must sleep—I've earned
it. To-morrow"- ~~z. smile flitted round his mouth
—"I'll hang their hides where every coyote and
vulture can see."
Toward four o'clock in came Doctor Sackett
and Culver. The room was flooded with light
—the infinite light of the late-spring afternoon
reflected on the white enamel and white brocade
of walls and furniture. On the floor in the heaps
and coils of ticker-tape lay Dumont.
In his struggles the tape had wound round and
round his legs, his arms, his neck. It lay in a
curling, coiling mat, like a serpent's head, upon
his throat, where his hands clutched the collar
of his pajamas.
Sackett knelt beside him, listening at his chest,
feeling for his pulse—in vain. And Culver stood
by, staring stupidly at the now worthless instru-
ment of his ambition for wealth and power.


AFTER THE LONG WINTER 401
saw, in his keeping for himself and Gladys
the spoils he gathered up. He is inclined to think
he was intelligent rather than right; but, know-
ing his weakness for self-criticism, he never gives
a positive verdict against himself. That, how-
ever, is unimportant, as he is not the man to per-
mit conscience to influence conduct in grave mat-
ters.
He feels that, in any case, he did not despoil
Pauline or Gardiner. For, after he had told her
what Dumont did—and to protect himself he
hastened to tell it—she said: "Whatever there
may be, it's all for Gardiner. I waive my own
rights, if I have any. But you must give me your
word of honor that you won't let anything taint-
ed pass to him." Langdon, judging with the
delicacy of a man of honor put on honor, was
able to find little such wealth.
He gives himself most of the credit for Gardi-
ner's turning out so well—"Inherited riches are
a hopeless handicap," he often says to Gladys
when they are talking over the future of their
children.
Pauline—
The first six months of her new life, of her


402 THE COST
resumed life, she spent in Europe with her father
and mother and Gardiner. Late in the fall they
were back at Saint X, at the old house in Jeffer-
son Street. In the following June came Scar-
borough. She was in the garden, was waiting
for him, was tying up a tall rose, whose splendid,
haughty head had bent under the night's rain.
He was quite near her when she heard his step
and turned. He stood, looked at her—the look
she had seen that last afternoon at Battle Field.
He came slowly up and took both her hands.
"After all the waiting and longing and hoping,"
he said, "at last—you! I can't put it into words
—except to say—just—Pauline!"
She drew a long breath; her gaze met his. And
in her eyes he saw a flame that had never shone
clearly there before—the fire of her own real self,
free and proud. "Once you told me about your
father and mother—how he cared—cared al-
ways."
"I remember," he answered.
"Well—I—I," said Pauline, "I care as she
must have cared when she gave him herself—and
you."
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